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Sportspace - Hemel Hempstead
 
 
Thursday, 9th September 2010

 
PART 12

HARRY LOCKE AND THE STARS OF OF A HOME OF YOUR OWN TAKE IN THE SIGHTS OF HEMEL HEMPSTEAD OUTSIDE THE OLDE BELL IN THE HIGH STREET
THE ‘Master Plan’ for Hemel Hempstead New Town was finally approved by the Minister of Town and Country Planning, Mr Hugh Dalton, following a visit to the town on Friday, June 9, 1950.
One of the the major decisions the minister made that was to have - and still has - a major impact on the town was to back the development corporation in its choice of putting the town centre more to the southern end of Marlowes.
Hemel Hempstead Borough Council had urged that the centre should be at the northern end, around the bottom of the High Street, with a link between the two and the borough engineer Mr A. H. Turner had prepared plans for such a proposal. The council feared that the old town would suffer if the new developments were away from the High Street.
The minister and the corporation indicated there would be other plans to follow before the new town fully took shape.
The plan once again failed to go down well with many local people and in a lengthy article in the Gazette Alderman Henry Fletcher urged the minister to abandon the whole idea.

He said: “Six years of war, followed by four years of new town planning and disorganisation, is about as much misery as decent people ought to be called upon to suffer.”
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. During his visit to the town Mr Dalton visited the homes of Mrs Applegate at 37 Longlands and her neighbour, Mrs Maycock. Both told him they were very happy with their new surroundings and vowed: “We will never go back to London now.”
Other visitors to the town that year were 250 members of Acton Labour Party. They were taken on a tour of the town by bus and then given tea at the Labour Hall. Here Acton Alderman and Labour MP Mr J. A. Sparks said the rents for new town houses in Hemel Hempstead were too high, especially compared with houses provided by local councils.
Mr Christopher Higgins, an official of the development corporation, then spoke to the meeting and criticised the local press who, he claimed, distorted the news concerning the new town.
The Labour visitors also criticised the variety of styles of the houses and one said they “looked like barracks.”
Another complained that all the interior walls were cream washed, although a development corporation official pointed out a different shade of cream was used in the hall to that used in the bedroom.

Portraying the new town to prospective residents in the London boroughs was causing concern to the development corporation and in the autumn of 1950 they decided to make a film - eventually to be called A Home of Your Own - which would be shown as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain.
But after the BBC TV row earlier in the year (part 12), the decision was greeted with what the Gazette described as “public indignation.” Many people felt the film would just be propaganda for the development corporation, claimed the paper.

The Hemel Hempstead Council of Social Service was involved in helping with the film and Councillor Mayo, that body’s chairman, had to issue a statement saying that if the film did contain propaganda it had nothing to do with them.
Things got so bad that in November Hemel Hempstead Borough Council actually debated the film issue and passed a resolution that it would not support or participate in the project.
But film making continued and by the time A Home of Your Own had its premiere in preparation for the Festival of Britain in July, 1951, feelings had mellowed somewhat - the Gazette even said it made an “excellent impression” and high praise was due to Anthony Thompson, the producer, and his assistants.

The story of the film concerned one George Wilson, a bricklayer, played by Harry Locke (a big star of the time) and his wife, played by Joan Bisk.
Harry goes on a coach outing to Hemel Hempstead and sees the carnival procession in 1948. He then gets a job as a bricklayer in the town and brings his wife to live in a new house, away from the “squalor” of Willesden.
After a pleasant evening of dancing in the Greenhills Club the film fades out on Wilson and his wife walking home to Longlands in the moonlight.

Also walking off into the Hemel Hempstead moonlight in November 1950 was Lord Reith, who resigned as chairman of the Hemel Hempstead Development Corporation.
He made the move because he had been appointed chairman of the Colonial Development Corporation.
The move rated only three paragraphs in the Gazette of the time, but with hindsight, Lord Reith had done much to establish the new town here and his name lives on, of course, in Reith’s Fields in Adeyfield.

His successor, appointed a short time later, was to be Mr Henry Wells, another chairman remembered in the naming of the town at Grovehill’s Henry Wells Square.
The general manager of the corporation remained as Mr Hart and it was around this time that Mr and Mrs Hart set up home in the Lockers - which later served as a 6th form annexe and has now been converted into private homes.

As 1950 drew to a close it should be remembered that although the post war shortages may have eased a little, it was only a little.
The meat ration was lowered to 1/2d of carcus meat and 4d worth of corned beef.
There were supplies about, but government refused to pay the higher prices being demanded by Argentina. View older pages
 
 

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