Contrasting tracks

Most of our streets came about during the period of expansion and utilisation of former fields into residential or mixed development.  Before Kingshill Avenue there was a field sloping downwards towards the former Marshalswick Farm.  Royston Road and its neighbouring streets were carved out of a large field where cattle had grazed; and Cavendish Road, though there may have been a footpath of sorts, was created from an orchard or a tree nursery or a small crop field, depending on time. 

Although there are minor roads which were formerly footpaths crossing the countryside, and roads linking towns which have existed for several centuries, it is rare to come across a road with a life stretching back into antiquity, probably part of an ancient network of trackways which traversed the region.

Pre-development Beaumont Avenue at the Hatfield Road end.
COURTESY ANDY LAWRENCE

Part of one such route is now Beaumont Avenue and forms an attractive residential road linking Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road.  Along this road was a minor spur leading to Beaumonts Farm.  The spur today is part private (Farm Road) and part adopted, absorbed by the residential estate as Central Drive.

Remove the homes which line each side of the Avenue, all but three of which arrived since 1899, and you are left with the remains of a double stand of fine trees.  

The track which wandered through the former manor estate had extended through wooded land of uncertain age north of Sandpit Lane.  Today we know this as The Wick.  Also part of Beaumonts Farm was a continuation of the track towards Hill End.  Now Ashey Road, it is a mix of early 1930s semi-detached homes, a post-war industrial estate and the green acres which are now Highfield Park, formerly Hill End Hospital.  How this section of the track contrasted with the Avenue: it had been dug for the clay and was home to a brickworks as a result; and with the exception of isolated groups of trees did not appear to have been treelined.

One further difference: the southern section, though a track snaking through the farm, was a permissive route for traffic other than that which was farm business.  The Avenue, on the other hand, had always been considered private (whether legally so is another matter) and gates were installed at both the Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road ends.

The former BT building next to the railway, now Alban Away,  Today
part of an industrial estate and earlier a brick works and rubbish tip.

Today's Alban Way still intersects Ashley Road and demonstrates a further difference between the two sections.  But before feeling too satisfied that the avenue escaped the smoke and steam of railway tracks, it was a close call.  The Midland Railway's early iteration proposed a route which would have clipped the northern end of Beaumont Avenue and crossed in front of the former Marshalswick House.  Although Thomas Kinder, owner of Beaumonts, had not been found to have objected to the compulsory purchase of a small portion of his land, the Marten family certainly did, and as a result Beaumont Avenue retained its rural and ancient landscape.  No railway crossing the Avenue.  Same track, but quite a contrast.

Pothole Alley

With a title such as this you could be preparing to read a thoroughly modern story about the state of our roads and the inadequate amount of funding available to do a proper job in maintaining  thoroughfares and residential streets.

The state of our roads debate is probably as old as the proverbial hills.  Hatfield Road is in a variable condition at present, with entire slabs of macadam broken away like giant broken biscuit, and a few jolts here and there sufficient to wake a dozing passenger.

In the years leading to 1881 there were reports of a similar neglect of the road's condition, complaints at the authority responsible for receiving funds through the turnpike tolls, and then not spending it on repairing the road.  

The Reading & Hatfield Turnpike Trust was not considered to be very effective body at the best of times, but it did its best, at least until its final few years when closure was inevitable and take-over by a public authority.  Neglect set in, and it's anyone's guess where the income was spent.  The pictorial evidence?  The 1870s and 1880s are within the realm of early photography, though not with the popularising of techniques thirty years later.  Nevertheless, no identifiable early plates appear to have survived, if they were ever produced.  We might otherwise be able to publish spot the difference images in the newspapers!

There are many residents who will recall other potholes, although at the time of their experiences the route was on private land along a permissive way.  Who remembers The Ashpath, aka The Cinder Track?  A cart driver originally beginning at Hatfield Road, opposite Beaumont Avenue, would be pitched and jolted on his vehicle all the way to a bend close to the present Cambridge Road.  The only relief came when the horse pulled the load up the steeper gradient to pass a humped railway bridge (its modern version still takes traffic across the former railway across Ashley Road).  

When the homes on the Willow estate were built in the early 1930s the first section of the Ashpath was made up.  Our memories remain, however, of the next section.  It was wide, but there was a fearsome collection of variable holes along the whole length of the road.  After rainfall it was not possible to walk in a straight line for more than a few yards.  

Modern factories replace old Nissen huts near Hedley Road; the
former brush factory to the right, behind the hedge.

The owner, Thomas Kinder, had died in 1881 (coincidentally the year the nearby Turnpike was taken over), and from then until the 1960s when the City Council created a road out of the mess, it appeared to be no-one's responsibility.  Holes were occasionally filled with ash from the brick ovens on the east side.  Which brings us neatly to the same question posed above.

The first modern building along the Ashpath replaced the
former Owen's brickworks.

What visual evidence remains of the Ashpath as it used to be between the early 1900s until the 1960s?  The brickworks and subsequent quarry holes, eventually used for tipping rubbish?  The brush factory spewing out wood shavings and sawdust beside the track?  The large Nissen huts between Hedley Road and Cambridge Road, both of which joined the Ashpath in an uninviting way?  The ancient oak tree, only recently removed?  The bend where the path continued to the entrance of Hill End Hospital?  The latter remains as a much narrower way than in its earlier days.  Or the temporary pedestrian bridge slung over the cutting while the old bridge was being replaced?  Finally, where is a photograph of the brickworkers' cottages opposite near the end of Cambridge Road?

Photos of modern industrial estates are all very well.  But those irritating obstructions along pothole alley and the activity which grew up around them, are now limited to descriptions on the page.