Roadie Birthdays

 One hundred years ago (-ish) travelling began to become more exciting for those who owned or otherwise travelled in a motor car; the novel mode of transport for the masses.  In the 1920s the governments of the day encouraged the future with the construction of a large number of regional road links, bypasses and other arterial roads.  Many of them, while built as single carriageways had land reserved from the start to widen into dual two- or three-lane roads as need arose.

The cover of a post WW1 reprint of the 1914 Half Inch to One Mile centred on St Albans. 
Although it shows the red, brown and yellow of the as yet unplanned classification, there
are no road numbers, first introduced from 1923. 

The east end of St Albans benefitted from this largesse with the addition of a highway to bypass Hatfield Road and Watford Road.  It was, of course, part of the North Orbital, or St Albans Bypass, an intended route to skirt outer northern districts of London.  We now know it as the A414, though it was originally numbered the A405. The full scheme would extend from Hatfield to Hertford and onwards to Maldon.  In the opposite direction it was constructed from Garston to Maple Cross, with the awkward section via Watford later neatly skirted as A41 which was then subsumed into the A25.

Which brings us to a more specific birthday, for by 1923 the time had arrived to label main roads more systematically, and in April of that year the plan for Road Classification was born.  A detailed history of of road numbering can be found at the roads website here.

Standard sign for an A class road along St Albans Bypass (North Orbital) at Colney Heath.

We should ask at this point, how did the classification scheme affect St Albans?  For those not familiar with the numbers on road signs and wish to begin with an Ordnance Survey map, A roads were coloured red; B roads in brown and unclassified roads of a given standard or width (including some C roads) in yellow.  From the post-war period was added the Motorway class in blue.  Many of us will also be familiar with the (T) and (M) suffixes representing Trunk routes and A roads with some motorway features. And to add to any confusion parts of some roads are given two numbers, the second in parenthesis as one route leading to another.

Beginning with the most senior classification we are "blessed" with a section of the M25 which hums very close in places, although before this highway the M10 between Park Street roundabout and the M1 at Bricket Wood was provided to speed us on our way.  Now, however, M10 has been downgraded to become A405.  So far we have been bequeathed two motorways and one former motorway.

St Albans bypass, built in the 1920s and thirties, and frequently upgraded since, has three roundabouts between Roehyde and the Noke (former Hummingbird), and one set of traffic lights if you ignore the multi-set at London Colney roundabout.  As indicated above the bypass was part of a longer arterial road numbered A405, although nowadays its number is A414 between the A1(M) and A1001 at Roehyde, and Park Street roundabout.

The former A414 Hatfield Road is now the A1057, an ordinary main road!

We have lost the numbers A5 and A6 in the city (many will say "thank goodness") although London Road and London Colney High Street keep their A status with A1081 (so not A6 something); and St Stephen's Hill, City Centre and Redbourn Road is no longer A5 but A5183.

The main road which snakes its way from St Peter's roundabout, through Fleetville and Oaklands to the Comet was known as the A414 (so the number itself now has an upgrade to the Bypass!) but now joins all of the other four digit conversions.  Although we all know it as Hatfield Road, to everyone else it is officially A1057.

The road to St Albans receives two road numbers, first to complete Comet Way and then the
bracketed Hatfield Road.

Sign along the former ring road for local traffic to the city centre, the route to Hatfield via Sandpit
Lane and shopping destination at The Quadrant.

Just three B roads grace our local patch and one is quite short.  B691 is classified from St Albans Museum + Gallery (or the Town Hall, or the Old Town Hall) to The Crown where, of course it becomes the aforementioned A1057.  No sign confirms the route to or along the B691 so it is simply a number on a database, map, or on Google where road numbers appear to replace street names, even if the latter do prove to be more useful.  The other two B roads are Sandridge Road B651 and Watford Road B4630.

That is it.  Maps identify other roads as unclassified but are not given numbers: Sandpit Lane/Oaklands Lane, the former ring road we are not supposed to name (Batchwood/Beech/Marshalswick/ Beechwood/ Ashley/ Drakes); Camp Road and Cell Barnes Lane.  But you will sometimes discover roads such as Colney Heath Lane and Hill End Lane in yellow, though yellow is used more sparingly in modern online maps such as the fantastic Open Start Maps.

