Part 26, New Market Opens
The new Woolworths in Marlowes |
Fishmonger William Taylor, who had already been moved out of Marlowes to make way for development, put up a sign outside his Bury Road shop asking that if he didn’t survive the roadworks, he would be obliged if people would put flowers on his “pauper’s grave.”
At the opening of the new William Perry store at 162 Marlowes in May 1955 development corporation chairman Henry Wells said he estimated the new town would be complete within six years.
The Perring brothers - Stanley, George and Douglas - were all former pupils of Berkhamsted School and the arrival of a branch of their furniture store chain in the town was seen as a step forward in making Hemel Hempstead the shopping centre of West Herts.
July saw a major milestone for the new town centre and what many saw as a gravestone for the old - the new market opened on Saturday, July 9 and the long-established market in the High Street closed.
There were 64 stalls to start with and over 80 applications for them, but it wasn’t all joy for the lucky traders who secured one of the tubular steel stalls with brightly coloured awnings - they were described as “atrocities” by some. There was no lighting and trader Mr Booth soon brought his own generator, only to be told to stop using it by the council. Then butcher Mr East cut his hand in the gloom and the council promised there would be light!
Another to move from the old to the new a few weeks later was the International Stores. For the opening of their new self-service food store in Marlowes there were special offers including prime streaky bacon at two shillings (10p) a pound and 8oz of assorted cream biscuits for 9d (4p) Manager of the new store was Mr F. J. Hoad who had been managing International’s West Malling store for 14 years, and had moved to a new town house in Warners End.
The exodus from the old town was becoming a torrent. In August the town’s courthouse, which it was believed had been based at the Town Hall for 400 years, moved out to a temporary home in Boxmoor Hall with plans to move on to a new home in the town centre in the future. To make room for the magistrates the first floor of Boxmoor Hall was adapted and an organ removed.
The move was partly because the council needed more room as the town expanded, and in December 1955 a site was chosen for a new town hall in Marlowes, between the County Garage and the Princess Cinema. Bath Street would disappear, as would a number of houses and the council’s old waterworks.
The old town exodus carried through into January of 1956. That was the month that saw the opening of the new town centre bus terminus to replace the old Bury Road base, and the switch of the town’s Woolworth store from the High Street to its present home in Marlowes.
Woolworths had been in the High Street for 38 years and its staff of 30 with manager Mr K. E. Pesell all moved to the new shop, where the salesgirls’ old red overalls were replaced by grey blouses and blue skirts.
There was one attempt to reverse the old town exodus early in 1956 when one of the town’s oldest stores, George Rolph Ltd, which had opened in the High Street 1834, carried out major extensions to create one of the most up-to-date small department stores around
In 1834 George Rolph had opened as a drapers, and by 1956 his great nephew Cyril Rolph had a store with a considerable frontage on the High Street and offering an extensive fashion department, menswear, household goods, furnishing and bedding as well as toys.
Back to the new town centre in 1955, and the new Bridge Street was beginning to rise from the rubble of the old.
New shops to open that November included Bishops Foodstore and Blakey Morris, selling wallpaper and paints.
Work also started on the £41,000 extension to Midland Road to link it with Marlowes. The road would run parallel to Fernville Lane and took some of the grounds of Coombrook School, as well as necessitating the demolition of an annexe to the White House, the building which still stands on the corner with Marlowes.
And there was a new look to the entrance to Gadebridge Park as the old air raid shelters were demolished and a 200-year-old Canadian pine felled to give an unrestricted view of the Charter Tower.
The first of Hemel Hempstead’ series of town centre sculptures also made its appearance in November 1955. The Four Stages of the Development of Man by Professor A. H. Gerrard of the Slade School of Fine Arts was unveiled by Dame Evelyn Sharp.
The four panels can still be seen on the the wall of a shop on the corner of Bridge Street and Marlowes, now the offices of the Bradford and Bingley Building Society.
The cost of the sculpture was £2,000, which provoked many letters to the Gazette complaining about the ‘waste of public money’ and suggesting much needed things it could have been spent on.
Away from the town centre the new town residents were still getting used to living ‘out in the sticks.’
In one week seven local children between the ages of two and three were taken to hospital after eating the berries of wild shrubs.
It was feared the berries might be deadly nightshade, but investigations showed they came from the woody nightshade plant, which although poisonous was not so lethal.
Five of the children had been playing together on wasteground in Barnfield and a few days later and Mr and Mrs Ronald Thompson were taking their two-year-old son Michael for a walk across the Boxmoor Golf course when they saw him eating berries.
They’d never lived in the country until they moved to Benchleys Road in Chaulden, and didn’t realise the dangers.
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