Hither and Further

 In the previous post we identified three former fields grouped around or near the double roundabout at the heart of the Beechwood Avenue and Hatfield Road junction – a very busy and sometimes congested traffic meeting point.  To name the fields as they were prior to building development and when active farmland we'll take a walk eastwards  along Hatfield Road, beginning at the Bycullah Terrace Fleetville shops.  

View east along Hatfield Road from Sutton Road (off camera to the right).

Our first field on the right, beginning at Sutton Road and extending to Ashley Road was named Broad Field.  Today's Cambridge Road marked its hedge line with parallel Hatfield Road, though it was the railway which became the foreshortened boundary from the 1860s. Although by the second half of the 19th century Broad Field was identified as part of its partner, Hither Bridge Field; the track, now Ashley Road, divided the two sections.  It is possible these two fields were merged for convenience.  They were both considered arable, and they were both intended for sale for development together by 1899, although the latter was delayed until 1929. They had nevertheless been together referred to as Broad Field. Around c1890 the part of Broad Field furthest west was referred to, possibly informally, as Rats' Castle Field.

The fields laid out over today's street map.
OPEN STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

Continuing from Ashley Road on our eastwards walk an altogether smaller field, Hither Bridge Field, had its Hatfield Road eastern hedge line at the highest elevation where the main road levels out.  While Beaumonts Farm, with a line of mature oak and beech trees which continued on our left, there is a change of ownership on our right.  Hill End Farm named this field Hatfield Road Field, with a plain-enough meaning! As with the previously mentioned fields this was described as for  arable use, and was only sold – by the Hill End Hospital as surplus to its requirements – in 1920.

From right to left, passing Ashley Road, which was a track; then up the gentle hill passing Hither Bridge Field along Hatfield Road; towards Hill End Farm's Hatfield Road Field.  Off the picture on the
left is the former Three Corners Stewards Field, which today includes Elm Drive.
GOOGLE STREET VIEW

While we have been walking towards Oakwood Drive, the field on our left behind the shield of roadside trees and part of Beaumonts Farm was called Three Corners Stewards.  It certainly has three sides and therefore three corners.  Steward is someone who takes responsibility for something, in this case perhaps not the field itself but at the farm or manor.  It has an Old English early medieval derivation with the first part of the word referring to a hall – an early style of manorial building.  We note that the nearby area of Sandpit Lane is still referred to as Hall Heath.

If you were wondering about the bridge included in the name Hither Bridge Field, you may be similarly perplexed about its neighbour, which today is part of Brick Knoll Park business park; it was formerly named Further Bridge Field. The bridge in question had nothing to do with the branch railway, but there may have been a simply formed bridge somewhere near the boundary between the two fields.  We have to follow the contours and remember that below the clay there is chalk.  Though the water table is not as high as in previous centuries it is likely a spring surfaced nearby and followed the natural land surface in the vicinity of Cambridge Road, meeting another stream flowing from The Wick, across Hatfield Road and Campfield Road towards the River Ver, thence to the Colne.

When building development first began in 1899 your walk along Hatfield Road would have begun with the general shop on the corner of Sutton Road, where now is the Rats' Castle public house; the route  of Castle Road, with its two sub roads Cape Road and Kimberley (later renamed Burleigh) Road, had been laid out and one or two groups of homes and a few isolated cottages built, or in the process of construction, by 1905  A little nursery garden had quickly grown near the Ashpath track, but the remainder was left as open land.  Even along Hatfield Road where housebuilding was slower off the mark.  The field appears to have been initially purchased by two different businessmen: Tom Tomlinson and Horace Slade.  As with other early development in Fleetville the roads were lined with a mix of houses and business premises, although there has been slow transformation away from workshops in favour of compact homes and small groups of flats, the most recent only coming out of the ground within the past twenty years.

