This was a circular walk of 12 miles, from St Albans City railway station, E to Hatfield railway station, then W back to St Albans City railway station.

The usual stats:

• Event led by Martin T.

• Attendance: 22 men, of whom 7 left mid-walk.

• Distance: 11.7 miles (18.8 km).

• Altitude per GPS: low 305ft (93m), high 528ft (160.9m), climb 843ft (256.9m), descent 902ft (274.9m).

• Time: start 11:09, end 16:31 (sunset 17:13), lunch 41 minutes, other breaks 22 minutes.

• Speed: moving arithmetic average 2.72mph (4.4kph).

• Weather: sunny, clear skies, temperature up to 7°C, northerly wind ~6mph (9.7kph).

• Number of sewage works: 0.

• Number of churches: 3.

• Number of golf courses: 0.

Points of interest:

• the outbound route used almost entirely the disused railway track between Hatfield and St Albans, formerly that of the Great Northern Railway. The Hatfield and St Albans Railway Company opened the line in 1865 with the support of the Great Northern Railway. The line came about because the GNR wanted to recover market share from the London & North West Railway, the LNWR having built a line between St Albans Abbey and Watford Junction stations in 1858. The H&SARC fell into receivership in 1868 when the Midland Main Line opened its northbound line through St Albans, resulted in GNR buying H&SARC. Passenger services closed in 1951 and freight services closed in Dec1968. The tracks were lifted in 1969. The trackbed is now called the Alban Way (wiki). The construction of the A1M tunnel in Hatfield destroyed some part of the trackbed. It is no longer possible to re-lay the track on any similar alignment without destroying residential buildings. Conserved artefacts of the former stations on the route include Smallford and Nast Hyde Halt, the latter being particularly well conserved. (wiki)

• The return route used another section of the same disused railway.

• At Hatfield, the A1M motorway J3 was opened on 10Dec1986. The first main route to Hatfield was the Great North Road, which ran on the eastern edge of the railway alignment as at 1879 (map). This remained the sole alignment from the south until construction of the A1(T) in 1972-73 (map). By 1974, the single-carriageway A1(T) (map) ran from Potters Bar to Ellenbrook (immediately south of the then Hatfield Aerodrome), joining Hatfield Road briefly north-east bound then becoming Comet Way northbound to join the then already-existing A1M at J4. This replaced the Great North Road, essentially becoming a by-pass of Hatfield Old Town, but coursing through Hatfield New Town. The by-pass was itself by-passed by the A1M in 1986 becoming the road as we know it today. The A1M tunnel at Hatfield was planned as early at 1968, for which its preference as a design choice was expedited by a fatal road accident in 1972 (source, source, the latter also linking to a 31m video of the history of tunnel’s construction).

• the construction of the tunnel meant that there would now be a roof to the tunnel. What to do with roof of the tunnel? Well, build a shopping centre, of course. And thus the Hatfield Galleria (wiki) was born, completed in 1991. The Galleria features the largest single-span steel roof as at the date of its construction (source) and is not a listed building.

• Hatfield was designated as a new town on 14Jun1948. Construction was delayed owing to the lack of ferrous metals (which bedevilled all of the Mark I New Towns at the time). The business case for Hatfield largely rested upon the de Havilland Aircraft Company. By 1962, Hatfield opened its town library - something of a milestone in terms of a new town’s development – and grew comfortably. In 1993, British Aerospace announced the cessation of aircraft manufacturing at Hatfield, resulting in today’s Ellenbrook Fields and a housing development of Salisbury Village (through which today’s route walks), immediately due north of which is an industrial and distribution estate and Hatfield Garden Village.

• Fleetville is a small neighbourhood in suburban St Albans. Fleetville is to St Albans as, say, Angel is to London: smothered, absorbed, assimilated and gridlocked. Nevertheless, Fleetville has a distinct personality with some interesting local shops, cafes, restaurants, a very good delicatessen, one supermarket, one cemetery, a secondary school, two churches, one Islamic centre acting as a mini-mosque and at least three pubs. Fleetville is hard to visualise, because it is strip development that ultimately sprawled alongside the Hatfield Road A1057. There was no settlement at Fleetville in 1883 (map), other than St Peters Farm. Indeed, until the London Midland Railway appeared in 1868, there was virtually no development on the Hatfield Road east of St Albans: the almshouses on Hatfield Road was the eastern-most development (map). By 1898, St Alban’s urban sprawl began to ooze eastbound, with the development of Stanhope Road, Clarence Park and the cemetery (map) at the eastern-most edge. By 1924, Fleetville’s name appeared on the map, with terraced housing spread eastbound towards today’s Ashley Road, north of Fleet Works (now Morrisons). By 1940, further development east of Ashley Road had appeared alongside Hatfield Road, which had now received its designation of A414 (map). So, in only 57 years, Fleetville was entirely absorbed by St Albans’ urban sprawl.

Other links:

• Potted history of Hatfield

• More history of Hatfield

• Abbreviated history of Hatfield

Churches:

• Kingdom Light Church, St Albans Road West, Hatfield

• Hatfield Road Methodist Church, Hatfield Road, St Albans

• Church of St Paul, Hatfield Road, St Albans

9 members attended the optional pub stop at The Crown pub. The Crown was originally a hotel, first appearing on an Ordnance Survey map on 1898 (fragment history). Today, it is a pub.