Family picnic

Around 1995 I was given a video about St Albans which was then available in the shops.  It was called Bygone St Albans – a montage of cine footage taken at various times, and included such themes as the 1948 pageant, views from the Clock Tower, the Highland Games, fetes, weekend camps and archaeological digs.  For the first time in many years I have taken the opportunity to view the video once more.  Among the fifty minutes were three gems relevant to St Albans' East End.

First were three or four pan shots of the neo-georgian building which was W O Peake's factory in Hatfield Road, opposite Clarence Park.  It was a wonderfully-proportioned building which stretched from the right of the former Crown post office (now the Chilli Raj restaurant) to Granville Road.  When no longer required as a factory it was still in very good structural condition, yet it was replaced.  Here is a tantalising picture of the Peake building (sometimes floodlit) with its climbing plants around the door and manicured lawn behind the front wall.  Surprisingly, very few pictures have surfaced of Peake's factory.  If you have one you would be happy to share I would love to hear from you.  Meanwhile, enjoy this sample.

Then, if you were a child of the 1950s and 60s you may remember the children's funfair each summer at Verulamium Park.  It was organised by fairground ride owner Charles Hart, probably better known for his fairground and theatre organ collection in Camp Road.  Once again, pictures of Mr Hart's fairground rides are rarely seen.  Here, then, is one sample screen shot from the video.




Finally, the one topic which left the confines of the Abbey, Verulamium Park and city centre, came to rest in our patch, more specifically "Marshalswick and Jersey Farms."  The narrator was not specific but mentioned "Woodstock Road and Sandpit Lane," which was rather vague, especially in connection with the first quote.  A family picnic – mother, father and two children.  Well, I assume that the camera operator is the father of the family.  No buildings are visible, the ground is steeply sloping, the landscape is scrubby and there is evidence of the base of a tree trunk.  Mother and the two children are shown, with the boy in his school blazer.  Does anyone recognise this family?  The film was taken in the late fifties.  Over to you!

The video is still available as a DVD, from www.bygonefilms.org.uk

Trust the park

A public forum meeting took place on Thursday last at the Council Chamber.  Its purpose had intended to be to discuss and to take forward proposals from the council's legal department, updating the Trust Deed which governs part of Clarence Park.  Rumours and counter-rumours ensured that there was also a sizeable public presence, as much concerned about what St Albans City Football Club may or may not be proposing; and whether the council's intended trust changes and the club's ideas were suspiciously linked.

A shaded corner of the council-run part of Clarence Park.

From the historian's perspective I could not help wondering what history would make of this civic spat; how would it be recorded for someone in the course of the next century to make sense of?

Let's start with the Trust Deed.  Since the formation of the park in 1894, the sporting area of the park – what the deed refers to as the recreational park – is controlled by the trust, and historically the trustees are all members of the city council cabinet.  The area nearest to Hatfield Road, which has all the nice trees, the children's play area and the bandstand, is managed directly by – the city council!  So the proposal is to have the trust deed cover the whole of the park, "to make it more straightforward to manage".  So far, so good.  But the original wording of the deed would, if agreed to, be embellished, with clauses such as, "the power to permit clubs, societies and organisations to carry out improvements to the recreation ground and to erect buildings and provide equipment,"  and "the power to acquire land."

This is where many smelled a rat and made their own connection with what they had heard the football club was up to.  News of a stadium, restaurants and a nursery had done the rounds, and for many that was several steps too far for a traditional Edwardian park.

City Football Club owner Lawrence Levy was present and was asked directly to explain his proposals.  It appears that there are four options which the club is considering:  a future entirely in the football zone at the park; one where the match centre is at the park with ancillary training and youth facilities elsewhere; the reverse of option two with the match centre elsewhere; and full facilities elsewhere with no presence at the park whatsoever.

A vista across the formerly gravel-worked Butterwick Farm.

The "elsewhere" site being considered by the club is already well advertised.  The East End of St Albans would be home to the new site, on space behind the north side of Colney Heath Lane.  Some of us will recall this as the home of former Butterwick Farm and Smallford Farm.  It appears to be a sensible location, near the bypass and and a walking route, Alban Way; although, no doubt, residents of the lane and its little closes will have reservations.


By the end of the evening those against football club developments at the park could relax a little, for the main decision turned on the Trust Deed alterations, plus one other rather important aspect.  The meeting was part of a wider public consultation, which included a survey form.  Many considered the questions to be poorly worded, with several of them leading the respondents towards a particular answer.  The meeting told the council to look again at the Trust Deed and to obtain advice from experts on creating a better survey form.

The Bunch of Cherries

This week I have received a picture typical of the 1950s.  Taken in the coal yard at the old Fleetville sidings – now Coach Mews – it shows two Kendall's coal lorries, having picked up a new load for delivery.  Kendall's took over the coal business from Stanton's, whose family had a wood and coal business in Castle Road.  Many thanks to Steve Kendall for letting us recall those days, when children were often asked to "count the bags in" and to "go into the road and pick up any dropped lumps."  A photo of Kendall's shop in Bycullah Terrace appeared recently on the front page of the website and is now on the photo library page.