Further Bridge Field east of Ashley Road was retained by the Fish family of Oaklands (who had acquired Beaumonts Farm c1899).  The owner had released some of the remaining field as an allotment garden, but not the Hatfield Road frontage.  There was space for approximately seven homes here but the plots did not become available until 1929, all but one completed by 1931. At the same  time homes for rent were built on what is now known as the Willow Estate.  This included a row of homes on the east side of newly named Ashley Road, completing the first phase of road names with the theme of trees.

On the former Hill End Farm's Hatfield Road Field, building had begun earlier; three were complete by 1923, twelve more by 1926, and the remainder by 1930.  As with all homes in this period only the plots were purchased, leaving the owners to negotiate separately with a builder; a majority of the homes became detached dwellings, mainly having substantial rear gardens.

Across the main road Three Corners Stewards became part of the remainder of Beaumonts Farm to be sold in 1929.  So a line of large semi-detached homes became the subsequent development along Hatfield Road, the first to be marketed as "an estate".  Many of the line of mature trees along the Hatfield Road frontage of Stewards had conveniently been removed during or shortly after the First World War, the work carried out under supervision by prisoners of war billeted at Oaklands.  The boundary near the Beaumont Avenue end was in the form of an embankment, out of vertical alignment with the road surface – and there was no footpath for several years.

Both sides of Elm Drive were within the curtilage of this field and marketed between 1933 and 1936.  For those pondering over a distinctly more modern house at the junction of Hatfield Road and Beechwood Avenue, this was built c1966 on the site of the builder's compound for the field's development.

Old Field Names

 Readers will have noted over the years in which this blog has been published that old names for specific locations have been labelled using the names of fields on which, in the end, development had taken place.  Of course, very few people will understand what these names are, or were, and there is only one database which is anything like a complete national reference.  If you are to consult a 19th or 20th century Ordnance Survey map you will discover that fields are given numbers, although the same fields in subsequent surveys are provided with different numbers, which is not always helpful!  The reason is, in part, because during the intervening period land owners or tenants may have separated existing large units into smaller fields, conversely amalgamated smaller fields into larger hedged or fenced areas, or whole farms amalgamated.

The next three map extracts illustrate the issue nicely.  

The above map shows Hatfield Road, coloured brown, at the top, and the Hatfield and
St Albans branch railway further down.  The Avenue (Beaumont Avenue) joins Hatfield Road
and then continues as a track towards the foot of the map.
25 inch OS map surveyed in 1872.
ALL THREE MAPS COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The second map show the same fields on the 25 inch OS 1897 map.

The above map again shows the same fields on the 25 inch OS 1922 map.

On each map the west-to-east road is Hatfield Road with the former Sutton Road turnpike toll house on the extreme left and the junction with the privately-owned Avenue (later Beaumont Avenue) halfway along.  The Hatfield & St Albans branch railway (now Alban Way) disappears off the bottom of each map.  The broken double lines in the top two maps mark the track formerly known as The Ashpath or The Cinder Track linking the Beaumont Avenue junction with the railway bridge and then leaving the bottom of the map.  This track had been made into a road by 1922 and was renamed about this time as Ashley Road.

By reference to the 1872 map the large field which the track intersects is numbered 480 (with an area of 27.538 acres).  By 1897 the same field is numbered 806 and with an almost exact acreage.  But by 1922 the field, by now renumbered 294 is significantly smaller as the western half was sold for development in 1899.  Its working area is down to 13 acres.

The second field to look at in 1872 is east of the first one. Again, each survey numbers them separately. Because, as one sheet of a fuller map we can only see the western part of the field, the area of the complete field number 496 is shown in the margin: 21.212 acres.  The field boundary between those two fields also separates two farms: field 480 belongs to Beaumont's Farm owned by Thomas Kinder, and field 496 is part of Hill End Farm owned by the Gaussen family.

An event in 1920 is recognised in the third map above.  The owner of Hill End Farm from the 1890s was Hertfordshire County Council as owners of Hill End Asylum.  However, the council did not require to use the whole farm, and it therefore chose to dispose of the fields on the Hatfield Road frontage for development.  This is illustrated on the 1922 map where plots are already pegged out and two houses are already complete, the one at the right margin being close to where Oakwood Drive was later laid out on the opposite side of the road.

