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.

Old Year

Certain thoughts drift through our minds on the final day of the year – achievements realised or or not, as the case may be.  But in the case of the St Albans' Own East End blog it is the realisation that new posts have been trickling through the system now for ten years, at the rate of over 30 posts a year.  Which is over 300 items in total, and all about the East End of St Albans.  Unfortunately the very early posts are no longer available online, but the original function was to generate interest in a couple of books about the district which had yet to be completed.  Well, a decade on and work is progressing well on preparing for the second editions of those same books.

Let's talk about housing for a minute.  In 1919 the city council was discussing a chronic under-supply of basic homes fit to live in; the rural council engaged with local communities to provide new homes for agricultural workers; and, slow off the ground, projects under Homes for Heroes eventually materialised, but for far fewer tenants than the target.  Eventually, estates were provided at Townsend and Springfield.

In 1949 the city council was still grappling with the issue of lengthy housing waiting lists, with thousands juggling with allocated points to move themselves, hopefully, nearer a house.  Local authority houses and homes for reserved occupations such as police, teachers and nurses, were created from whatever resources were available.  Estates at Beaumonts, London Road and Slimmons Farm became available, augmenting the private developments from the thirties at Beaumonts, Spencer, Camp and Breakspear; and in the fifties at Marshalswick.

In 1979 further private developments had been launched at former farms and later in the grounds of former hospitals.  Today, if there was an all-embracing list, with or without points, how many potential home owners and tenants would show themselves to be in need of accommodation in this city; east, west, south or north?  Prices for even modest-sized homes are beyond many pockets and banks. Yet it is revealing that St Albans was one of the locations selected for a special edition of Monopoly!  As a young couple, still living in a modest parental home, commented recently: "finding a house (or flat, or even a barn) is not a game."  Which takes us back to 1919 – and in 1949 – because that is where many were forging out an existence, in barns, old caravans, huts and buildings awaiting demolition.  Articles in the Herts Advertiser reported, with unfortunate photographs, many eviction cases. And, if we include overcrowded and multi-occupied dwellings, many are probably still there in 2019; the hidden population of St Albans.

SAOEE's New Year Greetings is for you more than anyone, though you are the residents who are most unlikely to be reading this message.

What About Those 50 Houses?

At the top of the website's front page is this banner:
1919: Council proposed 50 houses on the corner Hatfield Road/Beaumont Avenue.  Did it happen?

It would have been so easy to provide a single word answer; job done; but so much more satisfactory to explore the question a little further.

An early drawing for one of the four-home blocks at Townsend, Waverley Road area. HERTS ADVERTISER

Townsend HFH in Margaret Avenue GOOGLE STREETVIEW

St Albans Council in 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War, didn't fully respond quickly to the call for local authorities to build huge numbers of new homes under the banner Homes for Heroes.  By April, however, it had agreed to explore three sites. First, 65 homes in Camp Lane opposite Sander's nursery (presumably where Vanda Crescent is now); this did not go ahead but was later replaced by the Springfield site at the top of Cell Barnes Lane.  Second, 50 homes at Townsend, which was the first development to go ahead; the scheme was formally announced in 1920.

Newly completed Springfield home in 1928. HERTS ADVERTISER

The third location was, perhaps a surprise: 50 homes on the corner of Hatfield Road and Beaumont Avenue.  This was fairly quickly crossed off the list as the city's drainage network did not extend that far at the time.  However, was the choice of location just a curiosity or was there some logic at work?

We have to forget what was actually built, but later, and focus on the farmscape in 1919.  Beaumonts Farm had been acquired by Oaklands in 1899 and the land on the west of Beaumont Avenue had been sold for development.  That left the east side of the Avenue and the fields lining Hatfield Road to be managed as a mixed farm.  Today, Beechwood Avenue and Elm Drive sets the scene.  We even know how this field had been used during the war. Checks had been made to ensure farmers were making effective use of their land for cropping and one field in particular caused concern as it gave the appearance of not being cropped at all.  Mr Moores, the farm manager, implied that he had more-or-less given up with that field as the local residents – meaning Fleetville at the time – regularly used it for recreational purposes, there being a gate near the junction.

Beechwood Avenue from the old pre-development field gate entrance, Hatfield Road.

So, in 1919 there was a field alongside Hatfield Road which gave the impression of being neglected and would probably prove easy to acquire by the Council.  We should also remember that the Council boundaries had been extended from The Crown to Oaklands (Winches) only six years previously.  This field would have been eminently suitable for a Homes for Heroes development, and if the authority had been able to muster sufficient funds there would have been space for considerably more than fifty new homes.

The field remained until sold, along with others, in 1929 and the Beaumont estate came about.  The short answer is therefore no!