To Save a Tree

 We now move westwards from the Senior Central School (Fleetville Juniors today) on the third field to be sold by the Grammar School, but rather later than the fields incorporating the Fleet Works and Fleet Ville.  Called Poor Six Acre Field we assume the name to reflect the quality of its top soil.  [Further along the road at the cemetery this top and sub-soil is brought to the surface when new burials are due]. So selling for development would have been an easy decision to make.  During and following the First World War the field, or at least a part of it, was delineated into allotment plots "for the war effort", partly to avoid the recreation ground being utilised for the same purpose, which was certainly a real risk. 

To fully understand which plots today occupy the front of this field, the first to the west of the school's vehicular entrance is Grimsdyke Lodge, then BC Cycles and Magnet.  Although Topps Tiles is also part of the modern range of development this will form part of the next post.

The Valuation Office records from 1910 to 1915 reveal that during the lifetime of its data, W H Lavers, the owner of the timber yard nearby, also acquired the frontage land to the west of the school entrance, 206 to 202 and possibly 208 as well.  So, we will consider number 208 first.  It is doubtful if many current residents of the district recall a detached house to the west of the school entrance, but a photograph in the St Albans' Museums Archive shows one to be there.  

The house behind the railings was built for the school caretaker.  The large detached house behind
the bus stop had two owners in its short lifetime before being demolished shortly before 1967.
It is possible the tree in its front garden may be the one referred to in the text below, but it
certainly did not survive the next stage in the site's life.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

It was erected shortly after the First World War and its first occupant was Mrs Bell; her name appears as the occupant in the 1930 and 1934 street directories.  From then on the occupant was Mrs Wilkins.  In both cases we only know their names.  If Mrs Bell was the owner of the house she may also have purchased the adjacent  land, the plots taken over by Mr Lavers from the Grammar School.  From then on numbers 208 to 202 were treated as a single plot of ground even though no further houses were built there.  However, a row of lock-up garages existed at the back of 206 to 202 from c1930 until 1967.

An article in the Herts Advertiser 19th April 1973 revealed that Mrs Wilkins had planted an oak seed on her land in 1935 to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of George V and Queen Mary.  She very much wanted to protect the tree from development by Fairview Estates to whom she had sold her property in 1967.  Your Editor cannot recall such a tree being present, although a photograph from the archives of St Albans Museums proves it was growing in the front garden. The oak tree – which would now be 86 years old – is not within the boundary of Grimsdyke Lodge today.

The left section of Grimsdyke Lodge was the location of the former detached house.

Grimsdyke Lodge, a development of eight 1-bed flats, dates from 1967 and a central throughway gives access to rear parking.  It is thought that the name of the building came from Grimsdyke Developments, a development arm of Fairview Estates. 

Three of the four eventual sections of the ironmongery (DIY) shop begun by James Andrew, and successively by the Tuckett family and then Leon Reed. On the left is part of the open ground
owned by Mrs Wilkins of the detached house, now part of Grimsdyke Lodge.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Numbers 200, 198 and 196 were created in 1910 by builder James Andrew, who also occupied the western end of this multi plot.  He also had a shop on the north side of the road directly opposite from which he sold building accessories and fittings.  Mr Andrew  constructed a two-bay unit consisting of shops on the ground floor  with living accommodation above – often the upper floors were converted into storage areas, but it is not certain whether that was the case here. Two ground-floor-only shop units were added later, one on each side of the original structure, and this part of Hatfield Road became a very successful DIY centre managed by Leonard Reed – until the industrial estate DIY warehouses popular from the 1980s motoring boom, and suddenly Reed's became no more.

The fullest four-section extent of Leon Reed's DIY Centre shortly after its closure.
COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX

But this is putting the cart before the proverbial horse, because one of the original shop units, number 200, remained a drapery and then ladies' outfitter from c1912 through to the 1960s. Number 198 was held by builder James Andrew until he opened his shop opposite, and was then taken on by Harry Tuckett, whose family had previous ironmongery experience working at Hallam's, a well-known ironmongery on the corner of Chequer Street and High Street (the giant letter H still features on an external wall of this building, now a bank).  The Tuckett family also managed a general store in Camp Road on the premises which later became John Dearman's ironmongery, now private houses.

Leonard Reed took over in the mid-1950s and gradually expanded into the ladies' outfitter unit and then built first one wing on the eastern side, followed by a second on the western side, on the land previously occupied by James Andrew's open depot for his building trade, although that must have gone by the time I first knew Fleetville in the 1950s.

200 and 198 were demolished and replaced by the modern Richmond House, home to Weddings Unlimited and now BC Cycles. It is a mixed site incorporating retail and apartments.

This part of Hatfield Road has seen plenty of variety in its urbanisation since it was a field with poor soil, with many changes too.  And Mrs Wilkins' oak tree was only one of the oaks failing to survive to the modern day.  Seven mature oak trees quietly growing  in the field were felled and offered for sale, possibly to make sale for development much easier.

Next time we will be introduced to a member of a very well-known family.

Educational Future

 While we can way find our way along Hatfield Road by means of the frontage shops, we now have a choice: the premises which line the south side of the road, and the occupier of the back land.  We have reached the next of the fields owned by the St Albans Grammar School.  Hertfordshire County Council planned a three-stage re-organisation of schools which had been a mix of board and elementary schools, which had themselves been borne from an earlier collection of British and National schools.  One desperately urgent need was to separate senior pupils from infants and juniors to provide senior schools and distinct Junior Mixed and Infant Schools.