Classified routes through St Albans.
COURTESY OPEN STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

Whether the numbering is important for us is debatable but that's probably not the point; it is a system which is given a code, just like every lamp post and road sign has a reference number – they must be important to someone.  But on longer journeys we, or our satnavs, rely on road numbers to help us to our destinations.

Happy 100th birthday A5, and all the rest!

Smallford Settlement

 This week the tithe map extract shows the area we now know as Smallford.  Before the 1940s the group of buildings east of the present roundabout, and previously called Smallford Crossroads, was known as Horseshoes, after the name of the public house along  Hatfield Road.  Early maps also referred to the settlement as the Four Wents – four winds; there are similar references to wents in other parts of the country including in the East Sussex South Downs National Park.

Smallford hamlet and its surrounding fields.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

The first map below also charts fields surrounding Smallford, and their names provide one or two clues about usage and topography.  A reminder again that the orientation of the tithe map has been rotated through 90 degrees to conform to modern maps – which it doesn't quite achieve but is near enough.

Extract from the 1840 tithe map.  Roads clockwise from the top: Sandpit Lane (now 
Oaklands Lane); Hatfield Road east towards St Albans Road West; Sleapshyde 
Lane (now Station Road); Hatfield Road towards St Albans.
COURTESY HALS

We'll begin with the water course marked in blue and the narrow fields through which the stream still flows southwards. One was named Drunken Bridge Meadow (693) and the other Boggy Mead Wood (259).  The stream continues as Smallford Brook until it reaches the River Colne.

Water is also referenced in field 268 which the tithe map names Well Field. There is a little conjecture here, but by the road  – then known as Sandpit Lane but now renamed Oaklands Lane – in this field was a small plot which can just be identified as 269 with a cottage and garden (all dwellings were then named cottages).  Today it is at the beginning of a 1960s road straightening, close to the bus stop. A rugby club now has its entrance drive. During the 19th century it housed the St Peter's Pest House – containing anyone with a contagious disease – and was only closed and demolished after the opening of the Sisters Hospital on the St Albans City Hospital site. Well Field later gave its name to the large nurseries which occupied this field until the 1940s, when it became a sports field for the County Council.

Fields are so named for various reasons.  Field 270, an L-shaped fenced area for grazing, had the name Toll Gate Field because the turnpike gate was at the cross roads.  On the other hand the twin fields south of Horseshoes hamlet (578 and 579) were named Great Shepherds and Little Shepherds, which probably referenced sheep grazing, though the St Peter's Tithe Award Book indicates both fields to be arable at that time.  Field 275, now largely occupied by Notcutts Garden Centre and the mid 20th century homes along Oaklands Lane, was named, for obvious location reasons, Horseshoe Field. And if you couldn't think of a better name for your field, why not tell everyone how large or small it is.  Hence, field 276, where used to be the Chester nursery and today is also the Radio estate, was identified as Fourteen Acre field, which was, unsurprisingly, 14 acres in area.

Closer view of Smallford hamlet, orientation as extract above.
COURTESY HALS

Current and building use map of Smallford.
COURTESY OPEN STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

Turning our attention to the plots along Hatfield Road which comprise Horseshoes itself, we might be surprised that no expansion has taken place since the 1840 tithe map (though, of course, modern housing has spread along Oaklands Lane and Station Road, the latter named Sleapsyde Lane before the arrival of the railway; west of the crossroads of course St Albans has joined hands with the hamlet!)

On the north side of Hatfield Road, always the least built on, were three buildings.  Two of them (in 273) wrapping round the crossroads north-east corner both belonged to the Trustees of the Turnpike Road.  The Trustees also owned a little plot of the north-west corner, now in front of Cayton's veterinary practice and Busy Bees children's nursery.

