The Year Was 1922

 Almost every newspaper and magazine – and these days blogs as well – features a roundup of the past year's major events.  During the past decade such a topic has only occurred occasionally on this blog; so 2022 is one of those years!  Here goes: one hundred years ago, and what had been the talking points in Fleetville and Camp districts in 1922?

Not a particular feature of 1922 alone, but one which engaged a number of residents who enjoyed regular walks in the countryside or in their newly-built homes near to woodland: the battle between the resident red squirrels and the invasive greys that had spread their range remarkably quickly.  Correspondents to local newspapers claimed to identify where a grey squirrel had been from the damage to bark it had left behind.

The phrase "Homes for Heroes" had been around for four years.  Such a reward for returning soldiers after the First War was widely acknowledged, but by the end of 1922 only one local scheme had been taken forward, at Townsend.  But In our East End the Springfield site was still empty, with rumours from the government that funding for HFH schemes was soon to be cut back.  We were to live in hope and expectation.

Those of us who enjoyed watching our city's football team playing on home turf at Clarence Park received some welcome news that plans were afoot to provide some spectator shelter along the railway side of the ground, and a volunteer force of men were engaged to construct terracing using secondhand railway sleepers to provide improved visibility on the remaining open sides.

A new cinema has opened on Fleetville's doorstep, on undeveloped land in Stanhope Road.  The Grand Palace Cinema occupied the full width between Stanhope and Granville roads and opened in the middle of the summer.  Its impressive Grecian-style entrance and foyer lead to sweeping rows of seats both downstairs and in a deep balcony; a dining room for refreshments and live music from a 14-piece orchestra created the appropriate scenario to herald the new format of future sound movies.

Mains drainage pipes had still not been laid in parts of Fleetville and Camp, and even where the scheme had been provided, taking effluent to the city's sewage treatment works near Park Street,  many home owners declined to pay for their properties to be connected as they still had cess pits in their rear gardens.

Street lighting, mainly gas but a few electric, existed on many street corners, but in the newly developed built up areas which had only become part of the city ten years previously, there is little public lighting at all.  Residents of Camp and Fleetville returning home after dark to their unmade potholed roads find it a rather risky experience.  And we are not entirely beyond the primitive regulations of street lighting remaining dark on moonlit nights.

This year is also the first occasion on which, with the cooperation of the Herts Advertiser, the shops which line Hatfield Road are being  marketed as an entity: the Fleetville Shopping Centre.  The concept is that you can buy almost anything, that such variety was within an easy walking distance, and that from elsewhere in the city you are able to bring your motor car and park it right outside your desired shop without the need to making arrangements for later delivery.

A controversy lingers on between residents whose homes are on the city side of the 1913 boundary and those who live in Fleetville and Camp homes added to the city since that year.  The city rates (council tax) are significantly higher than that which applied in the former rural council area.  It had been agreed the two rates would be harmonised over a period of years.  In the meantime there were frequent complaints that Camp and Fleetville folk were benefiting unfairly by paying less.

The General Post Office (today's Royal Mail) have been the subject of many complaints.  The company, it is alleged, were not at all interested in serving the new areas by way of opening post offices, placing new posting boxes or organising delivery rounds to the same level established in the more central areas of St Albans.  T'was ever thus!

An unnamed correspondent to the Herts Advertiser who had observed the gradual expansion of the east side of St Albans, took a crayonistic view of the future and predicted how new housing might appear in the future, using fields and private parkland north of Brampton Road and encompassing Marshals Wick.  He further projected development eastwards towards Oaklands.  It is clear that a number of readers have suggested such thoughts of future expansion are much exaggerated.  But seems the correspondent was remarkably modest in "playing with his crayons on a map".

A large house at the Sandpit Lane end of Beaumont Avenue had changed ownership again – and sported a new house name of St John's Lodge.  News will have begun to spread about the launch of a new preparatory school based at the house: St John's Prep.

Away from our East End, the King Harry junction in this early year of motoring, has been considered dangerous.  The council considered two options; either move the public house to another site, or remove the obstacle altogether to widen the junction.  As has often happened the council decided to do neither, nor select an alternative option.

There was a time before the Odyssey Cinema in London Road, before the Odeon, its previous moniker.  Before even the building itself. In 1922 the former Poly Picture Palace, built on a wider footprint than the first building, was briefly renamed the Empire Cinema and Varieties.  Co-cincidence? Or perhaps a competitive marketing strategy against the opening of the Grand Palace Cinema (see above).