The third field to pinpoint is on the north side of Hatfield Drive and entirely part of Beaumonts Farm: field 484 (in 1872), 367 (in 1897) and 4 (in 1922).  Although we can't see the northern boundary on these maps, we know that something has changed, as its acreage has reduced from nearly 20 to just under 12.  The northern boundary when the farm was sold in 1929 roughly followed the line of today's Elm Drive.

1840 tithe map covering the same area, although a little extended.  The later railway can be
traced through hedge lines on the west of the map.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

Finally, we'll look back to the map series before the 1872 edition.  Although remarkably well drawn it did not contain as much detail and shows evidence of more basis construction.  It was created in 1840 for this part of Hertfordshire and is widely known as the Tithe Map, considering the purpose for which it was created.  The Award (a written listing) names all of the fields, buildings and other enclosed areas of land, the owners and occupiers, size of enclosed areas from which to calculate value, and the purpose for it was used – payments due to support the church and its organisational structure.  The tithe map was created with east towards the top; when comparing with other maps therefore I have turned the map through 90 degrees – which is why the field numbers are shown printed on their sides!

Notice that the fields were named, not numbered.  But the names are likely to have retained their names over a long period of time, and the record of these was limited to the tenant and landowner accounts and working books.  In some case the names related to topographical features, sizes and nearby features, bearing in mind that not all tenants would be in a position to read or write their own records.  We might not always appreciate the relevance of the names today, but we will reveal more in the next post.

The names of our three fields in 1840 were:

Field 480 in 1872 - Hither Bridge Field (field 738 and 737)

Field 496 in 1872 - Hatfield Road Field (field 718)

Field 484 in 1872 - Three Corner Stewards (field 207)

It is these names I tend to use as they are more meaningful than frequently changing field numbers, and they are more likely to linger in the agricultural vocabulary.  In fact, many current street names are derived from former field names.

In the next two posts I'll explore each of these three fields and how they have changed in more detail.  For a start, we might discover how each of these fields was used when they were part of a farm, and  the nature of the change which occurred to made them a complete  part of modern Fleetville.

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.

Absent Collection

 During the past two months I have identified for everyone data on a range of buildings which no longer exist, and which from my research no-one thought to photograph, or if they did those pictures have not survived.  We therefore have little or no memory of what they might have looked like.

I've nowhere near finished this collection, but when I do I will offer reminders of buildings no longer existing but where, fortunately, photos were taken and still act as a point of reference for all of us.

Meanwhile, back to the challenge of locating buildings long since gone; not just one this time, but a whole group scattered around our East End.  Smaller than your average house and definitely not intended for permanent occupation; all erected in the late 1930s and demolished at various times in the 1950s.  They were variously street shelters, police cabins, and Air Raid Precautions Wardens boxes.  All constructed using stock bricks and with flat reinforced concrete roofs.

Street shelter surviving until at least the 1980s; not St Albans.

1946 aerial photo centred on Royal Road.  The orange boxed area shows the location of six

street shelters constructed on the west side of the roadway.

Street shelters built on the roadway of a city residential area; not St Albans.

Intending to provide emergency shelter to those caught in the road spaces when bomb warning sirens sounded, the last two surviving street shelters (though these were not actually on a street) remain on Fleetville Rec, part of the present Fleetville Community Centre and serving to protect nursery children and their teachers between 1942 and 1945.  The days of these old structures are now numbered as demolition is imminent, but we are fortunate in having a selection of archive photos, one of which is shown below.

Section of a surviving shelter at Fleetville Community Centre where it had sheltered nursery
children.  Section shows the side opposite the main entrance and the emergency escape hatch
with steps leading to the higher ground.

Among the structures demolished decades ago were street shelters in Beechwood Avenue (near Hatfield Road); Sandpit Lane (junction with Homewood Road); Sandpit Lane (The Wick); Colney Heath Lane (junction with Hatfield Road); Camp Road (junction with Campfield Road); Cambridge Road (junction with present Ashley Road); Clarence Park (football area); Sandpit Lane (junction with Lemsford Road); Royal Road (six in-line in the road space).