In 1925 Fleetville and Camp districts possessed no schools for senior children of either gender, and the council agreed to purchase a site of less than five acres for a pair of senior schools.  Quite what it thought would fit on this acreage for two schools and its attendant playgrounds is debatable, quite apart from a playing field.

The 1924 map shows the cemetery and a large undeveloped space to its east.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Timber yard – see previous post – and a number of shops and business to the west by the time the
1937 map was published.  Behind is the site of the Central and Senior Girls' School in its original
square building and the separate handicraft building.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

From around 1918 a central school for girls had been operating in a rather ramshackle set of buildings in Victoria Street – partly a former  library, an arts and technology centre, boys' handicraft rooms and a school for girls who would benefit from a full four-year curriculum not limited to the existing leaving age of thirteen.  Most of these spaces had to be shared and were not for the exclusive use of the school.  And as the number of qualifying girls increased the available space became crowded.

New premises was desperately needed for the school and for practical rooms which could be shared with elementary schools lacking in these facilities.  So, new central school buildings came to Hatfield Road, and a search for a new pair of senior schools for the eastern districts would continue (and was eventually found at Oakwood Drive in 1938).

A cooking lesson in one of the practical classrooms.
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

The new Central and Senior Girls' School school had no need of a frontage to the main road and so was not included in the sale to the education authority.  One pedestrian entrance, still used as such, was created at the eastern end between a motor factor (then West & Sellick and now CAMRA), and a further entry at the western end, later improved for access to the ancillary buildings, parking and a caretaker's house.

A typical HCC architectural design from the 1930s, of expanded buildings at Hatfield Road.
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

By 1938 the school was changed to become a secondary St Albans Girls' Grammar School, with attendant increases in accommodation and for an increase in places.  In 1951 a new site was built for STAGGS in Sandridgebury Lane, originally intended to become a boys' secondary modern school – the county council changed its mind several times during this period!

Original handicraft and pupil teacher buildings, now unused on the site.

Overcrowded Fleetville JMI school earnestly hoped the former girls' school buildings would be available for them, but the inadequate Beaumont schools, new in 1938, became a boy's secondary modern and its girls formed a new school in Hatfield Road, first as Beaumont Girls school, and then altering its name to Sandfield Girls to avoid the name Beaumont being used for two sites in different locations. All of this new accommodation was required for an increase in the leaving age to 15. Instead, Fleetville Overflow School was constructed in Oakwood Drive, being named Oakwood JMI School in 1958 when it opened.

Aerial view of the current school, playing field, ancillary buildings and the former Family Centre.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Sandfield School later merged with Marshalswick Boys' School at The Ridgeway; and the parents of Fleetville JMI made a further attempt to move from their, by now, even more overcrowded Royal Road location.  This time they were more successful and the Junior department became custodians of the Hatfield Road buildings in 1975, enabling the infant department to spread out in Royal Road.

Fleetville Junior School is therefore the longest of the five occupiers of the buildings at forty-six years.  The first two occupiers would even have experienced the occasional passing of a train on the southern boundary!

Up for the Cup in 1996

Every so often it behoves all of us to spend time clearing out, or maybe tidying the piles of stuff we hoard.  A while back we were undertaking a similar task at Fleetville Community Centre, although the intention had been solely to discover records of the Centre's early years from 1982.  But you know what it's like; you discover interesting programmes, minutes or newspaper articles, stop to read them, and later two hours progress remains slow.

The 1995-6 squad.  Back L-R: Robert Ade, Nick Malham, Jonathon Smithers, David Adams, Elliott Ryan, Jonathan
Michie, Tom Price, Stuart Hames.  Front L-R: Sam Parratt, Ben Herd, Chris Seeby (Captain), Matthew Jones, James Buck.

Among the miscellaneous documents were the three images shown on this post.  They were familiar and the reason became clear later when I consulted Bob Bridle and Duncan Burgoyne's book "100 Years, a History of Schools' Football in St Albans".  1995/6 was the final year described and illustrated – that year was Bob Bridle's final year overseeing the fortunes of schools' football in the district.  The book shows a squad line-up, the three goalscorer from the Cup match, and captain Chris Seeby holding aloft the trophy after the match against Hackney.

Goalscorers David Adams, Ben Herd and Jonathon Michie
in the Southern Counties quarter-final.

In a box of documents at the Community Centre is also a set of three photos, though not originals.  The squad from that year has fewer players than the one in the book, the goal scorers photo is in the collection, and another threesome pic is from an earlier match against Sutton, with the two team captains and the "regular referee".  The photos are all captioned and probably came from a local newsletter.  The locations may well have been at Fleetville Junior School, and at least some of the team will have had Fleetville connections.

Captains Chris Seeby (SA) and Ben Harding (Sutton), with
referee Chris Wood.  Southern Counties quarter final.

So we ponder over their futures, both in football or other sports, and in life.  All will now be in their mid-thirties and it would be great to hear from any of them, wherever they are now living – anywhere between Colney Heath Lane and the Falklands – as they reflect on their team recollections.  No distinctions will be made, so comments from ex pupils of other parts of the city are also eagerly sought.

The owner of these pics isn't known and so can't yet be acknowledged.