Help Sitemap Home Skip Navigation Contact Us Disability Statement

Sportspace - Hemel Hempstead
 
 
Thursday, 9th September 2010

 
FARMERS IN FRONT LINE

Cox Pond Farm in Adeyfield had made way for new homes in the 1930s for employees at Brocks firework factory.

Some of the first to come up against new town activity were the local farmers. It’s difficult for those of us who were not around in those days to realise just how much of what we now regard as Hemel Hempstead town was farmland.
It was in the summer of 1947 that Walter Hopkins, a smallholder of Bennetts End Farm, and Albert Edwards, a dairy farmer of Wellswood, Leverstock Green, received letters from agents representing the Ministry of Town and Country Planning asking permission - but saying if it was refused they’d go ahead anyway - to go on their land to take measurements and site levels for future roads.
The Ministry also wrote to Mr Hopkins saying they wanted to purchase some of his land at Adeyfield.
Mr Hopkins, who was 52, had just 11 acres at Bennetts End farm and used it for pig rearing. He worked a 12 hour day, seven days a week and he said he had no intention of letting the men from the ministry on his land.
Mr Edwards owned two fields of 11.5 acres in all and if six acres were taken away, he said, he would not be able to carry on putting his 12 cows out to pasture,
Mr Hart, general manager of the development corporation, said the land at Mr Edwards’ farm was required so ‘bungalows’ could be constructed for the workforce who would be needed to construct the new town.

As it later transpired, it wasn’t bungalows that were built for those first workers but huts - many of them to come, it was said, from the Brocks firework factory. This was not until much later, in 1949, and the site was roughly what is now the junction of St Albans Road and Longlands.
Another insight into the agricultural nature of the area comes in 1947 with the purchase by Herts County Council of the Highfield Estate.
The whole estate consisted of 67.5 acres of which 53 acres had been let on agricultural tenancies.
Highfield House itself, which was formerly the home of Sir Evelyn Wallers and had more recently been home to the Hon Mrs Gibb and her sister, the Hon Mrs Murray - sadly, the Gazette has no information about these people - was to be converted into a children’s home.
Early in 1948 Hemel Hempstead Borough Council was under strong pressure to build homes for agricultural workers in Vauxhall Road to help local farmers attract staff.

But the scheme for 13 houses at a cost of £1,660 was considered too expensive. The average agricultural wage was £3.10s and the rent for the houses would have had to be 30s 5d a week.
It was perhaps fitting, then, that the development corporation had established their headquarters in the rural setting of Westbrook Hay.
Mind you, the location was not too popular with some of the staff there and Mr Bellingham, a legal and administrative officer put forward the following limerick:
There was a young lady of
Westbrook Hay
Whose journey to work
took almost a day.
In the House of Commons the town’s Conservative MP Lady Davidson tabled a question asking for the salaries of development corporation staff. In a reply in December 1947 she was told that the general manager got a salary of £2,500, the administrative and legal officer, architect, engineer and estates officer received £1,750 each and the public relations officer was paid £1,200 a year.
The development corporation was a good target for anti-new town snipers in those early days and at a meeting of the town’s Conservatives in Boxmoor Hall early in 1948 Mr G. Brook Taylor, the corporation’s public relations officer, was asked by Mr C. Runham if it was really necessary to purchase wallflowers and have the gates of Westbrook Hay repainted!

Mr Brook-Taylor disclosed that the princely sum of £4 5s had been spent on the wallflower with which they wanted to stock the grounds which might, in the future, become a public park.
The gates, he claimed, definitely needed repainting.
On a more serious note, Mr Brook Taylor said that progress on the new town was slow because of the recent cuts in capital expenditure by the government which added to the problems of labour and materials shortage.
Bureaucracy also managed to cause hold ups. Early in 1948 a London engineering company called Chambon Ltd wanted to build seven factories at Cupid Green on 33 acres of land it had bought two years earlier, well before the new town was announced.
They were told nothing could be built until the new town plans had been finalised.
At the same time there was the case of the long established local company Hemel Hempstead Engineering.

It was being prevented from expanding because the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Supply were refusing to let the company have the use of a food store and other buildings at Cupid Green as a factory.
The company had already been refused permission to erect buildings on the fields it owned behind its then premises in Hemel Hempstead High Street.
Alderman Herbert Christopher, who was managing director of the company, said he feared they might have to take production of new machinery elsewhere or “give it up completely.”
Eventually, as later chapters reveal, the move did go-ahead but the delays just helped give more fuel to the new town critics.


TO RETURN TO THE NEW TOWN STORY CLICK BELOW:
JUST CLICK HERE



View older pages
 
 

Sister Newspapers:
Press Complaints Commission

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the PCC by clicking here.