Finally, we have been encouraged to frequent a shop new to St Albans but with a name having a nationally impressive reputation: J Sainsbury.  JS will have been added to the shopping lists of an increasing number of East Enders as they took one of the new bus services now available between Oaklands, Fleetville, Midland Station and Market Square.  The residents of the new young areas of the city must have felt more "grown up" by now being offered transport services to and from the the heart of their own town.

So, what to look forward to in 1923?  Fleetville, still being a dry district, might hope eventually for a public house of its own.  Residents are desperate to have roads that are fully made up.  The name "Sutton Lakes" needs to be consigned to history but neither council or railway company will agree to do anything.  And if there is one element of living where they are really disappointed the footpaths are too narrow to make the planting of street trees a practical impossibility.  Will progress be made on any of these issues?

A happy New Year to all readers; 1st January 2023.

Absent Photo: Third Hand Chapel

 This week we'll remain in Hatfield Road and walk westwards towards the Bycullah Terrace shops, opposite Morrison's in Fleetville.  A most unusual story is about to be revealed – and for further pages on this topic see the links at the foot of this post.

OS map 1922.  The vacant land belonging to the printing works bordered in red; that leased for the
cinematograph bordered in orange – and is now the Post Office plot.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

On the western corner of the Woodstock Road South junction is the Post Office; that is where our story is centred. Before the First World War its name was Tess Road.  Apart from the then new Bycullah Terrace shops the nearest Hatfield Road buildings would have been at Harlesden Road to the west and the villas which were the subject of the previous post to the east; although the printing works owner had employee homes in nearby Royal Road and Arthur Road.  Hatfield Road did look strikingly empty in spite of the opening of the elementary school in 1908. I should confirm that the printing works, The Fleet Works, was the first business to set up hereabouts, and was located where Morrison's store is today.

An impresario, maybe of doubtful reputation, arrived in town, and took a lease on the corner plot from the owner of the printing works opposite.  He may, or may not, have erected a board announcing the imminent arrival of a new cinematograph building in keeping with the entertainment fashion of the day.  His name was Russell Edwards and was previously known to the courts for various financial irregularities.

Hatfield Road c1914.  Smith's printing works on the left; Bycullah Terrace shops on the right.
Arrowed is the vacant land just beyond the shops and where Russell Edwards chose to
assemble his cinematograph building, a former chapel or parish hall.

There arrived on the scene several cart loads of metal, timber and panels of corrugated iron.  They had been brought from the Midland (now City) Station where their rail journey from Colne in Lancashire (or Colne Valley, Yorkshire) had begun.  Local people had become used to quirky buildings and Meccano-type temporary structures before.  Tin churches were quite common. But what was this one? Difficult to work it out from the piles of assorted stuff on one corner of the site, although it apparently wasn't certain whether the stacks were fully on the correct site or partly overflowing onto the adjacent plot, which Edwards also chose to use without the owner's permission.

During the next few weeks a variable number of casual workmen turned up each day to assemble what today would be called a pre-used building.  In fact it wasn't even second-hand, but third-hand, and it appears that several assorted parts were missing.  The structure's last use was as a chapel or parish hall, so is that what the people of Fleetville were going to get?  If the workmen can be persuaded to remain at work – many had not been paid for some time –  the word on the street was they were being promised a cinematograph building.

This would have been the view of the building from Hatfield Road.  The projector box, far 
left, was thought not to have been part of the acquired kit and would have been added on
site, if there had been space without incursion on to the neighbouring plot. Tess Road
(now Woodstock Road south) is on the immediate right.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

The Council was offered a set of plans, as shown in the images below, and proposals for a building which the Council may not have been aware was already in build.  Unfortunately, the Council turned down the plans, because as Russell Edwards had been enterprisingly concocting his Fleetville project a new safety law, the Cinemas Act, was added to the statute books.  This specified how cinematograph buildings should be built, what facilities they should comprise and the standard of those facilities.  The new Fleeville cinematograph, it turns out, did not comply and was not likely to have been the comfortable exhibition building customers might have expected. 