View eastwards from the crossroads (Smallford Roundabout). Former turnpike house on the
left.  Four Horseshoes further building on the left; Three Horseshoes furthest visible building
on the right.
COURTESY SMALLFORD & ALBAN WAY HERITAGE SOCIETY

View westwards with Three Horseshoes on the left and Four Horseshoes distant right. 
Painting by John Buckingham, c 1860.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

At the eastern end of the north side of Hatfield Road was a building standing on its own with a shelter on its left (in this painting by John Buckingham it near the right edge), with the first iteration of the extant cottages on the left. The Four Horseshoes beer house, which survived into the post world-war two era is further along the road – probably the red building.  For anyone exploring the strip of land on which these properties stand, from round the corner in Oaklands Lane to the footpath east of the garden centre and on the north side  might wish to investigate the plot descriptions Upward Lane at the crossroads, and Heggs Garden Spring and Eggs Garden Field, both forming a roadside strip the full length of the main road.

Thomas Kinder owned the Three Horseshoes building and the adjacent blacksmith's forge (375), which were then separate structures but now form the unified Vintage Inns restaurant. To its east are the cottages which were also shown on the tithe map.  They consist of a terrace of four cottages, as today identified by four chimney stacks.  They each had their own rear gardens although these have now been subsumed into the Three Horseshoes parking and outdoor dining zone.

Cottages, Three Horseshoes and Filling station on south side of Hatfield Road.

West of the public house was a long narrow plot of, probably three cottages and their roadside gardens (576), part of which became a cafe and small petrol station. In more recent times the cottages were demolished and the fuelling station significantly enlarged.  The final cottages were in a wrap-around garden plot (577) and as with the others, standing parallel to Hatfield Road at the crossroads.  These cottages have since been replaced by an attached pair of houses and a corner bungalow.

Three Horseshoes, cafe, early filling station and now demolished cottages beyond.
COURTESY SMALLFORD & ALBAN WAY HERITAGE SOCIETY

It will be useful to return to this hamlet occasionally to investigate other elements of the extended settlement, including the former railway naturally.

Cell Barnes Farms

 This week we are returning to small groups of 19th century farms to make some sense of the present topography.  As usual I have begun with an extract of the 1840 tithe map of St Peter's and picked up part of the route of Hill End Lane.  We need to remind ourselves that the orientation of the tithe drawings was not N–S as are the majority of other maps, but approximately E–W.  For comparison with the Ordnance Survey maps therefore. the tithe extract has been rotated a quarter turn.

The farms are printed in orange.  Great Cell Barnes was a large residential property, 
but it possessed a large tract of land which was farmed.
COURTESY HALS

The route of Hill End Lane has been labelled and we discover that three places lie along it.  At the top is Beastney's Farm, no longer extant, but its site is near the corner of Camp Road and Hill End Lane. Beastneys is marked as a locator for the other two places described below, but we will return to Beastneys in a later post.

Further along the lane is Little Cell Barnes Farm, which in 1840 was being farmed by James Bunn, its owner being Earl Verulam.  The homestead and agricultural buildings of the farm are still in use, most recently as Rodell's Scaffolding business and the community building of London Road Residents' Association.

Cell Barnes Lane is to the left on the 1872 surveyed map.  Hill End Lane is routed top to bottom
and Nightingale Lane drops off the bottom of the map.  No fewer than six ponds can be
identified.

By the 1922 survey agricultural cottages have been built.

The 1937 survey shows the extent of the Cell Barnes Hospital and the extension made to
Great Cell Barnes for transformation to the nurses home.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Immediately opposite Hill End Lane is another Verulam structure, the residential dwelling known as Great Cell Barnes.  This was transferred to Cell Barnes Hospital for use as as a nurses home, but much extended during its lifetime.  Today is is used by Emmaus for its community businesses and community homes for a number of people who have experienced homelessness.

The same features shown as part of the eastern London Road estate on a modern aerial photo.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

One building which we might have seen is an attached pair of agricultural cottages along the eastern bend of Cell Barnes Lane which were not built until the 1860s; and a further pair in Hill End Lane where Ashbourne Court now stands.  These cottages were built on a small triangular field called Little Orchard.  Although not labelled on the annotated tithe map it is field 818, and the access road beside the current building continues as a pathway to Drakes Drive and forms the northern side of the former triangular field.

