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.

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.