And In 1933

 The majority of the items of news appearing in the Herts Advertiser in 1933 were not sourced from our East End, but from within the 1879 city boundary.  It took a considerable number of years for the outer areas to become established and for news on the east side to become routine.  Consequently, if you lived in Camp, Fleetville or further East you may have become knowledgeable about the established city, but residents of the inner areas may have been less inquisitive about their neighbours in the East End.  

Here is a random selection of topics reported in the Herts Advertiser  during 1933.

Behind this frontage was the cattle market with its vehicle access where the planters have been
placed.  Bon Marche and then British Home Stores arrived.  But behind these buildings was the
Market Hall and the market.  Travelodge is responsible for the wonderfully blue skies in its
recent photograph. 
Courtesy Travelodge

The Market Hall (behind where BHS was until recently replaced by Travelodge) was an essential part of the cattle market.  Meals were dispensed on market days and meetings on other days. It was a civic restaurant during the war.  Entertainments probably began in 1933 when the hall was first used for recreational and occupational activities for the unemployed.

A view of the Handley Page buildings from the Midland Railway.
Courtesy St Albans Museums

Anyone who could  afford the five shillings (now 25p) could take a flight over St Albans from St Julians Aerodrome – where Handley Page Aircraft was shortly to arrive, and where in future there may freight movements!

Doggetts Way was one of the early St Julian's estate streets developed adjacent to 
St Stephen's Hill.
Courtesy Google Street View

A number of homes were for rent or sale at St Julians estate.  Guided by the new Town Planning Act 1919, it was reported to be "well town-planned".  These houses were in Wilshere Avenue and Doggetts Way, but the item made no mention of them being adjacent to the Gas Works; instead "next to St Stephen's Hill" was emphasised.

A photograph appeared of the four generations of the Rollings family, who arrived in the mid 1920s and developed an important wholesaling business.  East Enders would have recognised this family name.

Gas street lighting in George Street.

The council had recently agreed a contract for providing electric street lights to replace the gas lanterns.  Many Camp and Fleetville residents would have been grateful for any kind of street lights instead of relying on moonlight.

The Cross Keys Public House on the corner of Chequer Street and London Road, where 
Burton's store was later developed.  Adey & White's gave way to Benskin's. Those with
specific knowledge of pub licences will probably know more of this story.

Benskins Ltd was granted permission to transfer its licence from the Cross Keys. which stood on the London Road/Chequer Street corner, to Beech Bottom where new housing was going up.  The name of the new public house was the Ancient Briton.  Until recently only two pubs were open for trade in wider Fleetville and Camp (The Camp and The Crown); recently added by the Rats' Castle which was just a toddler having opened six years previously.

A early photograph of Stanborough swimming pool when it first opened and before more features
added.

Stanborough Swimming Pool has opened.  This lido-style facility attracted many East Enders, as no progress had been made on sites at the top of Victoria Street, Grange Gardens, St Peter's Street North, Verulamium, or Pondwicks.  We made do with Cottonmill, although in the same year St Albans School opened its own pool (now replaced) in Belmont Hill.

Various public events which had taken place at Clarence Park transferred to Verulamium from 1933 as the site was more spacious. But it was significantly further away from Fleetville, Oaklands or Smallford.

The three well-known pageants which entertained the masses in 1907, 1948 and 1953, were joined by a lesser known and smaller  version in 1933: The Nautical Pageant staged by Rotary on August Bank Holiday Monday – a recreation of a famous war incident, the attack on Zebrugge and other scenes.

Oak Farm, a short distance from Sandpit Lane in Coopers Green Lane, provided space for letting off steam.  A grass track was prepared for off road motor racing.  An East End bonus!

Hundreds of aspiring employees from St Albans were taken on at "de Havs."

de Havilland began moving onto the site around Hatfield Aerordrome; another East End benefit for later years which provided employment benefits at the growing firm.

Most definitely an East End benefit was the Twelve Acre Estate developed in 1933.  Houses for rent in Valerie Close, Campfield Road, Roland Street and Sutton Road.

The Chequers Cinema, first called St Albans Cinema, had played to the St Albans public since 1912.
Entrance to the car park was in front of the large poster board.

East Enders who could walk that far, or pay the bus fare, were able to benefit, along with everyone else, from an enlarged cinema at The Chequers.  The building was lengthened, pushing the screen end further into the car park.  For those who only know The Maltings may be surprised to discover the Chequers Cinema and the Chequer Street Car Park had been here since 1912, the former site of a brewery.

Most of our main post offices have now been dumped into shops but in 1933 the Post Office opened its equivalent to the longest bar.  The new building in Beaconsfield Road for all services extended a full 120 feet long.

The above, of course, were merely the highlights of the year.

Wings over Hatfield

The very tail end of 2018 is an apposite moment to stand, figuratively speaking, in the middle of what is now Comet Way, opposite the shops of Harpsfield Parade, and recreate December in 1958.

