Absent Photo: Third Hand Chapel

 This week we'll remain in Hatfield Road and walk westwards towards the Bycullah Terrace shops, opposite Morrison's in Fleetville.  A most unusual story is about to be revealed – and for further pages on this topic see the links at the foot of this post.

OS map 1922.  The vacant land belonging to the printing works bordered in red; that leased for the
cinematograph bordered in orange – and is now the Post Office plot.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

On the western corner of the Woodstock Road South junction is the Post Office; that is where our story is centred. Before the First World War its name was Tess Road.  Apart from the then new Bycullah Terrace shops the nearest Hatfield Road buildings would have been at Harlesden Road to the west and the villas which were the subject of the previous post to the east; although the printing works owner had employee homes in nearby Royal Road and Arthur Road.  Hatfield Road did look strikingly empty in spite of the opening of the elementary school in 1908. I should confirm that the printing works, The Fleet Works, was the first business to set up hereabouts, and was located where Morrison's store is today.

An impresario, maybe of doubtful reputation, arrived in town, and took a lease on the corner plot from the owner of the printing works opposite.  He may, or may not, have erected a board announcing the imminent arrival of a new cinematograph building in keeping with the entertainment fashion of the day.  His name was Russell Edwards and was previously known to the courts for various financial irregularities.

Hatfield Road c1914.  Smith's printing works on the left; Bycullah Terrace shops on the right.
Arrowed is the vacant land just beyond the shops and where Russell Edwards chose to
assemble his cinematograph building, a former chapel or parish hall.

There arrived on the scene several cart loads of metal, timber and panels of corrugated iron.  They had been brought from the Midland (now City) Station where their rail journey from Colne in Lancashire (or Colne Valley, Yorkshire) had begun.  Local people had become used to quirky buildings and Meccano-type temporary structures before.  Tin churches were quite common. But what was this one? Difficult to work it out from the piles of assorted stuff on one corner of the site, although it apparently wasn't certain whether the stacks were fully on the correct site or partly overflowing onto the adjacent plot, which Edwards also chose to use without the owner's permission.

During the next few weeks a variable number of casual workmen turned up each day to assemble what today would be called a pre-used building.  In fact it wasn't even second-hand, but third-hand, and it appears that several assorted parts were missing.  The structure's last use was as a chapel or parish hall, so is that what the people of Fleetville were going to get?  If the workmen can be persuaded to remain at work – many had not been paid for some time –  the word on the street was they were being promised a cinematograph building.

This would have been the view of the building from Hatfield Road.  The projector box, far 
left, was thought not to have been part of the acquired kit and would have been added on
site, if there had been space without incursion on to the neighbouring plot. Tess Road
(now Woodstock Road south) is on the immediate right.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

The Council was offered a set of plans, as shown in the images below, and proposals for a building which the Council may not have been aware was already in build.  Unfortunately, the Council turned down the plans, because as Russell Edwards had been enterprisingly concocting his Fleetville project a new safety law, the Cinemas Act, was added to the statute books.  This specified how cinematograph buildings should be built, what facilities they should comprise and the standard of those facilities.  The new Fleeville cinematograph, it turns out, did not comply and was not likely to have been the comfortable exhibition building customers might have expected. 

The proposed plan for seating (green) supposedly for up to 450 customers.  There appears not to

be a specific place for payment to be made, although many early buildings ran on the fairground

principle with moneys collected outside.  Electricity had only arrived in St Albans in 1908 and it

would be some while before Fleetville would benefit.  The Engine Shed would have housed

a generator.

COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

There were other issues too.  One of Edwards' investors was lied to about the details of the project and suffered other financial problems. The purchased building was also too large for the plot, and instead of modifying the structure to fit, he instructed his workmen to "borrow" a part of the next plot, which unfortunately had not been fenced off.

There is no doubt, it was a basic building on a flat floor – even though the elevation drawing shows a sloped floor – and would not have been appropriate for use in winter.  There was one male urinal and no evidence of toilet facilities for female customers.  A tiny porch opened out onto the footpath of Hatfield Road.  If you were to visit the Post Office today, including the vet's premises next door, and then walk round the corner to the rear of the Post Office plot, that is where the promised 450 cinematograph viewers would have supposedly been accommodated on their chairs.  

The building never opened to the public; wasn't even finished. Edwards was taken to court for various financial irregularities and non-payments to creditors or his workmen.  Edwards was imprisoned, but meanwhile the court sitting required the building to be demolished, the component parts and the land sold to reimburse creditors.  So Fleetville residents never got to be entertained here.

Although the opportunity was very brief, did anyone grab a camera and record any part of the construction, particularly the nearest it reached to completion?  Or maybe even the workmen who were not paid but had to return home to their families to put meals on their tables.  Fortunately, we do have access to the plans and elevations, which are shown here, but unlike artists painting what is in front of them, can we be sure there were drawings of the original structure when it was in use at Colne?  Did W H G Hubbard, architect, make his drawings from measurements, from the building's original site, or from a company sales catalogue?