The proposed plan for seating (green) supposedly for up to 450 customers.  There appears not to

be a specific place for payment to be made, although many early buildings ran on the fairground

principle with moneys collected outside.  Electricity had only arrived in St Albans in 1908 and it

would be some while before Fleetville would benefit.  The Engine Shed would have housed

a generator.

COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

There were other issues too.  One of Edwards' investors was lied to about the details of the project and suffered other financial problems. The purchased building was also too large for the plot, and instead of modifying the structure to fit, he instructed his workmen to "borrow" a part of the next plot, which unfortunately had not been fenced off.

There is no doubt, it was a basic building on a flat floor – even though the elevation drawing shows a sloped floor – and would not have been appropriate for use in winter.  There was one male urinal and no evidence of toilet facilities for female customers.  A tiny porch opened out onto the footpath of Hatfield Road.  If you were to visit the Post Office today, including the vet's premises next door, and then walk round the corner to the rear of the Post Office plot, that is where the promised 450 cinematograph viewers would have supposedly been accommodated on their chairs.  

The building never opened to the public; wasn't even finished. Edwards was taken to court for various financial irregularities and non-payments to creditors or his workmen.  Edwards was imprisoned, but meanwhile the court sitting required the building to be demolished, the component parts and the land sold to reimburse creditors.  So Fleetville residents never got to be entertained here.

Although the opportunity was very brief, did anyone grab a camera and record any part of the construction, particularly the nearest it reached to completion?  Or maybe even the workmen who were not paid but had to return home to their families to put meals on their tables.  Fortunately, we do have access to the plans and elevations, which are shown here, but unlike artists painting what is in front of them, can we be sure there were drawings of the original structure when it was in use at Colne?  Did W H G Hubbard, architect, make his drawings from measurements, from the building's original site, or from a company sales catalogue?

The cinematograph site remained cleared for sixteen years before the current building was
erected in 1930 for A Rankin Smith.

A photograph demonstrating how the building appeared in its street setting would be a rare example of any building work actually in progress in this new suburb, but such activity did not, it appears, excite anyone who owned a camera.  Following the cinematograph's  demolition it would be another sixteen years before another building would be brought to this corner plot; the store and post office of A Rankin Smith.

At this period just before the First World War there was an increase in the number of people who had taken an interest in photography, using their skills to sell copies of their negatives to the locals, or as artistic views of street scenes at events across a wider geographical landscape.  Perhaps, even during such a short construction period, one photographic image might have been taken.  But does it still exist?

Link to Fleetville Cinema on SAOEE website.

Link to blog post "Missed the Flicks": https://stalbansowneastend.blogspot.com/2020/09/missed-flicks.html

 

Granville and Stanhope

 The two previous posts have drawn our attention to Conservation Areas (CA) in localities within our eastern districts –  Clarence Park and nearby residential roads, and Sleapshyde.  Perhaps a number of readers have or will take the opportunity to explore these streets and the buildings which lie along them.  It is usually only when we are walking that we are afforded the opportunity to notice details along a street. This week the third and final Conservation Area is Granville and Stanhope roads, where two of the three roads are busy thoroughfares in their own right.

Clarence Park is at the top; Station Way on the left; the trianglular 

space in the middle is formed of Granville and Stanhope roads; the two

houses in Grimston Road are on their own at the bottom; St Peter's

Farm homestead is on the top right.

COURTESY ST ALBANS DISTRICT COUNCIL

This week's Conservation Area is bounded by Hatfield Road (between the Midland Railway and Crown junction), Station Way, Grimston Road, and the rear boundaries of homes on the south side of Stanhope Road.  

Stanhope Road looking east before WW1. A tree-lined street with
The Crown PH at the lower far end.
COURTESY HALS

It is believed Stanhope Road was named after Philip Henry Stanhope (1781-1837), one-time president of the Medico-Botanical Society of London, who bred 55 species of orchid within the Stanhopea genus. I am less certain of the naming of Granville Road, although an individual of this surname is reported to have received bequests from Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.  Grimston Road is, of course from Earl of Verulam, James Grimston (1809-1895) whose base was at  Gorhambury.

