By Sue Mason & Sidney King
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| A postcard of the crossroads at White's Corner, Welham Green c1900 Photo by George. J. Knott, from the Images of North Mymms collection |
White's Corner was originally known as Town's Corner, taking its name from Miss Town, who had the first shop there, a single-storey building erected in the early 1900s. The shop later passed to the Smithsons, and Esme, the son, started the first coach service in the village, meeting trains at Brookmans Park station and providing a door-to-door service to St. Albans on Saturdays.
Between times he could be seen working on his two coaches in the road. He was later bought out by the Albanian Coach Company, as sad day for many in the village.
After the Smithsons came Mrs White, after whom the Corner is now named.
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| Jonah Chuck starting his round from his Dellsome Lane bakery, wife Beatrice is looking on from behind the gate Image c. 1900 by G. Knott, given to Mike Allen by P. Grant for the Images of North Mymms collection |
Further down Dellsome Lane was Chuck's the Bakers, and Mr and Mrs Jonah Chuck delivered their bread, freshly-baked on the premises, in a horse-drawn cart.
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| Photograph of Jonah Chuck delivering bread to Water End. Image c. 1900, from the Images of North Mymms collection |
Their daughter, Mrs Dolly Papworth, remembered washing down their cart in the roadside stream opposite and drying it off on the grassed area behind.
Next door to the Bakery was the Post Office, the end house of a row of six, appropriately known as Post Office Row, which were demolished to make way for the flats that now occupy the site.
It is interesting to note that the Post Office was transferred to Post Office Row from the Bakery, and after a period in Holloways Lane, returned to the Bakery under Mr Bill Papworth, where it remained until quite recently.
The first shops in Dellsome Parade were built by a local builder, Mr Rix, in the early 1930s, but in the main it remained empty through lack of interest until after the Second World War, when a further development took place as the village expanded.
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| A postcard from the 1900s showing the former St Alban's Road which later became Dellsome Lane From the Peter Millers collection, photograph by G Knott |
There had been only one other shop on the west side of Dellsome Lane within recent memory, and that was a confectioner's and hairdresser's opened in a wooden hut by a First World War veteran, Mr Milne in the late 1920's.
Dellsome Lane itself was known in early times as St Albans Road and it was possible until a few years ago, to negotiate this narrow, winding lane as far as Roestock, and thence through Colney Heath to St. Albans.
By Sue Mason & Sidney King
The piece above is one of eight articles written by North Mymms residents which appeared in a booklet called North Mymms Reminiscences, published by the former North Mymms Local History Society in the 1990s. All eight pieces are published on this site. They are:
- North Mymms on the eve of this century by Peter Kingsford
- During the Great War by Doris Ambrose
- Welham Green 1914 by Ruth Pinder
- Changes in half a century - 1900-1953 by Rosie Simmonds
- Brookmans Park Evacuees by Marjorie Tether
- 20th Century North Mymms by R. G. Colville
- White's Corner by Sue Mason and Sidney King
- Forty years ago in Brookmans Park by Peter Kingsford
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