The cinematograph site remained cleared for sixteen years before the current building was
erected in 1930 for A Rankin Smith.

A photograph demonstrating how the building appeared in its street setting would be a rare example of any building work actually in progress in this new suburb, but such activity did not, it appears, excite anyone who owned a camera.  Following the cinematograph's  demolition it would be another sixteen years before another building would be brought to this corner plot; the store and post office of A Rankin Smith.

At this period just before the First World War there was an increase in the number of people who had taken an interest in photography, using their skills to sell copies of their negatives to the locals, or as artistic views of street scenes at events across a wider geographical landscape.  Perhaps, even during such a short construction period, one photographic image might have been taken.  But does it still exist?

Link to Fleetville Cinema on SAOEE website.

Link to blog post "Missed the Flicks": https://stalbansowneastend.blogspot.com/2020/09/missed-flicks.html

 

Engaging With Our Locality

Whenever families, individuals, classes at school and visitors to the district, are able to share in some of the history of their home district, the experience is always positive.  More than that, what we discover is quite joyous.

Heritage Open Days have proved the point once more, although other casual meetings throughout the year have a similar effect.  September and October is also the period of time in the school curriculum when children explore their home patch, both the school itself and the shops and homes, where we and our friends live and what we can buy at the shops.  It is therefore a delight to meet the children as they find out how the school day was conducted, how children behaved and the playground games they may have played fifty or a hundred years ago.

Fleetville School playground in the 1930s.

Throughout the year members of Fleetville Diaries carry out deeper explorations in the form of projects.  St Albans had been the home of Frederick Sander and his renowned orchid nurseries in Camp Road, and this formed the basis of a major project last year.  Its culmination was to share our findings in a glorious celebration with members of the Sander and Moon families today (Henry Moon turned Sander's orchids into exquisite watercolours).

This year the organisation has taken Beaumont Avenue as its next subject in the series Right Up Our Street; and to focus on the former hosiery mill, Ballito, which grew on the site now occupied by Morrison's, where thousands of local men and women came to work, both in peacetime and war.  Although largely based on recollections it has been important to understand how the factory came to Fleetville in the first place.

Heritage Open Day on Saturday 14th September was an appropriate occasion to bring people together, to view three exhibitions and chat with the project leaders, to do so in a building (Fleetville Community Centre) first erected in 1942 as a nursery for the young children of women encouraged to work at the Ballito works that had been turned over to making shell casings for the war effort.

Factory managers' houses in Woodstock Road south

It comes as a surprise to many that competitive circumstances dictated the original Fleet Ville did not realise its full potential and which may otherwise have become a good deal larger.  The fact that it did not enabled one of this city's major benefactors, Charles Woollam, to acquire the field left over for the recreation and enjoyment of the people of Fleetville in the form of the Rec, or as many people refer to it these days, Fleetville Park.

Summer view of The Alley.

We then take a short guided walk around early roads; are amazed that Fleetville had a unique cinema – where no-one was fortunate in watching a film there; stood on the spot where several WW2 spies were charged, discover the homes built for the factory employees in one road and those built for its managers in another; and the function of The Alley which most Fleetville folk claim never to have walked along.  There are parts of Fleetville, too, which are more ancient than the Cathedral, and a stream to cross without getting our feet wet!

People love to ask questions and are often amazed by the answers; almost always a conversation ensues.  We are all part of a community and feel a personal responsibility to learn more about it.  And it matters not whether you are a 9-year-old who has already made sense of where he lives, or an adult who has lived here for three times as long and come to realise it's no longer sufficient to take local history for granted.

One way or another we all yearn to become more involved.

Right of Way

A few followers of St Albans' Own East End may recall reading of an application to St Albans Council around 1900 to divert part of  the footpath between Princes Road (Woodstock Road South) and Brampton Road so that homes could be built in Burnham Road.  This was agreed to since walkers would have a network of paths they could use on the new road network.

A current footpath through what remains of Chandlers
Grove wood

T F Nash, the company which developed Marshalswick Estate, encountered a similar problem, imposing a new road network on an existing network of public footpaths and tracks, which is why gaps between homes have produced St Mary's Walk and an un-named path between Pondfield Crescent and Queen's Crescent, which had previously been part of the edge of Chandlers Grove.  The narrow band of woodland accommodating a right of way footpath is also preserved parallel to Chiltern Road before it forms the boundary between Malvern Close and Sandringham School.

Path between homes from Pondfield Crescent
and Queen's Crescent

So, it is unsurprising that a public right of way issue has arisen once more on the site of Sandringham School.  For the roots of the story we must wind the clock back to the days before the school existed and a network of paths linked the farms and other rural habitations on the substantial Marten estate focusing on the former  Marshals Wick House.  One such path linked St Albans Road, Sandridge at St Helier Road and Jersey Farm; another branched southwards towards the House from Sirdane, a dwelling seemingly in the middle of nowhere but which came to be at the T junction of these two paths.