Homestead and associated buildings of Little Cell Barnes c2010.

View of Great Cell Barnes c2010.

The houses which today are between Ashbourne Court and Frobisher Road were built in the field named Aldwick (a place where alder trees grew).  Alders tend to favour streams or damp places, and as nearby residents are aware surface water is still an issue in periods of high rainfall!  On the western side of this former field and on the other side of Drakes Drive is a short residential road which has been named Aldwick.

On the eastern side of Hill End Lane is the boundary of the former Cell Barnes Hospital which is shrub and tree lined. Most evidence of the former hospital has now disappeared and the new 1990s  residential community of Highfield has grown up in its place, of which this is the southern part.

Former agricultural cottages in lower Cell Barnes Lane.

Ashbourne Court looking through to Drakes Drive at the far end of the pathway.
A pair of agricultural cottages were located where the modern building is today, on
the site of a small triangular shaped orchard.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Aldwick, taking its name from a field between Drakes Drive and Hill End
Lane, is a short residential road.

Most of the fields annotated on the tithe map are self-explanatory, with Wood Field adjacent to Aldwick, and Brick Kiln close to Great Claypits – so we assume the older buildings hereabouts were built using bricks made here.

Less clear are the fields Dull Winch and Middle Winch.  Nearby is also Further Winch, so the naming is clearly related and is assumed to describe some kind of lifting or winding activity.  Their origin may therefore be related to the movement of clay for the brick making, already a former practice by the mid 19th century.

Along Nightingale Lane is Walnut Tree Meadow.  A number of other former farms are known to have had walnut trees close to their homesteads which provided a contribution to local seasonal nutritional food supply.

As we walk along the roads, lanes and pathways along or near Hill End Lane it is easy to observe evidence of the former landscape, and realise that the ground is rarely level, even where we know it has been moulded to its present shape by machinery when modern developments grew out of the ground.

PARK FEST

 Surprising news that a topic of interest and concern has not yet reached the editorial desk of the local press.  Yet it has featured on the front page of this title's website and reached the in-boxes of all members of the Clarence Park Residents' Association and the Protect Clarence Park campaign group.

An events license application has been made by St Albans City Football Club for entertainment and music events at Clarence Park; twenty is the number quoted.

While it is not for this blog to take a comprehensive view on such an application, there are a few so-far unanswered questions which we should ask.

We are assuming that the boundary for the application is identical to the boundary of the football ground.  We are also assuming that the 4,999 person limit for each event has already been calculated as being the insurance capacity of the ground – and would that include allow attendees to stand or sit on the pitch, or does this area have to be kept free for escape routes, stages, or to keep the grass in good playing condition?  We note that the Club announces its match day capacity at 5,000.

Has a travel plan been published to model how up to 5,000 attendees would/could reach the ground and return to their homes; if necessary the provision of park-and-ride facilities in a number of out of town locations?

Has an agreement been reached with the emergency services for the control of crowds, emergency evacuation and a medical aid centre?

Have the organisers discussed with the police the likelihood of congestion prevention measures at or near the many junctions within a one mile radius of the event site?

Have discussions taken place, and agreements reached, about how residents will be able to leave and re-enter their own homes in the periods before, during and after each event?

Where will portable toilets be located: in the football area, along footpaths, or other areas of the park?  Will the events effectively preclude other areas of the park from being used for their own events on the same days, or individuals or families from enjoying the park's facilities?

Will the parking restrictions for the event need to be extended to the days before and after each event for the get-in and get-out procedures, and if so, what arrangements would be made for residents relying on street parking outside their homes?

One other item of information not included, so far as we can identify, is whether the events, presumably taking place in the short summer non-football season, are intended to last for one season only.  This omission suggests the option is left open for the event proposal to become regular over two or more years.

Is it intended that these events would begin in 2023?  And what would the ticketing arrangements be?

A further arrangement which might be modelled: are 5,000 individual spectators movements and behaviours follow a similar pattern at a typical match event as they might at an all-day entertainment and music event?

