EPW061126 ENGLAND (1939). Hill End Mental Hospital and the city, St Albans, from the south-east, 1939

Oakwood Drive junction with Elm drive

Oakwood JMI school site

Charmouth Road

Colney Heath Lane

Hill End Railway Station

This photograph is one from the St Albans Museums collection, but has never been officially identified. 1) I believe this to be an aerial pic of Cell Barnes hospital with the entrance from Hill End Lane/ Frobisher Road junction. 2) The picture is very close to Hill End, but the plane was flying a little further south and moving westwards, towards the city. In the middle is Cell Barnes colony (as it was first known), with Highfield Lane and the farm (now demolished) to the right. Further back, and on the right, are the hospital houses on part of the former Beastney’s Farm. The double row of houses going left to right are a short road known as Bisney Road. Later, in the 1950s this became Drake’s Drive, and was extended fully the width of the picture to London Road, just above the parallel Hill End Lane. Camp Road can be seen snaking towards the city in the distance with the allotments to the left. The zigzag roof of the rubber works stands out near the top, and to the right of it you can just see Campfield Press (neither of these buildings extant). Cell Barnes Lane is the hedge-line shown diagonally in the top left of the picture, eventually meeting Hill End Lane out of shot. I think the picture was taken just after WW2. Cell Barnes was built c1933 and the grounds seemed to have matured, and the allotments were at their greatest extent during, and just after, WW2.

Junction: Hatfield Rd / Oakwood Drive St. Albans

Pinewood Close was built about here,

Longacres Pinewood Close early 1960s, 'Jescot Dahlias' working the land before the land was compulsory-purchased from Ernie Cooper

Longacres Pinewood Close early 1960s, 'Jescot Dahlias' before the land was compulsory-purchased from Ernie Cooper

Longacres. In the early 1960s the land marked and that now occupied by Pinewood Close was compulsory-purchased for use by the local school from Jescot Nurseries. Not used by the school, yet became building land for Pinewood Close. It had been a market-gardening business for Jescot Dahlias, run by Ernie Cooper.

Camp Road

Railway siding into hospital

Hatfield-St Albans Branch of the GNR, later LNER, companies.

Starlight Way and Puddingstone Drive are here now.

St Albans County Grammar School for Boys.

Willow Crescent.

Linden Crescent.

Beaumont School

This tree (one of the largest in St Albans), surrounded by Woodland, Elm and Hazelwood Drives, is still there today.