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.

Community Football

 This week we are going to unpick a few community football issues from the very early years of our East End, and we begin with what is believed to be the first known amateur team which was formed c1890 from the residents then living in the new homes east of the Midland Railway, Cavendish, Albion, (upper) Camp, Stanhope and Granville roads.  A club by the name of Stanville FC was formed, the portmanteau name using Stanhope and Granville in its name.

Stanville FC adult team (there was also a reserve and junior squad) c1897.  However the setting is
not identified.  The gentleman centre back row is undoubtedly Thomas Oakley, who in this year was Mayor of the city.  Whether Mr Oakley had a formal connection with the club is not known, but he was present on this occasion!
COURTESY CHRIS REYHOLDS

Stanville's name appeared regularly in 1890s editions of the Herts Advertiser, playing other district teams, such as Abbey, Hatfield, Campfield (after 1995), Harpenden and Redbourn.  A report on one match in 1891 describes a home game played on its home ground in Hatfield Road.  This tantalising fact is set to test us.  Clarence Park is still three years from its opening, although the field from which the Hatfield Road side of the park was created had previously been a meadow known as the Fete Field and available for public events by the city's residents.  Another possibility was part of a field just east of St Peter's Farm.  The 1898 OS map shows unbuilt land on the corner of Stanhope and Camp roads, the green in front of St Peter's Farm, and a corner site on Hatfield and Lemsford roads. Perhaps these plots

were rather small for such a game.

How long the Stanville club lasted is uncertain, but the Adult School which opened in Stanhope Road in 1911, soon created its own football team, under the management of one of its members, Charles  Tuck, who ran a motor garage business in Hatfield Road, east of Sutton Road.  We might speculate that players from Stanville moved over to the Adult School team if some of their friends also transferred, or perhaps Stanville Club closed in favour of the Adult School.

The St Albans Adult School team from 1921, taken outside the School in Stanhope Road.
The team trainer/manager, Charles Tuck, is on the left of the middle row.

We know of another community street football team thriving in 1911, Glenfield FC – another portmanteau from Glenferrie and Sandfield roads, where the majority of their players are thought to have lived.  Once more, we have little idea of the lifespan of the Glenfield team and whether it was able to manage the frequent transfer of residents living in the rented homes in that part of Fleetville.  No doubt, as with other local teams, good or enthusiastic teens and adults from further afield would be encouraged to participate.

Another street football team was Glenfield FC, where many of the players lived in Glenferrie or Sandfield roads.   

We are, of course, not surprised by the existence of a football team in part of Fleetville in 1911; after all much of Fleetville east to Beaumont Avenue was either complete or in build before the First World War.  Whether such teams were able to re-form in the 1920s is uncertain.

However, there is an intriguing announcement in the Herts Advertiser during September 1898: the fixture list for that season up to the following April.  The list was headed Fleetville FC !  So, let's discover where the name Fleetville came from.  The printing works was in build during 1897, was completed during 1898 and named The Fleet Works, after the company's London address at the lower end of Fleet Street.  The rest of 1898 was taken installing machines and searching for a small number of skilled employees, although there were no houses closer than Cavendish Road, and Camp district was empty other than Camp Hill.  Factory owner T E Smith laid out plans for his Ville of workers' homes opposite the works, and placed advertisements for builders from 1899.  The name of the proposed development was initially Fleet Ville.  It would be a further year before a small number of homes in Arthur and Tess roads became habitable, and a year later than that when a few homes on the Slade building estate were also ready.

This photo of c1911 shows the locality which had been first identified as Fleet Ville and then as
Fleetville from 1898.

To have a ready name, Fleetville, for the residential district seems to us far too early, but ready it obviously was; to have sufficient residents, both adult and junior, ready to form teams also appeared far too early, but ready they obviously were.  In September 1898 the team – under whose management we know not – applied for affiliation to the district Football Association, which was accepted.  The Association had already received entries for the Cup from the following teams: St Albans A team, Campfield (probably from the Orford Smith printing works), Abbey, Harpenden, Elstree, Ware Excelsior, Stanville, Hatfield and Fleetville.

At the end of the first half of Fleetville's first season the Herts Advertiser announced that a member of its junior team was to be censured and cautioned for disorderly conduct during a cup match against Stanville FC – a local derby!

September 1898 was probably the first occurrence in the newspaper of the name Fleetville.  The usage of place names not officially titled and created, usually takes time for people in a locality to become acquainted with such words which enter the common language naturally.  Fleetville apparently entered the local lexicon far earlier than we had all imagined.

Only Waste Ground

There are plenty of accounts and recollections of a piece of development ground – probably enough for up to ten semi-detached homes.  It ceased to become farmland in 1929 and was nominally reserved as a site for a future church between Central, Woodland and Hazelwood drives.  During the 1930s there was, of course plenty of open space for children to play on, but by the mid 1940s when housebuilding began again "the field" became a centre of attention for a new generation of children; their very own  adventure space.

However, the field, much larger then because fewer homes had been built, was used between 1940 and 1943 by the Home Guard for training – they even had a meeting hut nearby.  One or two trenches were dug for exercises and only filled in later when house foundations were laid out in 1947.

The ground was far from level; grasses and nettles grew tall, and hiding was all part of the fun in playing adventure games.  Two badly mauled trees, previously next to the farm house which straddled Woodland Drive at that point, became their own centre of attention for climbing and swinging .  Between these trees traced the usual rough and worn path which enabled anyone to take a short cut towards, well anywhere really.

An informal game of football on the field not yet built on in Central Drive.

Out went the idea of a church; Benskin's acquired the site for a future public house, and erected a large sign to inform the world the land belonged to them.  Children saw an opportunity and used it for target practice – stones, mud, footballs.  Nearby, almost no-one noticed a square of heavy concrete which told of a former well, used by the farm.

In 1953 when just about everyone celebrated the Queen's Coronation, Woodland Drive held a street party on a part of the field where Oakwood School now stands, and in the evening the adventure field was the location for a giant bonfire and a fireworks display – this time it was the turn of the grownups to have some fun.

Team lineup with the the Central Drive shops behind.

Soon after 1960 St Albans Council's policy of making shopping more convenient for those living in residential areas, came to Central Drive and part of the field was developed for a parade of convenience shops with maisonettes above.  In time this brought a post box, and public telephone kiosk tucked around the corner of the righthand-most shop.  Not forgetting children's play, the council levelled the remaining field, and for the first time children could organise their own football games.  The worn path was still there, although foreshortened where the shops had been built.  Probably with safety in mind the Council erected one of those chestnut paling fences around the edge.  The success of the fence is doubtful, as footballs regularly soared over the top  into the roadspace, necessitating an inevitable indirect walk to the gateway to recover the escaped ball, which may have ended up in a garden, or under the only car then parked by the roadside opposite.

Irene Stebbings House replaces the open play space.

All good things come to an end sometime, and that end came with the 1970s building of the flats of Irene Stebbings House.  Today, the two trees have gone, so has the fencing intended to keep the footballs in.  There are no more opportunities for youngsters to engage in adventure games or get thrown into the stinging nettles or  ride their bikes over the uneven ground of little hills and hollows.

It was great while it lasted.