Queen's Court in 1946

 One small part of Fleetville which I sought on the RAF's 1946 flyover photo survey is the area on the north side of Hatfield where today is located Queen's Court, the three-block three storey flats developed for St Albans City Council.  However, Queen's Court did not emerge from the ground until 1952 and formally opened in Coronation Year 1953.

Unfortunately, peering at the image (below) there is little clear detail, and we need to rely on a supplementary details in describing the story in order to make sense of the camera view.  To be honest, the 1946 experience of walking along Hatfield Road was a mess.  It was not a location where photographs appear to have been taken – these were the days of film and the additional costs of processing, and as with most other aspects of life our resources were frugally managed.  If photographs were taken they seem not to have survived or circulated, unless our readers know differently.

An extract from the RAF aerial survey in October 1946. The north-south roads on the right are
Beechwood Avenue and Ashley Road.  A triangular shape in the centre is the focus for our
exploration in this blog.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

The triangle is between the Alleyway, a footpath from Beaumont Avenue towards Woodstock
Road South, and Hatfield Road.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

In this account we will focus on the orange boundaries on the following map.  To the east is a group of five villas built at the start of the twentieth century.  These finish where the footpath, or alleyway as it was popularly called at the time, meets Beaumont Avenue.  The western boundary where the Thrifty Cars site is, but in 1946 it was Currell's Garage as it was about to be nationalised under the name British Road Services (BRS).  Also absorbed into the present site was a bungalow to its right.

The five villas between Beaumont Avenue and Queen's Court.

In addition to the five villas mentioned above there were two other detached, both on wide ploys which extended back to the alleyway. Their short lifespan was the result of a development battleground between commercial Fleetville and residential building which would have contrasted with the tightly arranged terraces between The Crown and Arthur Road.  The City Council, which in the 1930s received increased responsibilities under the formative Town & Country Planning Act, came to the conclusion there were already enough shops along Hatfield Road, and that as traffic along the main road was already busy, houses fronting Hatfield Road would be better than short side roads leading to blocks of flats which were becoming fashionable at the time.

A photo taken in the 1930s.  On the far side of Hatfield Road was Currell's Garage and a bungalow
beyond.  This is now Thrifty Cars.
COURTESY STALEY HAINES COLLECTION

Photo from c1910 from the junction with Ashley Road and looking westwards towards
Fleetville.  These are the villas on the north side of Hatfield.  The most distant house was
said to be the first to be demolished in the late 1930s and part of the site occupied by the wartime
National Fire Service, and later by Queen's Court flats.  However the aerial photo shows both
homes to still be standing, though undoubtedly, empty in 1946.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

It was the adventurous owner of one of the spacious villas who first proposed building flats on a spare plot to the side and behind his home, with shops replacing his frontage.  When the plan was turned down by the Council, the applicant went even further, purchasing the house of his neighbour, began demolishing both and extended his initial plan.  Shops would be built along the main road in front of both villas, with a side road leading to blocks of flats behind – a rather provocative proposal one would have thought?  Or perhaps the reporting was rather confusing.  So determined was he, according to the press, that he pushed ahead shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939.  In fact, the aerial photograph shows the structures apparently still standing in 1946, though empty.  The gardens and a tennis court were left neglected.

 

A new fire tender purchased by St Albans City Fire Service shortly before becoming part of
the expanded fleet of the National Fire Service.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

As local and national bodies were set up for wartime emergencies and a range of defences on the home front, the newly-formed National Fire Service (NFS) seized on the opportunity to grab the site, which included an unsold plot where the branch library would later be built.  The NFS rather strangely numbered what was left of the two villas NFS1 and NFS2. For what purpose is unclear. It also built a training and operational building on the west side of the site.  It is presumed the former gardens were utilised for the parking of its fire tenders and other vehicles.

Soon after the end of the war the vehicles had gone and the windows of the operational building had been shattered by vandalism, entered and probably occupied by tramps and other homeless individuals.  Children made use of the open space as an unofficial adventure playground and broke through the fencing on the alleyway boundary.

One of the three blocks forming Queen's Court

In 1950 the City Council acquired the site and, although no shops appeared, it seems to have had a change of mind about flats, with not one, but two, access roads!  The result was Queen's Court, winning an architectural award in the process, which included the grassed square and brick frontage wall, name sign pillars and lines of lavender shrubs.

Closure and demolition of the branch library.

The small block of flats which was built on the site of the former library.