When the County Council purchased land for the Marshalswick Boys' School it clearly understood the problem as the north-south footpath, which had been allowed for by Nash on the south side of The Ridgeway, becoming St Mary's Walk, intersected the new school site.  The path was therefore diverted west-east along the northern boundary of the school before joining the path mentioned above near Malvern Close.  Walkers could then use The Ridgeway and pick up the  St Mary's Walk path.  

Later, when Sandringham Crescent was driven through, the County acquired more land for the school (only half of the school had been constructed in 1959 due to a restriction of cost availability), it had neglected to adjust the footpath to the new boundary further north.  Hence today's problem as the school plans for new facilities on the north side of its site.

Marshalswick Boys' School when new, fronting The Ridgeway.  The newly-posted fence forms the northern boundary of the school and the diverted footpath.  Previously the path had followed a
route from the house known as Sirdane (background left) towards The Ridgeway (foreground left).
The future Chiltern Road is the neck of woodland to the right of the playgrounds.  Sandringham Crescent, also in the future, will cross the light coloured field northof the original
school boundary.
 PHOTO COURTESY ANDY LAWRENCE.

But it does pose an interesting question.  What does the current path through the school grounds provide which the alternative – the original west-east extension of Helier Road towards Chiltern Road – does not?  One seems to be a duplication of the other for a few hundred metres.  If you were going to choose which path to follow, surely you would walk the path on the north side of Sandringham Crescent, where there are alternatives within Jersey Farm Woodland Park.  What would be the benefit of using the straight-line path along an educational establishment's boundary – or rather inside it – other than because the law allows us to.  Which is not a very strong argument on its own for so short a distance.

Of course, a precedent had already been set at the site of Samuel Ryder Academy, formerly Francis Bacon School, where extensions to the original boundary enveloped the lower end of Hill End Lane on its way to London Road.  At one time it had been a traffic route, but the lane had been allowed to "re-wild" along its edges and became a footpath, but as this passed inside the boundary of the school a risk was perceived to exist.  The authority therefore stopped up the path and authorised a diversion via Drakes Drive.  Drakes Drive had, after all, been constructed to replace Hill End Lane.

Just Dropping In

While in London recently I took the opportunity of calling in at the refreshed IWM London.  Not familiar with the name?  We all used to know it as the Imperial War Museum; IWM also has a new museum in Manchester.

Museums can be explored with a broad brush, of course, but if you have sufficient time, or simply come across some little detail you can come away feeling very satisfied.  One gallery, Secret War, is devoted to the undercover world of espionage and covert operations.  One display lists the locations of spies who were subsequently picked up during World War Two.  I didn't need to read through the entire list, as the names Tyttenhanger and London Colney stood out clearly from familiarity.  So, let's spell out the details of the event and then return to that information I had previously acquired.

Karel Richard Richter
German from Czechoslovakia
Landed by parachute at
Tyttenhanger Park
London Colney, 13 May 1941
Arrested at Tess Road police station
Hanged 10 December 1941

What, then, was the story?

We start with the police station in Tess Road.  The road is now Woodstock Road south, and the station, in a pair of former houses now demolished was on the site of the present nursery car park.  This was a base for Hertfordshire County Police (the city police station was in Victoria Street).

Now demolished Wireless Station in Smallford
COURTESY S AMES

A war reserve constable, Alec Scott who lived at Colney Street, had the regular duty of keeping guard outside the wireless station in Oaklands Lane, Smallford, now replaced by the Radio housing estate.  When cycling home from duty late one evening he came to London Colney roundabout.  A lorry driver asking which road would take him to London, from a stranger waiting to use a phone kiosk, became suspicious about the man's accent.

The roundabout was more of a square-about in those days, had no dual carriageway, or bypass around London Colney.  The phone box was immediately to the south of the roundabout, alongside High Street.

The stranger had been dropped on the previous day and had hidden in woodland near Tyttenhanger Park, just in case his parachute had been spotted.  He had his essential gear, including wireless set, in two suitcases!  The parachute wasn't noticed, but his presence at the roundabout was.  The lorry driver passed on his suspicion to Constable Alec Scott, who questioned the stranger outside of the box, there being a caller inside – at 11.45pm.  Apparently the stranger, who was later revealed as a spy, stated he was waiting to call a hospital about his injured leg.  Constable Scott took the matter into his own hands and said he would notify the hospital on behalf of the injured party.  Good policing!  Once inside the kiosk, though, he called the Fleetville police station for back-up instead.

Much enlarged London Colney roundabout. The phone box was located at the
entrance to High Street off the picture to the right.

Karel Richard Richter was formally arrested and searched at the station, then questioned.  He was sent for trial and removed to Wandsworth Prison, from where he was later hanged.

The full story wasn't made public until 1958 when an article appeared in the Herts Advertiser (August 8th).  

Revealing a story can happen when, 77 years later, an inquisitive visitor to a museum spots a familiar landmark in a list.