It's the Journey

Today, Sunday 24th April, is just the day to record what little is known about an annual event which once passed through the East End of St Albans.

The emotion involved in watching the process of thirty-six thousand runners pacing the streets of London, is insignificant compared with the bravery and effort of those same magnificent athletes pounding along the blue lines.  But each year yet more potential finishers join the list.

Before WW1 and during the inter-war years another annual event was taking place, but on a much, much smaller scale.  It had nothing to do with fundraising, or mass participation, or sponsorship, and it certainly wasn't a marathon.

Although the headline says otherwise, it was definitely a Hatfield to
St Albans event.  COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Interest in athletics in general and St Albans City Athletic Club in particular, had grown since  facilities were provided at the 1894 Clarence Park.  The park was the athletics centre for the city, until emphasis moved to Westminster Lodge in the 1960s.

Cross country runs had always been popular among serious runners, especially those who enjoyed getting wet and dirty.   Someone then had the bright idea of a road run, presumably for athletes who disliked ditches, fences, gates,  shrubbery and other obstacles, which may have included field animals.

The route chosen was from Salisbury Square, Hatfield, to Market Square, St Albans.  It is assumed that the event was popular, because the event was run annually, presumably with the exception of WW1.  By the 1920s there was only sporadic reportage in the Herts Advertiser, and in 1933 the newspaper indicated there were just twelve participants.  In 1927 there had been even fewer; illness being given as the reason.  So, it could not be identified as a large scale event!

While today crowd fencing would be erected, traffic diverted and a police and marshal presence engaged, it is assumed the runners looked after themselves, crossed streets and ran near the road edge, dodging any vehicles they encountered.

The route itself would, though, have been more straightforward.  There was no Town Centre and no Barnet Bypass (Comet Way).  It would have used New Town and St Albans Road West, passing a few new large villas on the right (now demolished) on the way along the narrow main road to Nast Hyde.  The country lane nature of the road would have persisted until the runners reached the partly-developed Fleetville at Ashley Road.  Although it was a made-up roadway, the rest of the route included the drag past Clarence Park and a further drag until reaching The Peacock public house.  No rest though, for it would have been necessary to dodge the market throng in St Peter's Street.  While many of today's events take place on Sundays,  activity on the first day of the week was severely restricted, and so took place on a Saturday.

The torch relay moves along Hatfield Road, Fleetville, on its way towards
the city centre.

We know how much crowd support there would be if a mass participation event was to take place along St Albans Road west and Hatfield Road today – the Torch Relay in 2012 is testament to that.

Is anyone up for organising a 10K event between Hatfield and St Albans once more?

What's so special?

Your blogger was, today, searching for useful data on Rochford's, the former Lea Valley nurseries at Cheshunt.  For a sizeable company, which many of us remember for its house plants, but was equally well-known in earlier times for its exotic fruit and salad crops, there is comparatively little in the way of written history or photographs.  The huge estate of glasshouses was demolished in the 1960s when  the Greater London Council purchased the site for housing.  Today, residual collections of images are probably restricted to personal collections, a topic which has appeared on this blog previously.

Kingshill Avenue 2014

Burleigh Road 2014

From our neck of the woods here are two photos chosen at random.  Are you are impressed with my restricted selection?  While you consider, here are two further images, the first, a print, from the late 19th century, and the second from just before the First World War.

Print now surviving as a photo

c1910 photo of part of Sutton Road

The impressive shop front represents much from this period; no doubt this print was intended for newspaper reproduction.  But it was also a time when photography was as much to do with people as places; the new paintings, much as MP3s are the new CDs in music.  The fact that few pics from the period remain is because relatively few were taken.  The cost of a photograph was expensive, and certainly beyond the range of ordinary people.

Printed postcard photos became very popular in the early 20th century; even today most of us will probably know at least one collector of early 20th century postcard photos and his/her batteries of boxes containing treasures of the period.  We therefore have a much more familiar view of our home district as it was in the 1910s and 20s than either earlier or later until more recent times which are within our memory.  We develop an emotional attachment to them, and once seen we crave to discover more – hence the popularity of various "then and now" books.

So, what happened after the 1920s?  It's a bit of a mixed bag, of course.  It's the period of developing personal photography, so there are masses of tourist pictures, but there is less balance in the range of places and people photographed, and more importantly, retained.

Aware of the risk of unspeakable damage to landscapes and buildings during World War Two, a number of  artists were commissioned to record urban and rural landscapes at risk from 1939 and though the forties.  Thank goodness for the Recording Britain project, now in the V&A Archive; an   exhibition is currently touring Britain.  A similar project on shopping streets in St Albans was commissioned in 1964, as a record of vulnerable city streetscapes of the period.

