Jubilee street names

Queen Victoria is remembered in Hertfordshire with 5 Victoria Roads plus a crescent, lane, and a street or two.  (Albert also rated four roads and four streets.)

There are also roads, avenues and drives recognising a Queen.  It was, again, Victoria who was commemorated in Hitchin when Dead Street was re-named Queen Street in 1850s.  (Whether the inhabitants of the street felt any better for this is a moot point.  It was a slum area, not demolished until the 1920s).  Her Golden Jubilee (1887) and Diamond Jubilee (1897) were celebrated throughout Hertfordshire and there are roads commemorating Jubilees, but which Jubilee?

In Stevenage, the Fishers Green area grew in the 1880s, thanks to the establishment of the Educational Supply Association’s factory near the station.  A small housing development catered for the workers.  The street names had a seaside theme with Lymington, Southsea and Bournemouth Roads, plus a non-seaside town, to reflect Stevenage’s location within the archdeanery of Huntingdon.  In addition, Jubilee Road celebrated Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. [1]   Her Diamond Jubilee, ten years later, was recorded in Ware with a Jubilee Avenue, which had been part of Dark Lane until a commemorative seat was placed there. [2]   Jubilee Road in Watford is of the same vintage.

Stevenage continued to recognise a royal Jubilee with a street name.  The Avenue from St Nicholas’ church was re-aligned and timing was such that the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in 1935 could be remembered by naming it Jubilee Memorial Avenue.  London Colney’s Jubilee Avenue was also built in 1935.

Letchworth also has a Jubilee Road, named so in 1953, a year noted for a coronation but not a royal jubilee.  It was, however, fifty years since the First Garden City Company was registered on 1 September 1903, and its citizens commemorated its anniversary.

[1] Margaret Ashby, Stevenage Streets (Stroud, 2004). [2] Thera Alcock, The Streets of Ware (printed for the Ware Museum, 1990).