Striking Camp

The Old Camp House at Camp Hill

We used to have a really enjoyable time at Scout camps.  New places to experience, new skills learned, bad old jokes we'd laugh ourselves silly over.  And if we didn't return home thoroughly dirty, nobody would believe we had actually been on camp.  That was true in another way too.  At the end of camp and the final campfire singalong, we would share in the task of striking camp, until there was nothing left of the site to prove we had been there, except the memories.

A thriving Camp PH

Soon that will be the case with The Camp public house.  Just the memories, and of course the photos. Not just the pictures of the demolition, but of the social events which were based there in its heyday of the 1920s and 30s.

The pub's beginning began a few hundred yards along the road in now-demolished premises in what had been ambiguously called, until 1914, the Old Camp (Beer) House – was it the Camp, the beer or the House which was old?  When McMullen's purchased it from Adey & White (who had acquired it from Thomas Kinder and who knows who before that) the building was in a decrepit state.  It was purchased by McMullen's specifically to have a license in place with which it could serve the new and growing Camp district.

Demolition begins.  COURTESY VIC FOSTER

Purchasing a portion of the Oaklands Dairy land a fine new building was erected.  Although the sign mistakenly assumed the name Camp referred to a Roman temporary settlement, the public house came to be a focus for the maturing district.  Even the library van pulled up on its courtyard each week.

However, the heyday came and went, and in recent years trade has limped along.  Given the distance to other pubs good organisation might have  re-invigorated good atmosphere once more and re-grow  a quality business.  Surely that would have been worth saving a fine building for.  A local group, though, did not stand a chance through the Community Asset route; there was just no time.

The machinery is on site, floorboards have been removed, presumably for onward sale, and gradually evidence for a century-old local pub will disappear.  It will, of course, require much more striking (of hammers and machines) than we did at other camps, but eventually there will be nothing left, nothing to remind us of its presence.

Arriving in its place will be a three-storey mass containing two dozen flats.  Should we be concerned?  About the loss of a quality building, yes.  Would it have been suitable for conversion?  Possibly.  About the loss of a location for people to meet?  Most definitely.  But there is a record of photos and of memories, so that is something.  Time moves on and we have to accept people need homes.  Perhaps, the new development will have a name which reflects its past in this place.  In such a  transition period the site will deserve that at least.  Any ideas to offer the development company?

What is coming?   Will there be a name?

The Sand Pits Lane

The road which many car and van drivers make use of as an informal bypass from Hatfield Road was, until the 1960s, called Sandpit Lane continuously from Smallford crossroads to Stonecross.  Today the section from Smallford to Coopers Green Lane is Oaklands Lane.  But it seems to have been used as a bypass even before the 1930s, when the St Albans bypass (A414) was constructed.  And is being used for the same purpose today to avoid renewed congestion between Fleetville and the railway station.

Sandpit Lane Wastes between Clarence Road and
Sunderland Avenue.

We can probably trace the origin of Sandpit Lane back to Roman occupation, given that there was a minor road between Verulamium and Welwyn – this seems to follow the approximate line of the Lane – and there has been suggested occupation evidence even before the 19th century cottages on Hall Heath.

Hall Heath extends from The Dell, where there is an incline across broadly flat  topography, until a descent at Newgates, where Verulam School playing fields are located.  The Hall undoubtedly refers to a medieval manor house within a moat at Beaumonts (at the junction of Woodland and Central drives).

Sandpit Lane near Newgates.  Mid-19th century
painting by John Buckingham.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Before the 20th century only two structures existed between Sandridge New Town and the edge of town: the former railway bridge (not the version we drive over today) and the nearby cottage.  For almost the whole of its length between the clapboard cottages near Stonecross  and Hall Heath was – and still is for most of this distance – a landscape of 'wastes' on both sides of the track.  Effectively, these wastes were common land, which created difficulties for the owners of the first homes which were built, as there was no automatic right to drive vehicles across the wastes to reach the boundary of the homes.   In 1914 the Council, who managed the wastes, decided to carry out drainage works, which suggested there was seasonally excessive water standing across the lane.  Not surprising really, given that similar issues were prevalent along stretches of Hatfield Road, undoubtedly from the same chalk springs coming off the upper heathlands.

The lane was at its narrowest on Hall Heath itself as recently as the 1960s, where two vehicles could just pass on reaching Beaumont Avenue.  No footpath on the south side existed here either.  But at least the traffic frequency had been low until WW2 and pedestrians walking from Beaumont Avenue to visit The Wick could manage it in, perhaps, four or five steps, and could generally afford to amble.

Early 20th century at Hall Heath, but not much had
changed in the 1950s.

Today, congestion can occur anywhere from Woodstock Road North to House Lane, partly because the housing developments at Marshalswick, Newgates and Jersey Farm, but the attractiveness of the lane as a Fleetville bypass.  There is unlikely to be a solution on the horizon as several further housing developments are due to be launched in the next ten to fifteen years.  No-one has spoken of improvements to Hatfield Road, the ring road, or creating new diversionary roads, so presumably they won't happen either.

Newgates Cottages

Today there are traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and roundabouts, but otherwise Sandpit Lane is still attractive to walk along, if far more noisy than fifty years ago and with less clean air.  But we may be forced to accept highway improvements in the years to come, unless, of course, we all agree to drive less and cycle or walk more frequently.

