Thames Tributary Lea - Hatfield


Thames Tributary River Lea

The Lea flows south east

Post to the north Stanborough
Post to the east Hatfield Park


Burleigh Mead
This is the original field name
Site of Hatfield Mill owned by Sherriff and Sons as a grist mill. Built together with workers housing in 1905. It had a gas engine, using gas made by an anthracite coking plant behind the mill. This was later replaced by electricity and the stones with a hammer system. There was a railway sidings to it. It was burnt down days before it was due to be auctioned in 1983. 
Housing by Ideal Homes on the site of the mill

Bush Hall Lane
Mill Green Mill. Working watermill astride the River Lea on a Domesday site. It was largely rebuilt in 1762 and closed in 1911. Now run as a museum. It is a three-storey brick building, of 1762, with a wooden clasp-arm, low-breastshot waterwheel - a replacement for the original. One of the two pairs of stones is in use. Bread flour is sold locally.
Horse trough dated 1889. This was originally on the Great North road near Hatfield Station. Moved here 1983.
Turbine cottage of 1886,
Sewage pumping station late 1930s with a 12 inch pumping main under river. Decommissioned in 2008
Electric substation of 1961.
Bush Hall. This was once a farmhouse and belongs to the Salisbury family.  Has had many important people as lessees. In the Second World War it was used as a hospital by the Red Cross.  Later it became a school and then a country club and hotel. 17th house in red brick rear with a 18th front

Great North Road
Roman Ermine Street ran through Hatfield, by the 19th this was the “Great North Road”.
The road here once took a sharp S bend to cross the railway line
Wrestlers Bridge. The bridge collapsed in 1966 during work on the railway line and has never been rebuilt – replaced by a footbridge.
Wrestlers or Two Wrestlers. This was a late 18th pub with a 16th core which had no cellars. It has a chequered red brick front but has a substantial 2-bay timber framed interior. Rebuilt 1966.
Birchwood Industrial Estate
Red Lion. 18th Red brick hotel with large c1950 rear extension.
160 Diffusion Alloys Ltd. The Chrome-Alloying Co. Ltd. was set up by Cyril Wick. It moved to Hatfield In 1955 with the first industrial diffusion coating process winning contracts for nuclear power and later many aviation companies and has continued to expand ever since..
168 Die Casting Machine Tools Ltd. purpose-built factory built in 1956 for toy and model products as well as machine tools. They were also Lone Star Products. DCMT Was wound up in 1983 and the Hatfield factory taken over by a German company, Wicke & Co., and finally closed down in 1988 when production moved to Hong Kong. The buildings were demolished

Hertford Road
Entrance and lodges to Hatfield Park

Mount Pleasant Lane
Mount Pleasant County depot. Adult Care Services, now disused

Pleasant Lane
Ryde Junior and Mixed Infant School

St.Albans Road East
Bus garage. A garage was opened here by the National Omnibus Transport Company for LGOC in 1922, previously buses were kept in a railway arch. The garage was an iron shed with a brick faced. It was bombed and buses then moved onto the de Havilland site.  It was sold in the late 1950s.
A new garage was built to the east of the earlier garage in 1959 to a pattern designed by LT’s architects department for country bus garages. This was for a hangar type building with no internal columns and a frieze round the outside of the building.  It was set back from the main road with a turning circle and a roadway right round the garage.  It was to house 49 buses and 16 more outside, including a washing system, offices, canteen etc.  There are now offices on the site

The Ryde
23-41 Row of houses built 1963-66 and Designed by David Randall and Peter Parkes of Peter Phippen and Associates, for the Cockaigne Housing Group.  They are Timber framed with black weatherboarding
43-79 group of single storey houses –narrow frontage single storey houses with Danish influence
69 The Community House, owned jointly by members of the Cockaigne Housing Group. It had a flat for short term visitors and was also a nursery school.

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