Thanks also to Janet Lang who is now able to let us see once again, not only the pub sign for the Bunch of Cherries public house at Oaklands, but also a drawing of the first building.  This was occupied in 1949 when the licence was first granted, but at a time when no licences were available to erect permanent structures.  Use was made of former builders' huts, believed to be already on site from  unfinished pre-war house-building activities.  The huts remained in service until the 1960s when the present house was put up by owners, Whitbread.

It is rare to find a group photograph with all of the names of those appearing listed on the reverse.  Fortunately Janet had undertaken that task as soon as she received a copy of the picture in 1961.  If you were in Oakwood School's top class of 1961/2, and were taught by Mr David Sidnell, then visit the School Groups 2 page of the website.  You will only be disappointed if you were absent on that day!

It seemed about time to give some coverage to a former hamlet known as Camp Hill.  First identified on a map in 1766 with a single house, it became home to an increasing number of families, initially associated with farming and domestic occupations; and then, from the start of the twentieth century, to industries setting up nearby, including the rubber works, electricity works and printing works.   Work places also came to the hamlet, although all no longer exist.  Today there are a number of modern office and apartment buildings near the top of the hill, but it all seemed to begin with a single home, known as Camp House.  There is now a new page on the website called Camp Hill; see the menu list on the righthand side of the Welcome page.

Thomas Smith

Last week I finally went in search of the will of Thomas E Smith, whose printing factory launched Fleetville.  Finding the date of his death was not easy, for a start.  Enter Smith, Thomas,  London into any search engine and you are confronted with dozens of possibilities.  After much searching and cross referencing, I discovered that Mr Smith lived in a very grand house in Enfield; a house called Bycullah House, in Bycullah Road.  So there is our link to Bycullah Terrace in Fleetville!  According to the obituary in the local newspaper in Enfield he was a driven man, taking little rest and having a mountain of different interests.  One of them being the Liberal cause.  He had just returned by train from St Albans where he had been addressing a Liberal meeting, when he collapsed and died while running along the platform to catch the last train home at Kings Cross Station (today Enfield trains leave from Liverpool Street).  This occurred in February 1904.  I still have not discovered a photograph of the founder of Smith's Printing Works, and his Enfield house is no longer there.  It and the grounds in which it was set have long since been transformed into a housing estate.













Ian, who kindly provided that lovely photo of Branson's shop, on the corner of Harlesden Road and Burnham Road (now on the Photo Library page of the website) has sent two more locally relevant pictures.  Although no other information accompanied the pictures, shown here, it is likely that the Osborne advertisement was printed on the back of the admission ticket to the sports meeting, held in 1922.  Until the opening of Verulamium Park a considerable number of open air entertainments took place at Clarence Park.  Even through the 1950s the Co-operative Society held its annual family Co-operators' Days there.  The modern connection between bananas and sporting activity is clearly not so new.  Osborne, a fruiterer was in Hatfield Road, near the Methodist Church.  It later became Jagel's, fruiterers.  Now it is Connecting People, a recruitment agency.  The street number is now different, following a renumbering in 1932.

I have also received a tantalising glimpse inside the Kendall's shop in Bycullah Terrace, as it was when this final house in the parade was converted to a shop in the 1950s.  Thanks to Steve for sending it.  I am hoping he will be able to produce a higher resolution picture so that it can be further enlarged and enjoyed.






Finally, I have found one – just one – example of those cinema poster boards that could once be found.  Usually a red Odeon panel sat next to a blue Gaumont one; both cinemas being owned by the same parent company.  This 1959 example comes from Exeter.  Does anyone possess a photograph in which one or two of these boards appear?  Let's hope so, and of course, the film being advertised will help to date the photograph.

Another good week

There is possibly something about the immediate post-Christmas period which encourages us to catch up with contacting friends, tidying up and sorting out, or trying in vain to make a dent in the general "to do" list.  As a result I have been able to record some wonderful progress.

First of all Ian posted me a copy of a photograph I didn't expect existed.  Almost all of the shops which have been historically photographed were in prominent locations, and that includes the 1964 survey of shops in St Albans, the collection of which is in the care of the Museum of St Albans.  But there were a small number of shops off the beaten track, and one of them was on the corner of Harlesden Road and Burnham Road.  I can hear people now saying to themselves, "Oh yes, Branson's."  Branson's had been built as a shop in 1903; the usual corner shop which could be described as a grocery with sweets.  I am sure someone will email in to tell me when it served its final customer, for that is a date I do not have.  But I do know that Mr and Mrs Field in the 1960 period had an alsatian dog.  I delivered the London Evening News to the shop on behalf of my employer, P H Stone, and the delivery was made, double folded, to the dog's mouth, and it would quietly walk through to the room at the back of the shop.  Anyway, enjoy the picture, which I imagine to have been taken in the 1950s, but if not, I am sure someone will correct me.