Of course, we might query why anyone in the 1940s would bother to take photographs of these rather plain and obviously temporary buildings, especially as most residents or travellers who were persuaded to shelter in any of them, will undoubtedly have negative experiences of the damp, dark and cold conditions, not to ignore how unsafe users might have felt sharing a dark windowless space with complete strangers.  

A police reporting cabin stood at the junction of Beechwood Avenue and Hatfield Road.
A street shelter was constructed nearby just to the left of the photo in Beechwood Avenue.
COURTESY PHILIP ORDE

The first reporting boxes were wooden and introduced in 1935.  The box shown above
was located elsewhere in St Albans, but an identical one stood on the west side of Sutton
Road opposite the Rats' Castle PH and close to the junction with Hatfield Road.  It
survived until replaced by the brick version in the upper picture in 1939.
COURTESY BT ARCHIVE

Police cabins were not so numerous, intending to be a reporting base for duty beat officers to avoid the necessity of returning to the Victoria Street police station at the end of a shift.  These cabins also housed a public telephone accessible from the outside.  Fortunately a photo is in the public domain of the Hatfield Road/Beechwood Avenue cabin before it was taken down.  What does not appear in the record is a photo of the early iteration of this brick box, which is the early wooden version on the Sutton Road/Hatfield Road corner; although the former GPO archive has an excellent picture of a similar cabin in a different district of St Albans.

Air Raid Precautions wardens were also provided with brick built boxes which acted as mini offices and provided with electric light and heating, and a telephone connection.  They were much smaller than a street shelter, but most of their locations have not survived human memory.  The former locations of four are certain: Beaumont School (driveway from Oakwood Drive); Fleetville Rec (next to the public toilets, now Beech Tree Cafe); Marshalls Drive (the Wick); and probably at Oaklands (location unknown).  It is also possible that two others existed, at the junction of Camp Road and Campfield Road, and at Windermere Avenue (where the north side Keswick Close homes are today).

So, the second question which needs answering: why would we need to retain images of these former inconsequential structures?  What value would they have for us now or in the future?  For the same reason former streams which no longer flow on the surface; stands of trees or wider woodlands which have long since been removed for their timber; or missing stone or metal milestones which are now obsolete, replaced by our widespread use of electronic maps and vehicle odometers.  

They represent individual items of the wider story of the district; they form the chapter headings for how life gradually changes as progress continues to be made; or as an immediate response to circumstances inflicted by outside circumstances.  When some of the evidence is permanently lost our understanding of a community is diminished.

So we will maintain our vigilance for the recovery of the historical record, won't we?

Absent photo: Chainbar Toll

 A recurring theme in our range of absent images is turnpike toll payment houses.  Here is another, which probably results from the frailty of such structures even when first erected. and of course the usefulness of their tiny sites once no longer required. It is understandable that photographs would be rare or non-existent; the structures were very basic and once the Reading & Hatfield Turnpike had been taken over as a county road in 1880 there was no further need for the infrastructure.  So we are reliant on the attractiveness of a wider scene for an artist.

This view is from the top of Camp Road. with Stanhope Road on the left; Hatfield Road on the
extreme right.  The house which incorporates Chilli Raj.  At one time this junction was known
as Cure's Corner after the name of an early owner of the shop opposite.

The shop on the site of the former toll house in a photo taken in 1964, before its conversion to a restaurant.  The post box and telephone kiosk stand outside the section of the house next
to the shop.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Homing in on the site of today's featured building we recognise it as the Indian restaurant Chilli Raj at The Crown corner, the current building replacing the former tollhouse known as the Chainbar Toll.  An alternative name, the Fete Field Toll, was also in use during its lifetime, taken from the name of the home field of St Peter's Farm nearby.