Finally, did the Club organisers consider the possibility of holding the events elsewhere than at Clarence Park? 

So many questions, but if  a project plan exists to answer them perhaps the Club could publish it and make it available  We could see obvious references to the proposal on the Club's website..

Just a thought!  If all of these points can or have been satisfied then we wish the Club well in its endeavour.  But it would be nice if nearby residents were offered an alternative event of their own by the Club.  We understand these events will essentially be fundraisers, but all fundraisers have costs, and this would be one of them.

On a historical note: the park does have a record of presenting non football events during the summer and autumn months before and after World War Two.  There were Billy Graham religious rallies, fireworks displays and Scout Organisation displays; all playing to capacity crowds, usually in the evenings.  On some occasions buses were laid on to deliver attendees to Clarence Road and to return them to the city centre at the end.

Marsh

 If you have ever walked along Sandpit Lane – all of it from Sandridge Road to Coopers Green Lane – you will have made at least one observation, that the lane is remarkably straight, in the same way we vision a Roman road to have been straight.  Today, we are pausing close to the roundabout which gives access to the Jersey Farm residential district.  Before the houses came you walked a narrow lane towards the farm and onwards to Sandridge.  But for the moment we will stop at the roundabout.

The couple of hundred metres of House Lane did not exist exactly here before the houses arrived.  Most of the original line of House Lane can still be seen, but it meets Sandpit Lane obliquely behind the three cottages known as Ardens Marsh.

A section of the 1840 tithe map showing the location of Ardens Marsh.
COURTESY HALS

The cottages are revealed on both the 1879 and 1896 surveys (this is 1896).
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Sandpit Lane follows the bottom edge of the photo.  An upgraded House Lane skirts the modern
housing to a new junction with Sandpit Lane; the former section of House Lane now remains to the north of the cottages.  Some of the houses are built within Ardens Marsh; those on the extreme left in 
the former Ardens Marsh Field.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH.

The 1840 tithe map identifies this junction clearly.  We need to look for field number 246.  The map here is very close to the parish boundary, and since it is essentially a parish map nothing of the land north of the broken line – that of Sandridge St Leonard – is shown.  As usual the tithe maps are not oriented northwards but have been moved a quarter turn for a best fit.  Sandpit Lane crosses the lower part of the map before turning towards Smallford.  Today its name is changed to Oaklands Lane after the Coopers Green Lane junction.

Field 246 is different from others on the map in that it is unfenced on the two sides where Sandpit and House lanes pass.  House Lane, incidentally, was at one time known as Hatfield Lane, but possibly not at this end.  The field was named Ardens Marsh, and the rectangular field to its west Ardens Marsh Field.  In the second half of the 19th century these two fields were combined.

View towards Sandpit Lane; the edge of Ardens Marsh.

Ardens Marsh cottages.

The name Ardens is obscure, and has been alternatively known as Hardings – the comparison is logical.  But the Marsh in the name is not as obscure as all that.  This locality lies low in the chalky landscape, a fact made clear as anyone climbing northwards along Coopers Lane will testify.  North along the line of Sandpit Lane, when the water table was significantly higher, have historically appeared a number of springs.  Only Ellenbrook and Boggy Mead Spring remain as surface streams today.  Ardens Marsh was still grass in the 1840s, and even today the roadside ditches are often water filled.

House lane as it was in the early 1900s looking southwards from Sandridge.  This section was known as Hatfield Road or Hatfield Lane.

Between the roundabout and the stub of House Lane which no longer provides access to Sandpit Lane, are the three attached cottages which are collectively called Ardens Marsh.  They didn't exist in 1840 but do appear on the 1879 survey.  Other nearby farm employee cottages were built during the same period: Freelands in Coopers Green Lane, Newgates in Sandpit Lane, Hall Heath also in Sandpit Lane and Beaumonts in Beaumont Avenue.  The need to accommodate key workers and improve on earlier and highly unsuitable arrangements of temporary accommodation within the conglomeration of inadequate farm buildings.  Ardens Marsh cottages were erected and owned by Thomas F Gape, who also owned the nearby Oak Farm.  His land extended to the western end of Ardens Marsh Field, abutting the small and narrow Newgates Farm.

