Part 27, Factories grow on Maylands
The Lyons depot on the Maylands estate. |
Just under 4,000 people were employed at the factories and from the early days, when the accent had been on engineering, there was now much more diversification - from Alford and Alder and its engineering to the Reliance Rubber Co with its hot water bottles and the J. Lyons food storage depot.
The new industrialisation of the town brought with it something the ‘old townies’ of Hemel Hempstead had not experienced much of in the past - industrial disputes.
In March workers at Rotax walked out after Mr Cecil Bennett of Keiths Road was sacked for refusing to work two machines at once. Over 600 workers at Alford and Alder came out on a five-hour sympathy strike. The Rotax workers returned after three days when Mr Bennett was re-instated, but in a different department.
The national rail strike of June 1955 hit local factories, but was good for business at Bovingdon Airfield where the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation introduced daily flights to the North West, landing at Blackpool, for £7/10s return.
On the buses, there was good news for the people of Chaulden and Warners End. Mr Charles Knight was given a licence to introduce a bus service linking the two newest neighbourhoods to the town centre.
Another new neighbourhood beginning to take shape was Highfield, with much of the housing at that time coming from the council, and that brought its own bus problem.
The people of Highfield needed a better bus service - the only route to the neighbourhood then was up the High Street and because of the height of the buses, they ran the risk of crashing into the town hall balcony! So it was decided to re-align the road, making the carriageway narrower, but clear of the balcony.
By no means all new town residents were happy with their homes and, in particular the rents charged.
There was a steady stream of letters about conditions in the houses in 1955. J. Rutherford of Six Acres complained of damp and mildew.
Mrs F. Carter of Newfield Lane wrote to say she liked her house, but condensation was a terrible problem and G. W. Anderson of Sheepcote Lane wrote in to say that he’d been evicted from the town centre to make way for development, and as well as now having to pay bus fares into town he was having to pay a 150 per cent increase in rents.
Rents remained a bone of contention throughout the new town years. In 1956, for instance, workers in the new town factories downed tools and marched down to the town centre for a mass protest rally against rent increases. They were led by a kilted piper and joined on the way by housewives and schoolchildren. The march was six deep and stretched from Bury Road to the Market Square.
They were greeted as heroes by bus driver Mr Joseph Spears, the Communist chairman of the Hemel Hempstead Rents Campaign Committee.
A deputation was sent to meet the development corporation, which said it could not defer planned rent increases.
Finance of a different sort had a great deal of public support - National Savings. Drives to encourage more through local savings groups were a feature of the early new town years and in the summer of 1955 Long Chaulden had one of the youngest savings group secretaries in the country. He was 14-year-old David Adams of 27 Long Chaulden. He’d started helping his mum with her saving group, but had now branched out with one of his own!
A more serious money matter reared its head in 1955 with allegations that the pledge given when Hemel Hempstead was declared a new town in 1947 - that none of the costs would fall on the ratepayers - was being broken.
The council was going to have to pay £6,000 that year and more the next towards the cost of new sewage works for the new town. Lady Davidson, the town’s long serving MP agreed to take the matter up with the government.
The development corporation replied claiming it was paying £1,500,000 for main drainage, it had provided many facilities normally expected of a local council and the extra rates income generated by the new town in the financial yer 1953/54 was £22,700.
New town and old town residents alike were fascinated by the story, centuries old, that there was a secret tunnel linking the Bury with Lockers which was used by Henry VIII for trysts with Anne Boleyn, who was staying in the Lockers when the King was reportedly at The Bury.
The story is still much talked about today and re-surfaced back in 1955, when Hemel Hempstead Rural District Council acquired the Bury. A council employee re-discovered the tunnel entrance when he was cutting the grass.
A Gazette reporter and the council’s man carried out an exploration and went about 75 yards before they were halted by a bricked up wall blocking the tunnel.
Examination of the bricks later by an expert showed they were from the Tudor period but some of the romance in the story faded when an expert on medieval buildings said that in 99 per cent of cases such tunnels were in fact surface water drains.
The year of 1955 ended with the people of the town saying goodbye to the man who had been general manager of the development corporation from the very start. Mr William Hart had been appointed Clerk to the London County Council.
The new man in charge at Hemel Hempstead was to be Brigadier G. B. S. Hindley, who would get a salary of £3,200.
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