IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Hazel Grove, HATFIELD, AL10 9DN

Hazel Grove is the name of the road, but the road is named after an area of woodland to the north-west of the housing estate.

This northerly view from the back of my childhood house was taken when I was a teenager and starting to get interested in meteorology, hence the photo of the cumulonimbus 'anvil' cloud in the upper left. I grew up on this council estate in south Hatfield which was built in 1956. It was designed by architect Lionel Brett (who became 4th Viscount Esher), and was innovative in that the terraced houses curved around the contours of the land in a series of sinuous crescents. They were warm and cosy and had sizeable gardens compared with modern-day council housing. The main distinctive feature was the low-angle single-pitch roof, constructed from timber overlain with aluminium cladding. Each terrace had a single modular roof extending over its entire length. Unfortunately this design approximated to a crude aerofoil section which was spectacularly demonstrated during a severe gale on the night of 3rd-4th November 1957 when virtually all the houses facing in a westerly direction had their entire roof length lifted clean off and flung for distances of up to a 100 metres away. In this photo, the houses visible in the lower left all lost their roofs, which ended up in the gardens to the right. The houses which faced east (of which ours was fortunately one) were unaffected, as the 'leading edge' of the roof section was not facing into the wind. I was 5 years old at the time and yet still clearly remember the screaming noise of the wind and the banging and clattering that went on. In those days, the street lighting was automatically switched off at midnight, so all this took place in pitch darkness in the early hours. Altogether, over 50 houses were affected and lost their roofs. In those days hardly anyone had a telephone in the house; there was a long queue of people outside the callbox at the end of the street, waiting to phone the council. Amazingly, there were no fatalities and, as far as is known, not even any injuries - quite remarkable when you consider that great sheets of aluminium must have been flying around during the night - could have had your head off in no time. The subsequent investigation and public enquiry found that in some cases the roofs had not been adequately fixed to the house walls. In the months that followed, repairs were made and structural improvements involving additional strong steel fixing brackets were installed. The photo was taken 10 years after the event and there is no sign of what had occurred. I continued to live in the house until 1973 and there was never any further storm damage during that time. But to this day I still get jittery during gales. Link to 'Hatfield's Night of Terror' storm damage webpage: https://www.ourhatfield.org.uk/content/topics/housing/hatfields_night_of_terror

Sinuous terraced housing, typical of South Hatfield.

This is the northern façade of the church showing the varying height of the ridge of the roof, and the inset roof panels with glass at their tops. The Church was built in 1958 and the inset roof now has a substantial build-up of moss. The western façade of the Church (the right hand end in this image) is shown here Image

This is the western façade of this prominent landmark church that is based on an A-frame type of construction and was completed in 1958 to the design of the architect Peter Bosanquet. The northern façade of the Church (the left hand edge in this image) is shown here Image

Taken from the A1001 Roehyde Way, which was once a part of the A1, now replaced by the A1(M) running parallel to it.