Cardington Avenue

Cardington Avenue is one of the streets of Pinehurst Manor, the large house lot development laid out in 1910 on the east side of Boston Road in Pinehurst. The plan, "Pinehurst Manor, Billerica Mass., Owned by Frank W. Coughlin," drawn by H. A. Millhouse, civil engineer, and dated at Boston in September 1910 (Plan Book 27, Plan 95), shows Cardington Avenue running east from Boston Road, then marked "To Woburn," across Allandale, Ellingwood and Glenside Avenues, with rows of lots 25 feet wide on either side. Coughlin laid out Mechanics' Park, on the Tewksbury line in North Billerica, in the same way three years later.

The plan gives no reason for the name. Its other streets, Beaumont, Dorsett, Allandale, Ellingwood, Glenside, Glenvale, Montrose, Endleigh, Clarence, Egmont, Chesterfield, Bancroft and Dillworth, look like names chosen for their English sound; several (Beaumont, Montrose, Egmont, Chesterfield) are British titles of nobility, and Cardington is a village in Bedfordshire. No record connects any of them with a Billerica person or family. The street was on the ground by 1916, when the directory listed "Cardington Avenue from Boston rd byd Cook easterly," and a 1925 plan of electric light poles on the unaccepted streets of Pinehurst Manor (Plan Book 47, Plan 64) shows it unchanged.

The town accepted "Cardington Ave. as a public way a distance of 800 feet from Boston Road" at the annual meeting of February 1927. The next year the highway surveyor graveled 630 feet of it and treated it with No. 45 road oil "from the State Road to Dillon's residence," the first surface treatment recorded. In 1929 the town voted to replace the 2-inch water pipe with a 6-inch main and hydrant for about 700 feet, money to blast a ledge on the street was voted in 1931, and the 1932 warrant proposed three catch basins and a coat of tar and oil. It was tarred for 800 feet in 1940 and asphalt sealed for its whole length in 1948. In 1958 the town rebuilt it under the Betterment Act at a cost of $18,660, the abutters sharing the cost.

The corner of Cardington Avenue and Boston Road was bought by the town in 1953 for a Pinehurst fire station, a two-door station built for about $45,000 that was nearly finished at the end of 1954. Cardington Avenue is not among the roads of the 1831 town map that the town accepted in 2016, and it does not appear in the street lists of 1897 and 1899.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1927: town accepts Cardington Avenue as a public way for 800 feet from Boston Road
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1928: Cardington Avenue graveled 630 feet and treated with No. 45 road oil from the State Road
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956: list of accepted streets, Cardington Ave., 800 feet from Boston Road, accepted Feb. 12, 1927
4. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1958: Cardington Avenue rebuilt under the Betterment Act, $18,660
5. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1953: article to build a fire station at the corner of Cardington Avenue and Boston Road
6. Burlington Retro: history of Pinehurst Park and the Pinehurst neighborhood of Billerica, with an advertisement for Pinehurst Manor