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Sportspace - Hemel Hempstead
 
 
Monday, 6th September 2010

 
PART 24

Work on building Stonycroft Shops at warners End
WORK started on Chaulden early in 1953 and Warners End towards the end of that year, but it was 1954 before the first families moved in.
And to get to the new neighbourhoods from the town centre a new road was needed. Work began in April 1954 on Road 14, or as we know it today Warners End Road. It would link Bury Road with the new Road, Long Chaulden which was being built.
The number of properties which would have to be demolished to make way for the road was kept to a minimum, but some at the Bury Road end would have to come down.
These were 2, 4 and 6 Bury Hill, 58 and 60 Bury Road, the Six Bells pub and Williams confectioner and tobacconist.

The Six Bells was believed to be over 300 years old and licensee Jim Sangster had been there for over a quarter of a century and before that his father-in-law had been licensee for 21 years. Many regulars mourned the passing of the pub, but as before there was no standing in the way of the new town.
Although it was not as old, Williams shop would be missed by many said the Gazette. It had great atmosphere and, had been run by Mr Sidney Williams a former professional golfer who had died three years earlier and his wife Maud for over 25 years. The shop’s atmosphere was such that one 80-year-old walked daily from Apsely to buy his ounce of tobacco.
Associated with the shop even longer was Mr Sid Pollard who had worked there for over 34 years. “His willingness to oblige little children with just a penny to spend made him a figure of great affection locally,” reported the Gazette.

He had also cheered patients in West Herts Hospital by taking them a daily paper every morning and cutting their hair (he had been a hairdresser earlier in his life.) He planned to carry on providing the service to the hospital when the shop closed.
By the summer of 1954 the community of Chaulden was growing and in June a Chaulden Residents Association was inaugurated.
The meeting was held in the temporary community hall - the old ballroom of Chaulden House (picture, part 15.)
Mr H. G. Ford was elected chairman and Mrs R. Walker secretary and subscriptions were fixed at 2s 6d a year.
By July 320 houses had been built in Chaulden and in the same month the first residents moved into Warners End. They were the Griffiths and Trower families.
The Mayor of Hemel Hempstead at the time, Alderman A. W. Mayo wanted to welcome the new Chaulden residents and he held an informal tea party in the community hall to which everyone was welcome to drop in, even if they were in their gardening clothes.
The first two shops at Warners End opened in August - they were Wallace Ltd, butchers of Harrow and G. D. Greenhalgh, newsagents of Willesden.
Although Chaulden was further advanced, the houses were fairly close to the Boxmoor shops which is why the work on the Warners End shops had been hastened as residents there were a good way from any shops.
The first shops in Chaulden were set to open in September and the spiritual needs of both neighbourhoods were met when church services started in a temporary hut in Long Chaulden on November 7, 1954.

Of a more practical need was a bus service so residents could get to the the town centre and new factories in Maylands Avenue. In the late summer the 320 bus started a half-hourly service but many complained this was not enough.
Mr G. Brooke Taylor, public relations officer for the Hemel Hempstead Development Corporation had the answer to them: “Our Londoners should realise that they are now living in a country town where the buses do not run every two minutes. I think they will soon get used to it.”

In those days the facilities of ‘old’ Boxmoor were seen as being part of Chaulden and although a new pub was planned in Chaulden itself, the old Anchor pub was to close and a new one opened nearby in Anchor Lane.
The old pub was believed to be over 300 years old and had been owned in 1863 by John Catlin with members of the Catlin family owning right through until 1938. The pub was owned in 1954 by the Chesham and Brackley Brewery who saw the new Anchor helping to cope with the new trade of the new town.
Other pubs were in the news in 1954. Although no-longer a pub The Boot which was reputed to be one of Hemel Hempstead’s oldest pubs and stood in the High Street - it ceased to be a pub in 1939 - was being demolished to make way for R. J. Robinson, Chemist.
And the year ended not with a pub closing down, but a new one opening - the Golden Cockerel at Bennetts End.

It was the first to be built by brewers Courage and Co since the war and was not in an area normally covered by the brewery but they felt that as many of the town’s newcomers were Londoners they would appreciate being able to get a beer they were used to.
Licensee of the Cockerel was to be 40-year-old Wally Pack who had been in the licensed trade for many years.
In 1936 he had won t boxing’s amateur Welterweight Championship and had represented Great Britain at the Berlin Olympics.
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