Demolition of 9 and 11 College Road

Now, let's return to those first two photos.  They are a fairly common sight; typical residential street scenes.  If we live nearby we will see them on most days.  So, why keep something so ordinary?  The point seems to be, that in 50, 75 or 100 years, what will those scenes look like?  Will the houses still be there?  How will the roadway have changed?  Will we be surprised that the streets seem empty?  If we don't maintain a record of our environment we won't be able to fill in the detail later.  As an early supermarket once proclaimed, "when it's gone, it's gone."

Let us, therefore record our local areas, the little details, the unusual, the ordinary, or the just-in-time, as in this final picture.  And let us grab our photo boxes to see what we can find and which might be a valuable resource for all of us now, and for those who come after us.

A Home of Our Own

In 1835 the city boundary dribbled a little south-east of Marlborough Road to take in some new developments in London Road.  Because the arrival of the Midland Railway had prompted more houses in New Town the boundary was moved further east to Albion Road in 1879.  Then in 1913 a  revised boundary was set at Winches (Oaklands), "well beyond" the, then, housing development at Castle Road.  There have been further extensions since.

"Development opportunity"

Families who would picnic at Laurel Bank (the present Crown district); watch from a gate as cows grazed where Fleetville Junior School is situated today; or make splashes with the ducks on ponds at Marshalswick and Newgates farms, gradually found their views and activities moved further out of town.  There was at the time, of course, nothing that could be done about it; there were fewer controls over development.  Farms were sold as uneconomic and house-building took over.  Families grew up and started families of their own; renting, or eventually purchasing homes of their own.  Families also arrived in pursuit of welcome employment at the many firms which had settled here and contributed to the city's economic wealth.

The former Cherry Grange site,
Camp Road

So, as children, we made many new friends, from our neighbourhoods and the schools we attended.  We used the great outdoors beyond our doorstep – and the building sites we grew up with – for our personal enjoyment.

I remember when our road was facing the edge.  Our front windows had an open view towards Hatfield; there was nothing in between.  It didn't last that long; eventually someone else had the benefit of living on the edge; and later still, yet another generation.  I suppose we just accepted that we did not own the edge; it was not ours by right, no more that the fields beyond where we picked wild flowers, or bagged potatoes, or walked with the family on Sunday afternoons, or ...

The former Newgates Farm

Friends' families sometimes moved on, to other districts of the city, to nearby towns where there were better jobs, or places seemingly on the other side of the world: Leeds, for example!  New families moved in and there were usually new friends.

Occasionally, such regeneration still occurs, such as at Highfield; or on a much smaller scale at the Radio estate.  But today the growth is more likely to come from pulling down large houses on expansive plots, and constructing several "units" in their place.  Cherry Grange, in Camp Road, is a good example.  Or former industrial sites in Sutton and Hedley roads.

Such piecemeal growth does not, on its own, do much to help all those who need a home here, to own or rent; at least not at a price they can afford.  Shortages always put up prices.  It is true of houses as it is, at times, of petrol or carrots.

Field on the Sandpit Lane side of Oaklands, Oaklands College

Is there a solution?  In May there will be an inquiry into a proposal to construct houses on a field at Oaklands; 348 of them.  That would help.  So too would similar proposals for even more homes at Coopers Green and Ellenbrook.  Several other locations have also been identified.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if those who want or need a home here, were able to settle at a price they could afford?  So, will it be possible?  The odds do not at times look good, but we will know where the barriers lie during the eight days starting on May 10th.  Lots of people will have their fingers crossed. but not all for the same reason.

The Chestnut Hut

The farm which became the Beaumonts Estate was developed from 1929 and was not completed until the early 1960s.  Most of the roads were laid out straight away, and a number of house builders had bid for groups of plots and begun their building operations in 1930, usually in five or six semi-detached pairs at a time.  By 1939, as war was declared, almost none of the estate north of Central Drive had been started.  The exception was Beechwood Avenue, and even in this road there were several empty plots.  Most roads were not paved or made up, and there was very little street lighting.

At the junction of Beechwood Avenue and Chestnut Drive – still open space with allotments at the far end – was a Nissen hut.  From memory it had been pitch-coated at some time, although the ends were possibly painted green. The question of when it had arrived is still open, as it appears on no Ordnance Survey maps.  Nissens were first produced cWW1, and it is possible that the Chestnut Drive building was erected around that time to service the needs of nearby Beaumonts Farm, which was managed from a more distant Oaklands Farm.