A feature of sections of the Reading & Hatfield Turnpike was the number of side tolls; that is, locations where payments were made close to the junction of a lane or minor road just before entering the turnpike road.  Although requiring more toll houses and therefore collectors than a system relying only on dividing the main road into sections, it may have been considered more fair to users; perhaps also more profitable for the owning Trust.  From the turnpike trust's perspective it avoided users being able to make use of free sections until reaching the next main toll.

From the OS map surveyed in 1872 is the toll house (circled) near the junction of Camp Lane
and Hatfield Road which curves around St Peter's Farm.  The initials TP stand for Toll Point.
Note that Stanhope Road has not yet been laid.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Throughout the life of the Chainbar Toll there was no Stanhope Road – this was still a cereal field called Hatfield Road field.  Camp Road joined Hatfield Road exactly where it does today, where the Royal Mail posting box is located.  Camp Road was the side road and therefore payment was due to entitle use of the section of the turnpike from that point as far as the Peacock public house at the junction with St Peter's Road.  From then on payment was not required to travel through the city.  The previous main toll was at Smallford – then called The Horseshoes – whose tollhouse was the subject of a recent post.

The next main toll in the St Albans direction was at the Peacock public house drawn in 1865.
It was later replaced by the structure shown below.  It faces Hatfield Road and is at the junction
of St Peter's Road and opposite Marlborough Road.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

To protect the payment point at the little side toll at Camp Road, a chain was hung across the road from posts on either side.  At certain busy toll points a separate lane was provided for traffic entering the side road since no payment was required, and therefore no chain.  Abuse of this return lane was not unknown and it is presumed that the chain was drawn across this lane at the discretion of the toll keeper.

We know little of the toll keepers whose task it was to collect the fees. Except one, Sarah Gray, who lived in the cottage next to St Peter's Farm homestead on the other side of the Crown junction (where the Conservative Club is located today).  She encountered Thomas Wheeler, who had just murdered Edward Anstee of Marshalswick Farm in 1880.  Her testimony was reported in the Herts Advertiser, and the event would have been a mere matter of weeks or months before the abandonment of the toll system.  Perhaps Sarah was relieved that she would no longer have to face the risks which must have been associated with her role.  

Little detail is available about the toll building itself.  We know it was residential and therefore contained at least one bedroom for permanent occupation.  We also know that it faced directly onto Camp Road and its front looked directly along the line of Hatfield Road eastwards.  The building was also very small.  That's all.

As for when it was demolished the toll house probably remained empty until long after the development of the Stanhope Road estate had begun.  One of the last buildings to go up was an impressive, though not extensive house on one of the then few plots at the eastern end.  The house was built with a detached garage, which was later  converted into a butcher's shop for Mr Bigg, and in the 1960s was  taken over by Mr Holdham.  The house itself was already shown as a Post Office on the OS 1897 map although does not appear to have been converted into a general shop until the 1920s; it incorporated the sub-post office.  Which is why the post box occupies the adjacent spot today – and was once also partnered by a telephone kiosk.

There appears to be no visual evidence of the Chainbar Tollhouse left for us today.  Travelling artists had produced sketches and watercolours, so perhaps one of the Chainbar Toll remains in a collection somewhere.  This junction would have made a delightful scene for artist or early photographer.

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

 

Absent Photo: Hatfield Road Villas

 This week the subject of our post is the site which is Queen's Court, the three-block estate of flats in Hatfield Road, Fleetville, and completed in 1952.  But what we are really interested in is what occupied the site before 1952.  As with all of the plots along this stretch of road it was released for development in 1899 as a consequence of the sale of the first tranche of Beaumonts Farm between Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road.

The green rectangle is the amenity patch around which the three Queen's Court flats are wrapped
on the north side of Hatfield Road near the Beaumont/Beechwood avenues junction.
COURTESY OPEN SOURCE MAP CONTRIBUTORS

Five villas, mostly semi-detached and near the Beaumont Avenue corner, were up within five years, and they are still standing today.  On the site of Queen's Court were two substantial plots for detached villas which were erected in 1902 and 1905.  They were given the names Balgowan and Waratah, which suggests an Australian connection.  Balgowan's generous plot accommodated a tennis court. The story of these two buildings gives the impression of having individual owners rather than tenants.

