On Saturday 7 October the Friends of the Abbey will extend a very warm welcome to a Special Day of talks, tours and workshops in St Albans Abbey. Events include:  Passio, a carnival workshop telling the story of St Alban; Friends Ancient and Modern, a light-hearted dramatised presentation of the origins of the Abbey; a talk on cathedral organs with music and demonstrations; a talk with slides about the Abbey’s unusual Victorian bells and their tunes; a tour of the tower (lasts 1 hour, includes steep steps and narrow spaces – for people over 12 years old); a talk/tour on the history and recent renewal of the Lady Chapel;  a Tudor Experience workshop;  a talk and dressing-up session on “What the Clergy Wear … and Why”. You can see historical records and artefacts from the Abbey archives  (up steep stairs); see the 12th century St Albans Psalter and other displays in the Library; and you can also sit in on a rehearsal of the choir. Full guided tours of the Abbey will take place at 11.30am and 2pm. All these events are free but donations are welcome. For full details contact 01727 860780; lines are open Monday to Saturday 10.30 to 16.30.

Chipperfield Within Living Memory
A Walk Looking back to Wartime Chipperfield 1939-45

Start at Blackwells built in 1922 in memory of two Blackwell brothers who died in 1914-18 war
Once two clubs – Women’s on the left, Men’s on the right. Tennis played in the car park until balls ran out and racquets broke. Meals service started for village children, evacuees, teachers and land girls. AFS – Auxiliary Fire Service based upstairs in Men’s Club.   ARP – Air Raid Precautions’ Wardens based downstairs in Men’s Club. Across the road, Home Guard had large round concrete blocks to be used  as road blocks or tank traps in the event of an invasion by Germany.

Walk to school gate on left as you leave the club
Look over the gate to the right – the school boys used to dig for victory and  grew vegetables here in the Two Brewers Meadow. Turn and look at the Youth Club, which used to be the site of the school’s air raid shelter.

Turn left to Old School Cottages 
This was the old school where the headmaster had to provide education for 120 evacuees in September 1939. They did bring their own teachers with  them. At first, villagers and evacuees had half day schooling, alternating between mornings and afternoons on a weekly basis.

Look at the village hall to the right behind the old school
Eventually the village children returned to full time education in the school and the evacuees went to lessons in the village hall, once furniture and equipment had been provided for them.
A special W.I. group used to come to the village hall and bottled fruit for the village women.
At Christmas, early morning services were held in the hall because it was fitted with blackout curtains.

Look across the road at the church car park 
The Auxiliary Fire Service had a large reserve of water in a 4 feet deep metal tank which stood by the wall. Children played on it when it froze!

St. Paul’s church
All services had to be held in daylight hours because it was impossible to fit blackout curtains to the large windows.  Services carried on, once started, even if the sirens went. Members of the congregation could leave and go into the school’s air raid shelter.

Stand in front of the Two Brewers
People who could afford to, came to stay here to escape the London bombing. In 1941, the Home Guard established a Guard Room at the rear of building.

Look across the road to the Common
It is here that 120 evacuees from London arrived by bus in September 1939. The Home Guard dug trenches and practised manoeuvres in the woods. While petrol lasted, people drove out from London to escape from the noise and  bombing and slept in their cars on the Common. At the crossroads, cross into Kings Lane and walk to the first right turn. The Home Guard had a concrete bunker at the entrance to Waterhouse’s field,  which is now Kings Close. Return to the corner by the Two Brewers and turn right into The Street. The Auxiliary Fire Service kept a lightweight  trailer pump, which could be towed by a car,  in the garage at Copthall.

Walk on and stop at Pale Farm on the right of The Street
The iron railings were removed from the front garden, with the mistaken intention  of using the melted metal to make war weapons. The flower garden was dug up and vegetables grown as part of the Dig for Victory  campaign.  In the former brick roadside tack room, volunteers used wooden gauges to sort nuts and bolts which had been swept up from factory floors, so that they could be reused.

Old Barn Cottage next door
This was the Head Quarters of the Home Guard. They posed for a platoon photograph to the right of the front door. They trained in the field behind and practised firing spigot mortars.
The Larder shop on the corner (Laurences during the war)
The air raid siren was on the roof of this shop until the 1980s. Customers stayed faithful to one shop, so that they would not miss out on special  food supplies which sometimes came in.

Diagonally opposite to the shop, on the corner of Tower Hill
The Home Guard had a pill box here and took it in turns to be on guard. Any messages would be brought from the Two Brewers guard room by bicycle. That would have been a challenge on a dark night. There was no pavement, the road  was narrower and there was a very high hedge, where all the modern houses have  since been built. 
             
Turn left into Dunny lane for the last site
The remains of a Home Guard bunker had to be removed in the 1980s when the   foundations of the Catholic Church were built. Beside the road there used to be a further stock of circular, concrete road blocks.  They had holes in the middle and could be rolled out into position with the aid of  strong poles.

Places too far afield to be included in this short walk
At the far end of Dunny Lane, behind the Plough Pub, two aeroplanes, from Bovingdon Aerodrome, collided in mid-air. A Flying Fortress landed down  towards Belsize and a Dakota crashed just up the hill to the right. At the opposite end of the village, going in the Kings Langley direction, a  doodlebug fell on a farm on Whippendell Hill and destroyed property. Fortunately,  no one was killed, although some people were injured. At a later date, an American Lightning Bomber crashed at the top of the same hill and its engines are still deeply embedded in the ground.

Polish soldiers were stationed at Chipperfield Lodge on Whippendell Hill, from  where they operated a radio station which was in contact with the French Resistance Movement. Their aerials and radio transmitters were in the field across the road.