Suburban Elstree

A Memory of Elstree.

I lived in Lodge Avenue from 1957 to 1976. It runs off Allum Lane, which was a major road that connected Watling Street to the Railway Station, which opened in 1868. Lord Aldenham, Governor of the Bank of England, lived in Aldenham House (now Haberdashers School) whose South Carriage Drive (double-lined with horse chestnut trees), connected it to Allum Lane and then to the Railway Station.
Lord Aldenham’s colleague, the Chief Cashier, Frank May, built a mansion called ‘The Grange’ which was situated on the corner of Deacons Hill Road and Allum Lane, and occupied the land upon which a developer called Davies Estates built a hundred or so houses in the fifties. These are the streets now known as Grange Road, Bishops Avenue and Lodge Avenue.
After World War I, a devoutly Catholic Armenian family called the Caramans (who immigrated to Britain after a brutal civil war in their own country), settled in Hampstead and then moved into The Grange, where they established a Chapel for fifty worshippers which flourished until the mid thirties.
Elstree is built on a big lump of clay that blocks the north westerly route out of London. Nothing grows in clay. My first memory is of my Father tearing his hair out when everything that was planted, died. To this day, the trees that the council planted in the sixties, have still hardly grown. The houses themselves were spectacularly badly built.
Most of the people who lived in our street had come from somewhere else. We were immigrants from Glasgow. Number 8 - were from Derby, number 4 from Wales and so on. So we were a little mistrustful of each other - but they were all nice people. Except perhaps for the stuntman who lived opposite and used to lob his empty beer bottles into our driveway. But even he had a pretty wife who watered the front garden in her bikini and who was forgiven most things.
Our bit of Elstree and Borehamwood was mid-way, in every sense. We were neither posh Deacons Hill Road, Barnet Lane or Barham Avenue; nor were we Borehamwood. There was definitely a sense of the other side of the tracks. There was real poverty in the fifties and sixties in the new council estate in Borehamwood, and there were rumours of outrageously luxurious living up on Barnet Lane. In Lodge Avenue we just kept our lawns cut, and continued to experiment with different ways of keeping the bushes and flowers alive.
We had shared ‘party’ telephone lines and could listen in to our neighbor’s phone conversations. Later, my Dad successfully argued that his job required a dedicated line, and eventually we had our own private telephone line.
Coal was delivered by horse and cart, and rag and bone men on carts went around yelling ‘any old iron’. There was an ice cream van that sold sugar and fat and a laundry van from Watford that collected and delivered. Everyone had one car; nobody had two for a long time. There was an old-style grocer in Elstree Village that delivered and a small Sainsbury’s in Shenley Road with a cashier’s desk at one end where you paid. That was replaced in about 1968 by a small supermarket-style Sainsbury’s with checkouts. Even then, there wasn’t much in the shops. I remember yoghurt and avocadoes becoming available for the first time.
The Railway Station was a lovely old Victorian one, with a very tall and thin Station Master, who had a son and daughter, who were also very tall and thin. They all lived in the Station Master's house that had been built at the Station, the same time as the Station itself - both have sadly since, been demolished. All the big old houses on Allum Lane were also in the process of being flattened and replaced by, sometimes, dozens of new smaller ones on the same plots. One or two survived.
The biggest local employers were the various film studios. In the mid sixties cult classics like 'The Avengers', 'The Prisoner' and '2001:A Space Odyssey' were all in production in Borehamwood. I recall that MGM and ABPC were the two biggest film production studios. MGM was where Christian Salvesen subsequently built a refrigerated logistics facility, and ABPC were opposite the old cinema. But that was all in Borehamwood where you didn’t stray, unless you had to go shopping. Elstree was much safer and much nicer.
Number 10, worked at Hawker Siddely in Hatfield. Number 8, worked at the Port Of London Authority in the city – he had to work Saturday mornings which was a bummer for him. Number 5, had a building firm, Number 14, had an electronics business and number 16, was in the ice cream business. Number 13, worked at Lloyds Insurance and died very young leaving a super wife and two great kids.
Rural England was just a spit away - but it might as well have been on another planet. We lived in suburbia - we were suburbanites. I always felt that life was just out of reach in Elstree. Me and my sisters couldn’t wait to get away. I now live in central London and on a beach in Dubai.