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.

The Other Hotel

 We have become used to thinking of the printing works which launched Fleetville as having been possible through the purchase of the field known in the 19th century as Long Six Acre from its owners, St Albans Grammar School.  While this was undoubtedly true our misconception is that the firm of T E Smith for the printing works occupied the whole of that field.  It did not; not quite.  The western end of Long Six Acre extended to the boundary which today separates Fleetville Junior School at the back of the site from Morrison's car park.  The first formal occupation of this field remainder was the opening of a timber yard for the family firm of W H Laver soon after 1926.  The family choose to pronounce their name with a hard 'a'.

Between the branch railway at the bottom of the map and Hatfield Road lay two fields of
St Albans Grammar School.  The Fleet Works is on the right and the cemetery on the left.
Paths were laid out for allotments during the First World War. The block bordered in red
was first owned by Trust Houses and then W H Lavers.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The 1937 map shows the various seasoning and storage areas, with the 'in' and 'out' drives.  To the

left is the original building of the school, and the narrow plot to the right of Laver's will be used by employees of Marconi Instruments in the 1960s.

COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The red box of the Laver's site superimposed on current layout of the car park between the school and Morrison's.  This is the additional land purchased by Safeway.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Quite another proposal had been suggested at the time the printing works was in build.  The hotel group Trust Houses acquired a block of land which it intended to utilise for a hotel with full boarding facilities.

You will recall Benskin's purchased a similar block directly opposite and spent the best part of twenty years struggling to win over residents and the Justices for permission to open a public house in Fleetville.  Benskin's succeeded in the end, though it would be further along the road at Sutton Road.  Trust Houses were happy not to duplicate the battle, and eventually pulled out shortly before the Rats' Castle opened, selling its vacant plot to Laver's in 1926.

However, before Laver's arrived an extensive allotment garden, on both the remains of Long Six Acre, and on the next field to the west, Poor Six Acre. This is labelled on the first map above. There was an urgent need for land to augment farms, smallholdings and gardens during the First World War, and the Grammar School appeared to co-operate in releasing its land for this purpose, although the editor has not been successful in establishing how many plots were let, the yields which were possible, nor the quality of the soil.  The subsoil at the nearby cemetery is heavy clay, so tenants might have struggled.  The recreation ground narrowly escaped allotment fate, probably because of the quantity of available land on the south side of the main road.

Founder of the company William H Laver.

When the Laver's family opened for business, it was under founding member, William H, in the 1850s, working out of Corner Hall Wharf in Hemel Hempstead.  Most of the timber came from the Surrey Commercial Docks and brought to the site by canal.  Later the raw materials also came by rail, and in addition to the Wharf the firm opened sites in Merton Road and St Albans Road, Watford – the latter being a one-man yard.  By the 1930s the third generation replicated this arrangement with Hatfield Road as the main yard and a one-man yard next to the former fire station at the top of Victoria Street.

The timber yard site in the 1960s.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Although national and regional house builders supplied timber from their own sources, smaller companies and householders helped to make Laver's highly successful, even during lean economic periods and the rise of DIY sheds.  Only the limitation of price got in the way of the variety of timber, length availability, natural seasoning,  personal service and delivery options which Laver's were able to offer.

Newspaper advertising for the company in the 1930s

As with many family businesses a moment arrives when succession is no longer viable, but Laver's drove business for four generations from its brown and cream carts and trucks.  The Hatfield Road yard was sold to Safeway in 1992, and a number of employees were  transferred to Travis Perkins and therefore remained in the timber business. 

One further rider to the story of 238 Hatfield Road is a reference to the site in the Valuation Office record.  While it recognises the owner as Trust Houses, as stated above, also mentioned is the occupier of the land: Hertfordshire County Police.  The police had opened an operational station in Tess Road (Woodstock Road South) in c1906, and the Valuation Office Survey was not established until 1910, in which its interest in the Trust House land was noted.  The ground may have been for parking of vehicles or for training officers, but there is no evidence of there having been a building on the site.  All we can do is to note the occupation from 1910 with interest!

Finally, what do we know about Trust Houses and why might the company have acquired a new site in Fleetville?  Trust Houses was, in 1903, a new entity.  A number of influential families had become concerned about the diminishing standards of some of the country's well known but old established public houses and hotels, especially since the closure of turnpike roads, along which they had flourished.  TH began acquiring an interest in and upgrading their reputation, structure and service offering, some of the earliest being in Hertfordshire.  Part of the business model was to purchase new sites in order to expand the number of new premises; hence the Fleetville land.  In this case it was a question of licensing and in the end TH went elsewhere.

An early advertisement by Trust Houses Limited.
COURTESY GRACE'S GUIDE