Prototype Mosquito being moved to the factory in 1941
Courtesy de Havilland Aircraft Company collection and Herts Advertiser

The carriageway on the Galleria side of what was then named Barnet Bypass was then new, obliterating the Stone House and the  old St Albans Road into the town centre.  The opposite carriageway was new at the end of the 1920s and straightaway attracted new businesses.  Among them was the de Havilland Aircraft Company, increasingly hemmed in by new housing on its Edgware site.  The company found the former Harpsfield Hall Farm site appealing and began by moving its Flying Club to a new grass runway extending from behind the houses then bordering the new road.

What makes 1958 a significant year was that anyone with any kind of connection with the company could look back with pride to the most famous aircraft type, Mosquito, the 1941 prototype of which was to be preserved, and was thus the reason for the development of what became the Mosquito Museum, now renamed de Havilland Aircraft Museum.

1958 was also the year when the post-war jet Comet IV was announced and photographs began to appear of the prototype in build at the factory; in its "Hall of Secrets" assembly workshops. Having recovered from two earlier disasters, the Company strove to create a larger and technically improved aircraft in the Comet IV.

Comet IV being assembled
Courtesy de Havilland Aircraft Company collection and Herts Advertiser

Anyone travelling along the rear of the company's site in Sandpit Lane in 1958 would have spotted the appearance of an unusual  tower, part of the Blue Streak missile project. Although it would later be cancelled there is no doubt that BS added to the experience and knowledge of ballistic missile technology.


Meanwhile, out of our area in Watling Street, Handley Page announced its new plane for the RAF, the HP111 (Treble One), a new military transport aircraft.  Handley Page was determined not to let DH have the year all to itself.

Blue Streak tower
Courtesy de Havilland Aircraft Company collection and Herts Advertiser

Well, that was 1958, where we could have looked back to the past (Mosquito), the present (Comet IV) and future (Blue Streak).  Yet the company was on the cusp of being merged into the much larger Hawker Siddley, and then British Aerospace.  Thousands of local people made great careers out of their employment at DH, although it must be admitted equally large numbers were also made redundant at key times.  Today, one or two feature buildings have new uses, there is a growing business estate and residential hubs, a major university location and, waiting in the wings, a future country park.  Roads mark aircraft which were born here and people who made them happen, and land which has a history extending back to medieval times in the form of Harpsfield Hall, has established a new chapter of the district's story.

Sweets and planes

While many of us are vague about where Fleetville's boundaries lie – because there never has been a defined place called Fleetville – the wider East End of St Albans IS more accurately delineated, as the author has taken it to refer to the boundary of the parish of St Peter east of the Midland railway.  St Peter, that is, before the daughter churches of St Luke and St Mark were created.  So, in the two books and on this website we are interested in parts of Hatfield too, because they were also part of St Peter's parish.

Correspondence from people having a direct family connection with the East End, or who once lived here, regularly flows in; although not all of it results in entries to the website or blog.  But one email, and then another, has created a connection between a small Fleetville sweet shop, a major wartime factory and the city of Seattle.

William and Clarice Grace at a local event.
COURTESY IAN GRACE

Let's begin with the sweet shop.  Generations of children down to the 1970s will remember their top-up point in Bycullah Terrace next to the grocer on the corner of Woodstock Road South and Hatfield Road.  These shops had various owners, and so we may have known them by different names.  Before and during World War Two the grocer was Bennington's (Leslie Bennington) and the sweet shop Blakeley's (Mrs Blakely).  When Peace returned Mr Dixon took over the grocery and William Grace became custodian of the confectionery – which also sold ice cream, tobacco products and toys.

In an earlier or later occupation we might image Mr Grace to have been a wholesaler; the local wholesaler for the trade was J B Rollings, and William Grace used this firm to supply his shop.  Or perhaps a travelling salesman.  Several of these plied a regular trade around the shops; one, whose name I now forget, lodged with us for a few days at a time in the 1950s, and could well have been the same trader who visited William Grace's shop and who delighted his children with new toys whenever he walked through the front door.

Mrs Blakeley outside the shop before Mr Grace took over.
COURTESY CHRIS WARD

William Grace and his wife Clarice had, instead, probably considered their new chosen way of life to be far more relaxed than they had experienced in the previous decade or two.  William's connection with a major wartime factory was, of course, de Havilland's.  For our younger viewers of this blog DH's was located on the present business park and university campus adjacent to Mosquito Way (a clue there!)

The junction of Woodstock Road South and Hatfield Road
in 1964. Mr Grace's shop is the second in line.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

He had begun his career with the company when it was at Stag Lane, Hendon, and moved with them to Hatfield when the firm expanded.  William advanced to be a senior production manager when manufacture of the Mosquito aircraft stepped up in the early war years.  

1940 bomb damage at the de Havilland factory.
COURTESY IAN GRACE

Of course, the Hatfield buildings were a target and part of the site was bombed in 1940; William being one of many employees injured.  He continued with the Mosquito project until the extensive layoffs as Peace returned, at which point he spotted an opportunity and chose to sell sweets in Fleetville.



Aircraft, however, was in the family blood.  The youngest of William and Clarice's children, Ian, also had an aeronautical career in the RAF and in the United States and has acquired a small collection of DH Moth small aircraft.  In memory of his father Ian has created a webpage which can be seen from
www.n5490.org/Pilots/Bill%20Grace/Bill%20Grace.html

William Grace's story will be featured on the website in the early Spring.