The Council's Library Committee had been searching for a suitable site for a Fleetville branch library.  Criticised for being remote from the heart of Fleetville as it then was, nevertheless it was still a branch library.  The pleas for access to a library had begun even before the Carnegie Library (Victoria Street) was opened in 1911, but at that time districts such as Camp and Fleetville were beyond the City boundary and their residents were denied the use of the central  facilities.  But from 1913 onwards the East Ward councillors, including William Bond and Stephen Simmons frequently campaigned for the young districts to have the benefit of their own branch library.  It took more than forty years to achieve, being opened in 1959, and its life was barely as long as as the period waiting for it to happen.

The new branch library replaced the existing mobile library van.

Taking another look at that section of the aerial photograph you would struggle to identify anything which might tell the story above, but at least today there is a fine estate of flats, and a smaller building of accessible flats where the branch library arrived – and departed.

Villas Past and Present

 You can imagine that, as soon as the western part of Beaumonts Farm was offered for sale in 1899, development plans emerged along the Hatfield Road's north side frontage.  To begin with it was probably limited to a few marker posts in the ground at the eastern end where land narrowed towards Beaumont Avenue.  Almost immediately a six roomed villa was erected (number 385 before the 1930 re-numbering, and named Innerleithen).  From new until a few years ago it has only been occupied by two households,  William Cowley, an elementary school teacher until around 1919; and then George Butlin followed by his daughter, Doris.  

The five villas erected prior to 1910.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

Two further villas, 387 and 389, followed quickly, 389 being occupied by Alexander South, a tailor's cutter at the Nicholson coat factory in Sutton Road.  There was space for two more properties, the second having a triangular plot, both of which were finished c1910. Villa number 385 is clearly identifiable today as it is adjacent to the eastern boundary of Queen's Court flats, although these won't reappear in our story until much later.

In our previous post we noted the growth of the former Currell's garage and the widening of its plot to accommodate, initially an exit drive for the British Road Services trucks, and later a further property for parking up a number of cars – still used for this function today.  The two properties absorbed in this way had been occupied by George A Curgenven, a railway engine driver, and next door in a bungalow, his son Arthur George Curgenven, who was a postman. The properties are visible on the extreme right of the middle  image in the previous post, but both had been demolished in the 1950s and 1970s respectively.

The initials FP locate the Alley (originally known as Crosspath). The five villas shown in the top photo are bounded in yellow; the two villas sited on the remaining land (bounded in red) are near the
Hatfield Road boundary and marked in blue.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

View of the five villas from the Ashley Road corner.  Behind the man and dog are the two villas
marked in blue on the map above.  In the distance is the chimney of T E Smith's printing works.
COURTESY ST ALBANS LIBRARIES (HALS)

We are therefore left with a sizeable site bounded in red on the map above and on it arrived two villas (framed in blue) somewhat larger than the earlier five to the east: 383 named Balgowan as early as 1903 and 381, named Waratah a couple of years later. It seems inevitable that both, with their expansive gardens, orchard and tennis court, would eventually be ripe for further development.  A development company known as Parkfield Developments acquired the legal and financial interests in both properties and submitted proposals in 1935 for a number of shops fronting Hatfield Road, an access road and blocks of flats between the shops and the Alley.

The Council,  empowered by a number of town planning acts in the 1920s and 30s, considered the applications and refused them in 1935, and again in 1937; making it clear it thought Fleetville already had enough shops and adding more would contravene the Ribbon Development Act.  Quite apart from the safety issues around the proposed access road, and close to the busy lorry access road.

Parkfield, in an apparent attempt to force the issue, began the process of demolishing the existing houses, although site clearance was not complete by the declaration of war in 1939.  The Council acquired the site as a base for the emergency National Fire Service and a building was quickly put up on the west side of the site.

Aerial view of Queens Court (centre) with the new flats replacing the 1959 library to the left
and the five original villas approaching the double roundabout on the right.  The straight line of the Alley from the double roundabout disappears in the group of trees towards the left edge of the
photograph.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH 

The eastern block of the award-winning Queen's Court.

The land remained unused, and the NFS building vandalised, for a further seven years after the war finished, and the Council then gave itself planning consent for three blocks of flats with an access road (but no shops!), work beginning in 1952.  The imminent Coronation prompted its naming Queen's Court; and the design received a national architectural award.  The original build had open passage entrances and staircases and the only subsequent alteration had been  the addition of front entrance doors to each block.

Both the Fleetville branch library (shown here) and Cell Barnes Lane branch library are now
closed.

The former library site, at the western edge of the site acquired by the city council. New flats built c2012.

One small part of the site was reserved for a branch library when the city's libraries were under its control. This opened in 1959, having been lobbied for by ward councillors since the 1920s, but is now replaced by a small block of flats.

The whole of the north side of Hatfield Road has now been explored, from The Crown to Beaumont Avenue, which the author hopes readers have enjoyed.  After a suitable interval we will turn our attention to the south side of the road from The Crown itself, along a similar distance to Ashley Road.