Off to the Stores

Herts Advertiser
advertisement 1932

At one time two department stores in St Albans provided its citizens with a wide range of merchandise.  They were Fisk's in High Street, and Green's in Chequer Street.  Neither is extant.  But many shoppers observed that neither trader was a true department store as each had a restricted number of sections.  Nevertheless, if you lived within striking distance of Hatfield Road, you walked to the nearest stop and boarded route 341 or 330 towards St Peter's Street for Fisks (later Blundells, Greens and all of the other city centre shops.

Then, in 1939, something excited householders.  A large store – a new department store – was due to open its doors in Welwyn Garden City.

The first 'Stores' at Bridge Road west, near Guessens Road.

To step back for a moment, Welwyn Garden City (the Second Garden City Company)  had been formed in 1919, and for the next 20 years the company largely concentrated on laying out roads and building houses.  Yet it understood that for potential residents to be attracted to the formative town, shops would have to be provided.  Initially this was in the form of a company shop.  Welwyn Stores (technically incorrect as Welwyn was a separate nearby town) was quick to open near Guessens Road and in a mainly temporary structure.  The first Stores provided most (though not all) domestic requirements for residents.  The company even opened small branch shops on the early estates.  There were, of course, the usual complaints about lack of competition affecting prices, and lack of choice within the premises.

However, all that changed in 1938 when the foundations were laid for a significant new structure on a prime site opposite The Campus (where the original building workmen's huts had been located), and in June 1939 the new Stores, now renamed Welwyn Department Stores, was opened.  Even if you've never heard of that name you will know the business from its current title as part of the John Lewis Partnership.

New Stores opens June 1939.

During the first week of July 1939 special bus services to the Stores were laid on from St Albans.  But it wasn't the best of times for new ventures: in another month World War Two would be declared, emergency wartime trading arrangements would gradually be put into place, and normal bus services would be curtailed.

Gradually, after 1945, when life returned to normal and bus services resumed at or beyond pre-war levels, the route 330 bus was carrying a steady stream of passengers from St Albans to Welwyn Garden City.  Our family was among those passengers.  On reaching the Comet Hotel, we passed The Stone House, picked up passengers from Birchwood, passed Jack Oldings, Stanborough, Lemsford Lane and Valley Road.  The bus travelled around The Campus, and if not going on to the Hospital, the  rather attractively-named destination Welwyn Garden City Cherry Tree was shown at the front of the bus.  The Cherry Tree was a restaurant, pub and music venue.

Post-war bus on 330 route outside
St Albans Bus Garage.
COURTESY MICHAEL ALLEN

Our visits always included some refreshment at the Parkway Restaurant on the first floor of the Stores (now it is The Place to Eat, but the original dance floor is no longer present).  We left the building at The Campus entrance, where the pillars are, and waited outside for the return bus to St Albans.

Clearly Welwyn Department Stores attracted many St Albans people away from the city's shops, and London Transport must have made a good profit, at least for a time, from its route 330.

Well, the two St Albans' department stores, are not part of the trading scene any more, but 'The Stores' in the form of John Lewis certainly is; and so is route 330, though today it starts from St Peter's Street instead of St Albans Bus Garage.  At the other end it finishes at Welwyn Garden City Station, which means Bus Station, which is opposite the former Cherry Tree, which is where Waitress now trades, which is owned by the John Lewis Partnership, which includes 'The Stores'.

Our Engagement is Announced

An important event in the Fleetville district will take place on Saturday 7th May, and repeated at Larks on Fleetville Rec on Sunday 26th June.

After carrying out a condition survey in 2014, and assessing demand and the space available, the Trustees of Fleetville Community Centre agreed to proceed with their intention to replace the current building in Royal Road.  Not that it would be an easy decision to make, nor an inexpensive one.

In 2015 a preliminary proposal was made and discussions held with current user groups at the Centre.

Since 2012 the Government's Localism Act (2011) has enabled communities to take more control of community developments in their area.  This is a process which St Albans City & District Council has embraced, and the Community Centre Trust is working with the Council to enable improvements to be made to its site adjacent to Fleetville Rec.

Although being a long-term process, with the probability of no new building until the mid 2020s, all major projects have to start somewhere.  The Early Stage Engagement Event at Fleetville Community Centre will show visitors the history of the site and how it developed from wartime nursery to community centre, and on to the hoped-for next step.  Outline proposals will be explained – although it is far too early to show plans and drawings.  There is, of course, one important reason for this: it is not the function of the Trust to state what will be provided for the community, but the intention that members of the community will engage with the Trust, open a dialogue, and enable a new building to evolve which will meet the needs of residents.

Trustees will be on hand to engage in conversations and answer questions; and visitors will have an opportunity to suggest ideas and to express your opinion.  Information gleaned from the Early Stage Engagement event will be fed back to those who participated, and those who join in the Fleetville Community Centre New Build Project Facebook conversation.  Email info@fleetville.org.uk.  We will even add you to the mailing list if you post to this blog. The project's website can also be consulted: http://fleetvillesnewbuilding.my-free.website     Printed copies of the feedback will also be available from the Community Centre from mid-July.

Do take the opportunity to call in anytime between 10am and 5pm on Saturday 7th May, or while you are enjoying yourself at Larks in the Park on Fleetville Rec on Sunday 26th June, 12 noon to 5pm.

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.