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Cottonmill Lane, ST. ALBANS, AL1 2ET

c.1950s housing in Cottonmill Lane. Although not developed until then, the route itself is much older, being the route from St Albans out to Sopwell from St Albans. In the left background the tower of St Albans Abbey can be seen.

The hall is in Abbotts Avenue opposite Image and its foundation stone was laid in 1952. For further information on the Christadelphian movement please see their website here http://www.godsaves.co.uk/index.htm

Church in Abbots Avenue built in the early 1950s as Cottonmill Baptist Church It closed in 1968 when the church merged with Park Street Baptist Church, but was taken over by the Christadelphians in 1976.

Amongst the motley collection of street furniture on view here the postbox seems to be suffering from advanced psoriasis, Royal Mail Engineering please take note! As ever "Abbotts" Avenue will generate complaints that it should be "Abbots". Indeed a Google search for "St Albans" and "Abbotts Avenue" currently gets 102 hits while the same combo with "Abbots" gets 844, and the Royal Mail, the Ordnance Survey and Streetmap all have Abbots. However the street name plate on the road has "Abbotts" so "Abbotts" it is!

Road developed in the c.1950s along with the rest of the area off Cottomnill Lane. The houses on the right would appear to be original, but although the area on the left is shown on the 1960 1:10,000 map as having also been built up, with individual detached houses set diagonally to the road, the ones here would appear to be a substituent redevelopment, dating from the late 1970s according to planning documents. The tower of St Albans Abbey can be seen in the background.

The church was built to serve the Cottonmill Lane housing estate and its foundation stone was laid in 1956. The church is in Abbotts Avenue. The crosses in the gable end walls are actually made out of slightly darker bricks with air gaps between them.

Church in Abbots Avenue opened in 1956, as a permanent building for a congregation founded in 1952 housed in a Nissen Hut as part of an anti aircraft searchlight emplacement.

At first sight the street sign "Old Oak" might seem to refer to this tree. In fact it is the name of a small cul-de-sac built in c.1995 (see Image, the rear of some of whose houses are on the right in this photo.

A daughter church in the parish of St Stephen.