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Cottonmill Lane, ST. ALBANS, AL1 2BQ

c.1930s housing in Mentmore Road, off Cottonmill Lane.

c.1930s housing in Cottonmill Lane, on the section between Leyland Avenue and Prospect Road. Although not developed until then, the route itself is much older, being the route from St Albans out to Sopwell from St Albans.

Leaving St Albans Abbey station, the former Hatfield and St Albans Railway left the current line to Watford Junction at a point just behind the photographer and this was the first crossing structure that it had to go under. The Great Northern Railway took over the line in 1883, but it was a very early casualty of British Railways' days being closed to passenger traffic in 1951. Freight services lingered on until 1964. The trackbed is now in use as a section of National Cycle Network Route 61 and is the start of the Alban Way, the dedicated footpath and cycleway between St Albans and Hatfield. Those familiar with Cottonmill Lane will know that it makes a sudden and inexplicable sharp 90 degree turn just to the right of this photograph. Looking at old Ordnance Survey maps it is evident that the road formerly carried straight on to the existing railway, and the re-alignment seems to have occurred when the Berners Drive housing estate to the south was built.

c.1930s housing in Cottonmill Lane, by its junction with Prospect Road. Although not developed until then, the route itself is much older, being the route from St Albans out to Sopwell from St Albans.

c.1930s housing in Leyland Avenue, a cul-de-sac off Cottonmill Lane.

The houses at the eastern end of Prospect Road are mainly bay-fronted between-the-wars semis, but the totally vegetation-clad telegraph pole with its massed ranks of radiating cables was something different!

Looking towards Image it was about a 100 metres away in the distance that the former Great Northern Railway's line to Hatfield peeled off to the right. That line closed in 1964.

Remains of a Tudor mansion built on the site of Sopwell Nunnery. More at this http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/Your-Visit/Sopwell-Nunnery

Semi-detached houses at the Cottonmill Lane end of Prospect Road, built in 1928-30. Prospect Road started out as a cul-de-sac off Holywell Hill, first developed in the second half of the 19th Century. The eastward extension, as seen here, linked it through to Cottonmill Lane, along the route of a former footpath.

This crossing over the St Albans Abbey branch line railway allows pedestrians to walk between Cottonmill Lane and Grindcobbe Close.