Ardens Way is this locality's connection with the past.

Ardens Marsh carries its name forward to the future as well, for a residential road branching off Barnfield Road has been named Ardens Way.

Crown Fields

 Before launching into this week's group of fields you might like to return to last week's post, Nine. I had intended to add an early Fleetville advertisement for Carter's (Sear & Carter later).  After much searching I have finally located it and it takes its place in the middle of the previous post.  Frank Carter located his shop and the adjacent land in Hatfield Road next to St Paul's Church as Ninefields Nursery.  The site of this property is now St Paul's Place.

IT might take some time to identify your location from the tithe map.
COURTESY HALS

The tithe map with roads named and fields identified.  The text below lists the owners by their
printed colours.
COURTESY HALS

This week there is a far larger group of fields (above) to understand if we are to make sense of the district which launched the development after the 1879 expansion of the city's boundaries, from the previous 1835 Lattimore Road boundary as far as the Midland Railway and Crown junction.

Again I have begun with the 1840 tithe map which, as always, is bereft of helpful text labels; just roads, field boundaries and their numbered references, and properties in grey or pink.  So, the first version at the top is how we start, and once the roads have been identified by their curves, straights and junctions, the names of the fields and their owners can be added.  In this locality there are many owners, identified by colour.  We should wonder whether owners sold up enthusiastically, willingly, or following detailed deliberations and only persuaded after offers of a higher price.

The blue fields were those of William Cotton of St Peter's Farm; the purple fields were owned by Thomas Kinder, but away from his Beaumonts Farm; in red were the fields belonging to Edward Boys.  One field, in grey was owned by Widow Brown, who also had a connection with St Peter's Farm, that field being between today's Marlborough and Lattimore roads.  Of the two major land owners Earl Verulam's presence on the map are in orange, while two fields owned by Earl Spencer (and rented by Thomas Kinder) are shown in green.

The map surveyed in 1872 just a handful of years after the building of the Midland Railway.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Map surveyed in 1897.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Map surveyed in 1922.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1872, forty years after the tithe map, demonstrates the sheer expanse of railway development once it arrives, and on this map are two; the Midland between north and south and the diagonal route of the Hatfield & St Albans branch line.  By this date street development had grown apace so Boys' fields were quickly lost under houses, as are two of Kinder's.  Locals knew this expansion area as New Town.

By the time the 1897 map was surveyed two further developments had appeared on the eastern side of the Midland Railway, touching and over-reaching the new 1879 boundary.  The field known as Nine Acres (not to be confused with Ninefields from last week) first became a nursery before being purchased by Frederick Sander for the Cavendish estate in 1880.  The opportunity arose as soon as the Midland Railway opened, to develop homes for users of the railway (commuters?).  Therefore, Stanhope, Granville and adjacent Hatfield roads were opened up in the 1880s and 1890s.  Earl Spencer, as with all major landowners, made a profit on his resources, and a field did not need to grow crops if a better income could be made From other outputs.  Land owners are not necessarily farmers.

Meanwhile, three more fields owned by Earl Verulam to the south of the map were also up for grabs.  Twelve Acres quickly became the prison at the same time as the Midland Railway arrived, the remaining land on this field becoming known as the Gaol Field and subsequently developed as the Breakspear estate.

Camp Road today, facing uphill to Camp Hill; the route of the former branch railway passing
overhead (but not on this newer bridge).  Originally the lane followed a line further to the right,
but to provide sufficient height it was diverted eastwards as shown on the 1872 map (above).

Camp Lane, on the lower edge of the map, was diverted by the builders of the branch railway route.  Its two adjacent fields, Dell Field and Up And Down Field were pastured until the 20th century and succumbed to housing development from the 1930s as the Dellfield estate.

