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Doggetts Way, ST. ALBANS, AL1 2NG

Houses built in 1931-2, along with those in the adjacent Wilshere Avenue, by the Workman’s Housing Association to create what was then known as the Eywood estate. Beyond is the Centrium office development and in the background is St Albans Abbey.

Doggetts Way in a suburb of St Albans.

1908s development off Wilshere Avenue. The road name commemorates Thomas Mercer Ltd, manufacturer of Chronographs and other instruments, who had a factory in nearby Eywood Road (now Griffiths Way) until the company closed in 1984.

A telephoto view of Doggetts Way in the St Stephens area of St Albans. On the right is St Bartholomew's RC Church. In the far distance an aeroplane can be seen having just taken off from Heathrow Airport

Griffiths Way and the Abbey View retail park in St Albans.

From old Ordnance Survey maps it is evident that the site of the St Albans gas works was once much larger, stretching down to Stephen's Hill, and having its own dedicated railway siding, more or less on the site where Sainsbury's is now. These two holders are all that remains but they are large enough to warrant being individually represented on the current Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 scale mapping.

Close up of the cast iron milepost seen in Image Modern roads do not give an obvious reason for showing Hatfield and Reading as destinations on the same post, but the explanation is historical. It is said that the Marquis of Salisbury, who lived at Hatfield House, wanted a route to the Great West Road avoiding central London, for onward travel to the spa towns of Bath and Cheltenham where, as a sufferer of gout, he habitually took the waters. He with others (including the Earl of Essex, who suffered from a similar affliction, and who lived at Cassiobury House near Watford) therefore sponsored an Act of Parliament passed in 1757 for the building of a road from Hatfield to Reading, with the Reading and Hatfield Turnpike Trust set up by a further Act passed in 1768, to improve the route between the two towns so he could be spared the discomfort and congestion of London's cobbled streets. It ran via St Albans, Watford, Rickmansworth, Amersham, High Wycombe and Marlow, with two alternative routes from there, one to Knowl Hill (on the Great West Road between Maidenhead and Reading) and the other to Reading itself via Henley-on-Thames. The Trust lasted until 1881, and at the latter date was one of the last surviving Turnpike Trusts in the country. For many years the route was known as the Gout Track, given its reputed raison-d'etre. Ignoring short sections of other modern day road numbers and stretches where the original has now been bypassed, its route is now represented by the current A1057, A412 and A404 (and A4155 for the alternative route via Henley-on-Thames). The original mile markers were milestones but the lettering quickly eroded and as a result they were replaced in around 1820 by new mileposts made of cast iron by Wilders & Sons of Reading, as here. Grade II listed - for listing particulars see www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1103007.

Cast iron post by the A5183, in parish of ST ALBANS (ST ALBANS District), St Stephen's Hill, between Nos. 10 and 12, on the verge, on East side of road. Wilder gabled iron casting, erected by the Reading & Hatfield turnpike trust in the 19th century. Inscription reads:- : ST / ALBANS / 1 : : HATFIELD / 6 : : WATFORD / 7 / READING / 44 : Grade II listed. List Entry Number: 1103007 https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1103007 Milestone Society National ID: HE_RGHT44.

The gasholders on the site of the former St Alban gasworks are now being demolished. See Image by Nigel Cox of the gasholders in 2009, having been out of use for some years and see Image for a glimpse of one holder in use in 1987.