Welwyn Garden City - History

History

Welwyn Garden City was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the 1920s following his previous experiment in Letchworth Garden City. Howard had called for the creation of planned towns that were to combine the benefits of the city and the countryside and to avoid the disadvantages of both. The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association had defined a garden city as

"a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community"

In 1919, Howard arranged for the purchase of land in Hertfordshire that had already been identified as a suitable site. On 29 April 1920 a company, Welwyn Garden City Limited, was formed to plan and build the garden city, chaired by Sir Theodore Chambers. Louis de Soissons was appointed as architect and town planner and Frederic Osborn as secretary. The first house was occupied just before Christmas 1920.

The town is laid out along tree-lined boulevards with a neo-Georgian town centre. It has its own environmental protection legislation, the Scheme of Management for Welwyn Garden City. Every road has a wide grass verge. The spine of the town is Parkway, a central mall or scenic parkway, almost a mile long. The view along Parkway to the south was once described as one of the world's finest urban vistas. Older houses are on the west side of Parkway and newer houses on the east side

The original planners intended that all the residents of the garden city would shop in one shop and created the Welwyn Stores, a monopoly which caused some local resentment. Commercial pressures have since ensured much more competition and variety, and the Welwyn Stores were in 1984 taken over by the John Lewis Partnership. A shopping mall, the Howard Centre, was built in the 1980s, incorporating the original railway station. There is now a redeveloped and enlarged Sainsburys in the town centre, and a Morrisons in Panshanger along Black Fan Road. Tesco had applied to build a new supermarket on the site of the former Cereal Partners/Shredded Wheat site. Planning permission for a Tesco at Broadwater Road was refused by the local authority in January 2012, after significant public protest. The future of the former Cereal Partners/Shredded Wheat site remains uncertain.

In 1948, Welwyn Garden City was designated a new town under the New Towns Act 1946 and the Welwyn Garden City company handed its assets to the Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation. Louis de Soissons remained as its planning consultant. That year The Times compared Welwyn Garden City with Hatfield. It described Welwyn Garden City as a world-famous modern new town developed as an experiment in community planning and Hatfield as an unplanned settlement created by sporadic building in the open country. "Welwyn, though far from perfect, made the New Towns Act possible, just as Hatfield, by its imperfection, made it necessary." In 1966, the Development Corporation was wound up and handed over to the Commission for New Towns. The housing stock, neighbourhood shopping and green spaces were passed to Welwyn Hatfield District Council between 1978 and 1983.

There is a sports centre, The Gosling Sports Centre, with a dry ski slope, golf driving range, indoor and outdoor tennis, squash, football pitches, an athletics track and velodrome, a gym and bowls. There is an airfield at Panshanger, currently used by the North London Flying School. The King George V playing field, on the boundary of the old Hatfield Hyde village, was once used by the England football team for training. There are three golf courses: Panshanger, owned and operated by the borough council, Mill Green Golf Course located in Gypsy Lane and the Welwyn Garden City Golf Club, of which Nick Faldo was once a member. The Stanborough Park and lakes was the venue for a free annual Water Carnival and firework display and a November 5 fireworks display, both of which attracted large crowds from great distances.

Roman Baths are preserved in a steel vault underneath junction 6 of the A1(M) and are open to visitors.

There is a large hospital in the town, the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital. Emergency and inpatient services are currently (March 2012) being transitioned to the Lister Hospital at Stevenage. The current hospital will be replaced by a smaller hospital offering outpatient, diagnostic and ante/post natal services.

There is a resurgence of interest in the ethos of the garden city and the type of neighbourhood and community advocated by Howard, prompted by the problems of metropolitan and regional development and the importance of sustainability in government policy.

The local civic society, which aims to preserve and conserve the garden city ethos is the Welwyn Garden City Society.