It is not difficult to use the tithe field boundaries to compare them with the three Ordnance Survey maps for 1872, 1897 and 1922;  many of those boundary lines are still evident in current roads, tracks and footpaths, the edges of gardens and other properties; a fascinating tracing of the locality's progress through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Nine

 When growing up in the 1950s, I came across grown-ups who were well settled into their Fleetville lives (as a child I would have used the word 'old') referred to a non-specific part of the district as Nine Fields, or the Nine Fields.  It has taken decades to home in on the background to this name.

Sear & Carter, who had a garden shop and nursery in Hatfield Road, on the site of today's St Paul's Place, had named it Ninefields Nursery.  So likely it was close by to this group of open space fields.

A class of boys from Hatfield Road Senior Elementary School at work with their teachers on
the land north of Brampton Road in 1917.  Early work to prepare wartime allotments for their
families.  The south side of Brampton Road is in the background.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

The beginning of the article which accompanies the
photograph above it.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Frank Sear (before becoming Sear & Carter) advertised its Hatfield Road shop and adjacent land
as Ninefields Nursery.  The nine fields, however, were north of Brampton Road.

The Herts Advertiser in 1917 ran an article about senior school pupils who had taken on extensive plots of ground "at the Ninefields" for wartime allotments.  The boys (the item was specific here; no girls were mentioned) would take home produce which they grew to their families. In one of the earliest photographs published in the paper the image was spread over the whole width of the page but there was little height to it.  The photographer was probably standing close to where Jennings Road is today, facing south so as to capture large numbers of boys at work, with the south side of Brampton Road beyond.

An uncle, who had grown up in one of those Brampton Road terrace houses, recalled his childhood adventures playing "on the Ninefields at the Woodstock Road end".

With a copy of the 1840 tithe map in front me I annotated that section between Beaumonts and the then city boundary and between Hatfield Road and Sandpit Lane.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to join the split map very effectively. 

The field names might, I thought, provide a clue to the name Nine Fields.  Descriptive as they were, the field names led me no nearer to an answer (except for one field named Nine Acres!)  Perhaps I should look at field names in more detail.  One group focused on locations and general descriptions of shape, such as Further Field or Great Long Field.  A pair of the largest fields in the Sandfield Road/Verulam School area was named Great Moodys and Long Moodys, which suggests an old English reference to fields which are difficult to work, unless someone has a more specific suggestion.

The orange labelled fields belonged to William Cotton of St Peter's Farm. The
unlabelled fields on the left are part of the map below.  Kinder's fields of
Beaumonts Farm and the Grammar School Field, on which Fleet Ville was
built, is not part of this survey.
TITHE MAP COURTESY HALS

A third group defined the fields in terms of their size in acres; there is Four Acres, Seven Acres and so on.  I noted that the group 1 and group 2 fields in 1840 were both owned by William Cotton of St Peter's Farm, whose farmhouse still exists as the Conservative Club, near The Crown.  Group 3 fields all belonged to Earl Spencer.  There were twenty fields in total.  Mr Cotton's apportionment was eleven fields, including the smallest, the almost circular Dell Field, a former chalk pit.  However, Spencer's total was 9 fields – so, to spell it out, Nine Fields.

The green labelled fields belonged to Earl Spencer; the orange labelled
fields belonged to William Cotton of St Peter's Farm and are additional
to his fields on the top map.  The two unlabelled fields lower right appear
on the top map and are labelled on that version.
TITHE MAP COURTESY HALS

The Nine Fields were a contiguous group, all north of Brampton Road, six of them with a boundary to Sandpit Lane and the remainder completely road-locked but edged by the lengthy footpath between Hatfield Road/Beaumont Avenue and St Peter's Church, much of which was adopted by Brampton Road and York Road.

So, although the Nine Fields must have been a specific group which did not include fields in the vicinity of Woodstock Road, it seems that the name became more generalised to refer to all of the fields between Brampton Road, Woodstock Road, Sandpit Lane and Clarence Road; quite possibly a slightly larger area before early 20th century developments.

References to Nine Fields in published works are virtually absent – but then, very little about the eastern districts of St Albans has been published anyway.  If, however, readers of this blog are in possession of more definitive information, please to share it with us.