All I can recall is that builders Tacchi & Burgess (T&B) made use of the distinctive structure for parking its orange trucks and machines during operations to construct houses in Chestnut Drive from 1949 onwards.

Possibly St Paul's (Chestnut Drive) Sunday School c1944 or 1945
COURTESY SHEILA ARTISS

Today, this delightful photo was given to me by a lady whose mum is in the line-up.  The children are smartly dressed – their "going out/Sunday best" clothes.  There is an indication may be a Sunday school class with the adults who were in charge of the children.  A further clue is that Ruth Benchley, the daughter of the vicar of St Paul's Church at the time, is standing at the right end of the back row.

It is therefore possible/probable that St Paul's Church decided to undertake some outreach Sunday school classes for the families of the unfinished Beaumonts estate.  The photo is thought to have been taken either in 1944 or 1945, but without further research we do not know when these classes began; probably not very much earlier than the photo.  The brick external stove appears quite fresh and new, and would have been constructed to provide winter heat for the sessions.

These homes were constructed on the site of the former
Nissen hut in Chestnut Drive.

I grew up on the estate and this is the first time I have become aware of the hut being anything other than a store.  Now if I had known there was a Sunday school so close to my home I would not have had to walk along Hatfield Road, passing two other churches, as far as Trinity Church in Beaconsfield Road!  This Sunday school must have been absorbed in the Blandford Road church building by 1949 so that T&B Builders could begin house-building.

So, the search is on for further information about this centre of Sunday activity on the Beaumonts estate.

Meanwhile over thirty children and their teachers in this picture need identifying!  If you are there, or know of others who were, do please comment, or email saoee@me.com

Making tracks

Have you noticed?  A stranger in town might once have stopped a passer-by and asked, "Sorry to trouble you, but could you please point me in the right direction for finding the railway station?"  Today, we would warm to anyone who actually asked in that manner, but we sometimes have to make do with the oh-so-brief "Station?"  Maybe our smartphones would help us, but I have noticed that having map and direction-finding apps in our hands seems to reduce our innate ability to know where we are and to use clues in the streetscape.

Signs – as in metal plates on posts pointing us to places – are relatively new; a motoring age concept. Maps are barely much older, given the cost of early map documents.  So, pre 19th century we would have passed on our own way of finding information by word of mouth, and maybe scratched out a hand-drawn simple pencilled map on a scrap of paper or piece of waste material.

Stand at the junction of Hatfield Road and Beechwood Avenue.  There are also two other roads at this junction: Beaumont Avenue and Ashley Road.  It is a busy intersection where the traffic is managed by twin roundabouts and a minor left-turn-only restriction.  Turn the clock back two centuries or more and the same location would have been very different.  Hatfield Road was there, as the link between Bishop's Hatfield and St Albans; arriving in the town centre we would find ourselves adjacent to St Peter's Church.

Intersecting with Hatfield Road was a trackway, at this point part of Beaumonts Farm but part of a much longer and probably ancient cross-country route linking a number of manors.  Today the track is Beaumont Avenue and Ashley Road.

York Road, facing west

But there is another route.  Generations of children have known it as The Alley.  That too leads directly to St Peter's Church.  It crosses Woodstock Road South, but from that point it has largely been replaced by modern roads.  The northern boundary of Fleetville Infants School formed part of the track which then crossed the line of Burnham Road before following the line of Brampton Road and York Road.  The York Road bridge over the Midland Railway was required because the track was a right of way. The walker would then have crossed the field towards St Peter's Road, or more directly across the churchyard to the church itself.

If, in 1700, you were standing at that intersection between Hatfield Road and the ancient track (now Beaumont Avenue), and you had a cart or carriage, your obvious route to St Albans would have been Hatfield Road, although, of course, it was nothing like the road we use today.  On the other hand, if  you were walking, you could still have travelled along the same route.  So, why would you use the path across the fields to reach the same destination?  It wasn't actually a short cut, and there were no cottages that we know of en-route.  It seemed only to be a path which linked fields.

We love mysteries, and this particular one is to query the function of the original path across the fields.  Will we ever discover a conclusive answer?  Probably not, but who knows? Someone may have a plausible suggestion.  Over to you.

Opportune moments

Some of us will have recalled childhood days at the seaside in the early post-war period.  Many families will have taken a camera with them – a few fortunates may have acquired an early cine camera.  Anyhow, our purchased roll of film, whether 8, 12, 16, 24 or 36 exposures, may have been made to last all week, bearing in mind the additional cost of processing will have to come from our pocket money when we returned home.