I have now received my second recollection about wartime street shelters and am therefore increasingly certain that the council constructed more of them in the actual road space than I had previously realised.  I knew about one at the end of Upper Heath Road, and I received a letter in which a shelter was said to have been built in front of their house in Oakwood Drive, near to the Elm Drive junction.  Now I have received a message from Stewart, who lives in Malaysia, recalling an unknown number in Royal Road, again, built on the road surface.  This would make sense as there had been a row between the parents and the county authority about the safety of children during raids.  The existing shelter under the nursery would only have been sufficient for a small number of the school's children.  The authority would therefore have needed more than one additional shelter.  Neither person recalled exactly how many shelters there were but the suggestion is between 4 and 6.  The photograph (above right) was not taken in St Albans, but gives an idea of what the street scene might have looked like with street shelters constructed there.

Finally, Stewart (see above) emailed me about a warden's post in the grounds of Beaumont School, at the end of its drive.  I wasn't quite sure what kind of structure it would have been, but was told there was space inside for two bunk beds.  There was one photo in my collection, taken by former teacher, Alf Childs, at Beaumont Boys' School in 1959 which might have shown something.  And there it was, that brick building in the background, immediately behind that gaggle of parents and pupils – we were just about to leave on a school journey, and that is me on the extreme left.  So that is what a wardens' post looked like!  From Google Earth it looks as if it has been demolished, which is not surprising given the number of new buildings the school has added to what we knew as the back field.


That was a good week.

Newcomers?

Two items of news were announced recently, although only one was directly connected with St Albans' East End.  On the site of part of Hedges Farm the decision to authorise construction of the proposed rail freight depot arrived from the Government.  As with most controversial decisions, individuals will, inevitably, stress those aspects of the project which support their own point of view.  It might be loss of farmland, increase in noise or traffic; or it might be more job opportunities or a chance to improve the bypass, especially at the two roundabouts.  I'm not taking sides on this one!

The second item also affects farmland, and this time it is very much in our own yard.  The simmering  proposal, now made more urgent by the loss of government funding for upgrading Oaklands College at what it calls its Smallford site (but is actually at Oaklands), the college intends a large number of homes and a link road at the former Oaklands Agricultural College.  There is also an intention – at least in outline – to develop an unspecified area along Coopers Green Lane and at Little Nast Hyde Farm.  In total several hundred homes would be built.

Once again I do not intend to take sides.  But I do remember there being a paragraph in Sir Patrick Abercrombie's Greater London Plan set out during WW2, where he firmly rejected the idea of further development between St Albans and Hatfield which would risk the two towns coalescing.  And that was before Hatfield New Town arrived and before St Albans council allocated industrial and retail sites to Butterwick Wood (there is not much left of the Wood these days, either!).  On the other hand, let's remind ourselves of other farms which subsequently grew houses instead.  If we live in one of those "new" homes, or in one formerly on extensive nurseries which had helped to feed the local population, or Londoners, how to we form our argument to deny others the right to a home?  The answer might lie in where those new residences could or should be constructed.  Does anyone have ideas about where, in the East End of St Albans, or around Hatfield, new homes might be constructed for the young families of tomorrow?

Until seventy years ago fields here grazed cows and produced cereals.

Percy Hall

Many wonderful stories about the East End of St Albans are emerging as news of Volume 1 spreads, or through contacts with Fleetville Diaries.  A ninety-one year old who spent his early years in Clarence Road.  The grandson of the manager of Patience, Butcher, at the Crown – Aberdeen House as it was called then, on the corner of Albion Road and Hatfield Road.  The family of Mr Hobbs, owner of the Hatfield Road garage which is now Kwik-Fit, whose home had been in Colney Heath Lane.  Then there is a former teacher who has remained in the house her parents purchased on the Beaumonts estate in 1937.  And the family of the first landlord of the pub with a unique name: the Bunch of Cherries, which began life as a pair of builders' huts.

Fleetville Saloons 195 Hatfield Road

Finally, this week the family of hairdresser Percy Hall has been sharing details of the various properties in Hatfield Road, and in Cambridge Road, in which his business prospered.  The one most of us whose memory extends back that far is 195 (now the New World shop).  But others had been next to the Liberal Club and next to former Ben Pelly opposite the Cemetery.  However, it was discovered that for a short time the very first shop was at Bycullah Terrace, where currently Londis trades.  It was great to discover the second photograph (below), where Smith's, bakers (later Spurriers and ABC) is on the left and the premises which is still a house in this picture, where Kendall's traded.

Fleetville Saloons, 211 Hatfield Road, c1935

There are four new schools photos on the website this week, all from the former Marshalswick Boys' School where music teacher Neil Hamilton developed and maintained a number of choirs, bands and other groups.  Also in the Group Pictures section is the Marconi football squad of 1960, when they were County League Champions.