Compared with the sizes of the villas nearer to Beaumont Avenue on the right, Waratah (blue)
and Balgowan (orange) were built on very generous plots.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

There appear to be two varying accounts of the villas' short lifespan and their eventual demolition, possibly around 1949.  In  searching for photographs I have discovered two, both in which one or the other is shown in poor part in the background of an image taken for a very different reason. Together these are inadequate in showing off the villas.  But first, the probable story. 

The distant view of Balgowan, behind the man walking in the road, is the only known photographic
image of the house.  The photograph was taken from the junction of Hatfield Road and Ashley
Road.  Note, in this early view there is no tree screen bordering the road.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

By contrast this 1930s image of Hatfield Road is looking towards Ashley Road and Beaumont Avenue
and would provide a much better view of the two villas if only they were not hidden behind the screen of trees beyond the lamp post.
COURTESY THE STAYLEY-HAINES COLLECTION

Balgowan was first occupied by Mr A E Jowatt, followed by retired Annie Purvis, her grandson Frederick who was employed in a merchant's office, and boarder Frank Webb, working on the railway and presumably at a local station since he was a clerk.  Balgowan had changed hands by 1922 and George H Williams moved in. 

Across at Waratah Miss E Purvis was the first occupant in 1906.  Was she a relative of Mrs Annie Purvis next door?  Anyhow, by 1907 Henry Williams had replaced her.  Was he related to George H Williams next door?

Waratah gives us the only reference to a family; Henry and Louisa Williams had five children: Norah, Hilda, Leonard, Florence and Henry junior.  Given that the nearest school, Fleetville Elementary, had only opened in 1908, the children were being educated in a very young building. The children's father was employed as a road contractor.

Waratah records its 1926 occupant as Sidney Ives.  By 1939 both villas were empty and had been taken over by the emergency National Fire Service with its temporary brick building to the left of Waratah, and there was plenty of land behind the villas for the parking of fire engines and for training purposes.  What our account now lacks is detail of the period between 1926 and 1939.

Mr Ives developed a building idea which included shops and flats on his own plot and vacant land to the left of him.  The Council refused permission as inappropriate development, since it failed to conform with the Town Planning Act for the zone the land was within.  It seems this frustrated Mr Ives, for the zone boundary came between his house and that of Mr Williams next door in Balgowan where the restrictions did not apply.  Mr Ives made repeated attempts to purchase Balgowan, perhaps to place the bulk of the development there.  The Herts Advertiser carried a detailed report in 1937. Mr Ives probably appeared surprised that his new more extensive plan which had been submitted under the name of Parkfield Developments  was again refused.   

The RAF flyover in 1946 captured the site of Waratah (blue) with the National Fire Service building
in its place, which is the broad white roofed block. Balgowan (yellow) has a number of small building
structures on its plot.  The five villas (green) are those remaining today.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

One suggestion reported in the press was that Ives might have  exerted pressure on his neighbour by beginning to demolish his own house (presumably he no longer lived there!).  But by then the plans for war were moving forward and under compulsory purchase arrangements the Auxiliary Fire Service/National Fire Service, which had taken over from the City Corporation's Fire Brigade, moved onto the site and the two homes were renamed NFS1 and NFS2.  The 1946 aerial photographs indicate that Waratah had indeed been demolished before the war began and NFS1 was the brick headquarters building shown as the large white block in that image. Whether they became offices or training exercise structures is not known.  Although not very clear Balgowan, along with a number of unidentified smaller structures were still in place.   A nearby resident's recollection stated a stray bomb had been dropped and damaged part of the site – no clear evidence though.  Anyhow, post-war was a different world and the City Council planning department acquired the site for – guess what – flats!

What a shame that such an unusual story has been poorly remembered and that the occupants of these two homes largely unknown.  Surely somewhere there is a photograph of Waratah and Balgowan, and perhaps the single-storeyed National Fire Service building next door (where Fleetville Library was later built, although that has now also been replaced).