COURTESY MARGARET GOWER

There were always commercial photographers who wandered along the promenade, looking out for personable family groups or individuals.  They would take a picture, give you a numbered ticket and let you walk on your way.  The following morning you would race to a notice board on a wall somewhere, and if the print was appealing, and you had spare money, you may have bought it.  One advantage, apart from it invariably being a better picture than any we might have taken, was that it would probably have been the only photograph featuring the entire family.  When (usually) you struggle to find father in the photographic record (it was usually father) and years later wonder whether he was even there at all, you come to realise he was always behind the camera!

COURTESY ALISON MANN

A few years ago I was given a copy of the photo, above right.  The old Camp Road bridge is behind the lady purposefully walking along Camp Road near Campfield Road junction.  It is a well composed image and the lunchtime picture is taken on a sunny day.

I then came across two other photographs, one taken at the same junction and a second near the junction of Hatfield Road and Woodstock Road South.  Recently I was shown a copy of yet another photo, left, taken at the same location.

This was surely not coincidence.  Was it possible that a commercial photographer recorded local street scenes in the same way the seaside photographer did?  Could it have been a Fleetville photographer?  Unfortunately, I have copies of the original, not the original itself,  and so any photographer's printed stamp on the reverse is missing.

So here is another mystery waiting to be solved.  Does anyone have an original photo in their collection in a similar style – an individual person, couple, family, pair of shoppers – walking along a local street.  Is there a photographer's stamp on the reverse?  Is the location identifiable.  Do please email saoee@me.com if there is any information you can offer.  This may have been a regular or occasional open-air trade operating in Fleetville, Camp, or even the park.

Where's here?

We all need to know these things occasionally.  So let's start by asking the question, "What do they call this place?"

Painted by John Buckingham shortly before the Midland
Railway arrived, from a vantage point near Grimston Road.

We'll assume the year is 1868, so this will be a historical question.  We've been walking (quite a common pursuit in 1868) towards St Albans, but we're not there yet.  We have dropped down towards a small stream valley, possibly a winter bourne, and we pass on our right an open space with, behind it, a farm homestead and a cottage next door.  On our left we note a lane coming uphill to meet the road, and stretched out across the lane and between two posts, is a metal chain, next to which is a tiny house.  Here lodges the guardian of the turnpike road, the route we have been walking.

After waiting for a young man on a loaded cart to pay his due, and the toll keeper to lower the chain, the cart driver bumps over the chain and turns toward the town where there is some feverish activity as dozens of gangers are piling subsoil onto the road in readiness for a bridge which will carry the road over the railway being constructed.  They are calling it the Midland Railway.

The toll keeper's house was where the posting box is today.

There is no further traffic for the toll keeper and so we engage in general conversation.  From my vantage point I can see back in the direction from which I had travelled, with hedges on both sides of the lane.  I now have a better view down the track from which the cart had arrived, and I can just see the bright new brickwork of another bridge recently completed, for a different railway.  Turning to look up the hill I spot the fresh brickwork of a new institutional building receiving prisoners from much older accommodation.  To its right there is a line of activity as the Midland Railway works continue, with a third bridge and the building next to it which will shortly open as the station.

Between there and the toll house are fields of barley rippling in the gentle breeze.  Cattle graze in another field.  Finally, a long field on the right of the turnpike road is bright with colour and noisy with people enjoying themselves at a temporary fair set up for the town's people – and for me when I get there!

"So, where are we?"  I ask the toll keeper.  "What do they call this place?"

"Don't rightly know, officially.  Don't think it has a proper name," he responded.  "But I know what some of us call it.  The Chain Bar, because that's the most important thing here.  If you've got animals or a cart, you have to stop and pay.  Some call it the Fete Field, because that's what sometimes happens in the meadow opposite.  Course, it's not an official name, just what folks call it.  If someone asks me where I work I tell 'em I collect tolls at the Chain Bar opposite the Fete Field.  They know where I mean."

By 1915 we got to know the place by the name of the
public house and hotel at the roundabout: The Crown.
Yes, there was a roundabout here in 1915!
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Today, if you haven't guessed, we have a part of St Albans which still hasn't an official name.  You might think an official name is even more necessary today, given the large number of homes hereabouts; the same point (Chilli Raj, or rather the posting box outside it) might be located at The Crown.  Because it is a complex road junction, and that needs a name, just as the toll keeper's house did, and the place where people went to enjoy themselves.  Yes, and we still go there to enjoy ourselves, but today, instead of going to the Fete Field, we'll tell them we're off to Clarence Park.