Kathleen Garley (kgarley @t can.rogers.com) of  Windsor, Ontario, Canada. writes: I have recently received my grandfather's mother's birth registration for St Michaels, St Albans and am having trouble locating the street.  If you can tell me whatever became of the street or area, it would solve one mystery for me.  I can't find Pound Field, St Albans on any current map though I did find a Pound Field in Watford. Here is the information from the registration:

Registration District:  ST ALBANS
1856 Birth in the Sub-district of: ST ALBANS
In the County of: HERTFORD
Column Number: 374
When & Where Born: TWENTY FOURTH NOVEMBER 1856 POUND FIELD ST. MICHAELS
Name:  MARY ANN
Sex:  GIRL
Name & Surname of Father:  JOHN COLLINS
Name, Surname and Maiden Name of Mother:  SARAH COLLINS FORMERLY MANN
Occupation of Father:  AGRICULTURAL LABOURER
Signature, Description and Residence of Informant:  "X" THE MARK OF COLLINS MOTHER POUND FIELD ST MICHAELS
When Registered:  THIRTIETH DECEMBER 1856
Signature of Registrar:  J BLAKE REGISTRAR
Name Entered After Registration: blank

First a few background points:

• A pound is a public enclosure for holding stray animals - so most towns and villages in Hertfordshire would have had a "Pound Field" - although it may not always have been known by that name. The parish of St Michaels would have had a pound which I would expect to be marked on the tithe map of 1840 - a large scale manuscript map of the parish held at HALS - which is hard for you to get to see!
• The Parish of St Michaels is mainly rural - but the historic main road from the centre of St Albans to the North West ran along Fishpool Street (look at the St Albans walk), over the River Ver by Kingsbury Mill and up to St Michael's Church. There were houses on both sides of the road (medieval ribbon development) and this part of the parish of St Michael's was also part of the borough of St Albans.
• As road traffic increased with the coming of the turnpike roads in the 19th century and tar macadam at the start of the 19th century, these winding urban streets slowed the traffic and in 1833 Verulam Road was constructed which bypassed the old road.
• During Victorian there were extensive housing developments round the Borough (later City) and some of the earliest of these were in the part of the parish of St Michael that lies between Fishpool Street and Verulam Road.

So how can you identify Pound Field with information available to you online. The relevant help page on this site is Locating Census Addresses on Maps. In the following discussion I have used the web site Ancestry for census returns.

• You know Mary Ann Collins was born in 1856 and using the information from the birth certificate you can locate the family in 1861.
• You now have enough information about John and Sarah to locate them in 1851, 1871 and 1881.
• Have a look at the image from the census enumerator's handbook for 1851. It shows John and Sarah and the older children living at "Pound Field" - and the layout of the entries suggests that there may have been two families living in each house.
• Above the image there is a line reading 1851 England Census > Hertfordshire > St Albans St Michael > District 5a. Click on the words "St Michael" and then select "District 5a". You will now be shown a copy of the page describing the enumerator's round:

• At first sight this appears unhelpful - but what you have discovered is that there were only three "significant" areas of housing in the Borough part of St Michael's parish, and Pound Field (which contains a fair number of houses) is big enough to have been shown on pre-Verulam Road maps of St Albans (see map). But there are unexplained houses shown so the Pound Field housing is comparatively new.
• Repeat the process for the 1861 census. The family are in Pound Field and the enumerator's round reads:

• This entry is more extensive - and adds references to Branch Road, Verulam Road and Hill Street, all of which can be found on modern street maps.
• Repeat the process for 1871 and the family are now in Portland Street. The enumerator's round reads:

• This is more helpful than many such returns - as it explicitly says that the name of Pound Field is now Portland Street - and Portland Street is shown on modern maps. [B.T.W. - who wants to live in somewhere called "Mud Lane" - which is probably why this road is now called "Mount Pleasant"!!!]
• Now that we know that Pound Field and Portland Street are one and the same aand examination of the 1881 census shows that the family lived the the same road, and most likely the same house, for at least 30 years.
• Visiting the web site Old Maps should produce a map from the 1880s, while Google Maps will provide a satellite view of the area.