The CA comprises entirely of a single development estate, which was formerly a field, known as Hatfield Road Field or "the field next to the chain bar" (of the Reading & Hatfield Turnpike at the top of Camp Lane), owned by Earl Spencer and worked by Thomas Kinder for his company's brewing business.  Its transfer for development (or at least that part not required for the railway) was part of Kinder's retirement from business plan and the owner's opportunity c1880 to build homes for users of the railway, some of our early commuters.  Also included in the Conservation area are the buildings of St Peter's Farm, The Crown PH and the Hatfield Road frontage buildings between the Crown PH and Albion Road.

Shops were added to the eastern end of Stanhope Road and are included as locally Listed.

All of the villas on the south side of Stanhope Road are locally listed; mainly built between 1886 and c1914, and most are detached with bays or semi-detached with double bays, offering a satisfying variety to the streetscape.  Just a small number of more modern homes use plots not sold during the main construction period, and at the lower end were built four shops during the main development period.  These, together with the former post office, Alexandra House and corner shops at the front of the Cavendish estate provided the local shops for the development's early occupiers. All of the houses and shops on the south side are locally Listed, even those which are modern.

The northern end of Granville Road containing locally Listed villas.

Regrettably the street trees planted at the road edge in the 1880s were removed in the 1920s when buses began to use Stanhope Road to reach the station.  Whether they were suitable species for roadside planting I don't know, but the restricted width for a main road and inevitable street parking for most of the villas – despite a wide footpath – results today in a harder streetscape.

The north side of Granville Road is lined with villas for half of its length from the Grimston Road end, but development eventually slowed down.  Some ground was left unbuilt and the remainder became an infill industrial building, both of which have been replaced by modern blocks of apartments in keeping with the rest of the street: The Maples and Ashtree Court.  All of the properties on the north side border a modern road, Station Way, which is busy with buses and station-bound cars.

The villas between Granville Road and The Crown along Hatfield Road were replaced by this 
Neo-Georgian style factory building for W O Peak.  This was itself replace in the 1980s.
COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX

Number 108 Hatfield Road next to Station Way which is the only house in the group not to be
locally Listed.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

Hatfield Road, facing Clarence Park, was developed with two and three-storeyed villas.  While those remain at the station end, the homes below Granville Road were gradually replaced by extensions to the former W O Peake coat factory, and have been replaced for a second time with modern residential flats and offices.  Photos exist for the neo-Georgian factory, but extensive searches have failed to reveal images of the range of villa terraces that preceded it, which is very disappointing.  Above Granville Road the gradient of the bridge embankment of the 1860s becomes evident as the homes built on the original field level have allowed for a lower-ground floor to be designed in.  All except the house nearest Station Way are locally Listed.  This exception is not explained in the document other than not to mention number 108.  Yet this house is shown, along with the others, on the 1897 OS map and appears to be the original building.

A pair of houses in Grimston Road is included in the Conservation Area and are locally Listed.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

In addition to the houses mentioned in the three above roads is a pair of more modest houses in Grimston Road.  The space for these was created by shortening the plots of the properties in adjacent Stanhope Road.

The deNovo Place apartments at the northern end of Stanhope Road where previously had
stood St Peter's Mission Church and then St Albans' Adult Schools.

On the island side of Granville Road is the Spiritualist Meeting Room which opened in 1910.

Seven villas were built on the lower end of the north side of Stanhope Road.  The rest of this
side was occupied by the Grand Palace (later renamed Gaumont) cinema. The Chatsworth 
apartment development has replaced the cinema.

The island section, between Granville and Stanhope roads, contain seven villas on the Stanhope (north) side, again, locally Listed.  The apex of the triangle is now on its third incarnation, having begun with the tin church of St Peter's Mission Church, then the Adult Schools once St Paul's Church had opened; today is a modern style of residential apartments, deNovo Place.  In 1922 the remainder became the cinema (Grand Palace, which changed its name to Gaumont) and its car park.  Today the cinema has gone and Chatsworth Court, the name giving a nod to the Dukes of Devonshire, has replaced it.

Finally, a compact plot in the triangle was used from 1910 as a spiritualist meeting house, and its usage for this purpose continues today.  The meeting house is also locally Listed.

Readers may perhaps agree with me that a fourth CA might be appropriate in the eastern districts: the heart of Fleetville, encompassing Bycullah Terrace, Woodstock Road south (formerly Tess Road), Royal Road, the recreation ground, Arthur Road, 
 including the former Printing Works Institute and the Rats' Castle, and possibly Burnham Road and Eaton Road.  Fleetville Infants School might also form part of the group.