Welwyn Garden City
| Welwyn Garden City | |
| Hertfordshire | |
|---|---|
 From the Parkway Fountain | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TL245135 |
| Location: | 51°48’22"N, 0°11’36"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 43,252 (2001) |
| Post town: | Welwyn Garden City |
| Postcode: | AL7, AL8 |
| Dialling code: | 01707 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Welwyn Hatfield |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Welwyn Hatfield |
Welwyn Garden City is a town in Hertfordshire. It was the second "garden city" in Britain, founded in 1920, and one of the first New Towns, designated in 1948.
The town is named after the original village of Welwyn, which stands to the north. To the south is Hatfield, another New Town. Welwyn Garden City now spreads out from its original foundation to fill the space between the Rivers Lea and Mimram.
Welwyn Garden City is unique in being both a garden city and a new town and exemplifies the physical, social and cultural planning ideals of the periods in which it was built. Because of its historical importance it attracts visitors from around the world.
The town's proximity to London and its station make it a convenient commuter town.
History
Welwyn Garden City was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the 1920s following his previous experiment in Letchworth. 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"[1]
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.[1] The first house was occupied just before Christmas 1920.[2]
The town is laid out along tree-lined boulevards with a neo-Georgian town centre.[3] It has its own environmental protection legislation, the Scheme of Management for Welwyn Garden City.[4] 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.[5] Older houses are on the west side of Parkway and newer houses on the east side[3]
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.[1] 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 Sainsbury's 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 was forced to hand its assets to the Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation, which nevertheless allowed Louis de Soissons to remain 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."[6]
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.[1]
The town
Welwyn has 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.[7] 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.[3]
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.[8]
The local civic society, which aims to preserve and conserve the garden city ethos is the Welwyn Garden City Society.
Economy
Ever since its inception as garden city, Welwyn Garden City has attracted a strong commercial base. It has several designated employment areas. Among the companies trading in the town are:
*Baxters
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Tesco has its head office at Shire Park, a business park in the north of the town, including a full-size supermarket mock-up for staff training.
The Hertfordshire Constabulary has its headquarters in the town.
Welwyn Garden City was once well known as the home of the breakfast cereal Shredded Wheat, formerly made by Nabisco. The disused Shredded Wheat factory with its large white silos is a landmark on rail routes between London and the north of England.[1] The factory, designed by de Soissons and built in 1924 by Peter Lind & Company, is a Grade II listed building. Cereal production moved to Staverton, Wiltshire in 2008 when the owner, Nestlé, decided that the factory required significant and prohibitive investment, due to the age of the building. Tesco had made a planning application for a store, leisure facilities and offices on the site but this was turned down.[9]
The former supermarket chain Fine Fare had its head office in the town at one time, as did ICI's Plastics Division. In 1929 Sir Henry Birkin built the first supercharged Blower Bentley car at his engineering works in Broadwater Road.
During Second World War the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had a research department in the town, the Inter-Services Research Bureau, which developed the Welrod pistol and the Welgun sub-machinegun. Station IX was a secret SOE factory making commando equipment at the old Frythe Hotel.
Sport and leisure
- Football: Welwyn Garden City FC
- Rugby: Welwyn RFC
Popular culture
Several films and television programmes were shot in whole or in part in Welwyn Garden City, including
- The Tweenies
- Superstars (Stanborough Lakes and Gosling Sports Stadium)
- UFO (Gravel pit in Cole Green Lane)
- Holby City (Exterior shots of Queen Elizabeth II hospital)
- Kellogg Company's cornflakes "Train Buffet Car" commercial (Railway station)
- Hot Fuzz (interior scenes of theatre production and theatre bar shot in the Barn Theatre)
- The World's End (another Pegg/Frost franchise coming out in 2013)
The film Battle of Britain shot scenes at Panshanger Aerodrome
- Brighton Rock was made at the Associated British Picture Corporation's Welwyn Garden City studios.
Welwyn Garden City is sometimes referred to on account of its name or suburban character, for example in George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a sketch by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones in Alas Smith and Jones, the TV series Porridge and Strange, in the lyrics of Billy's Line by Red Box, and in a song by Edwyn Collins.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Welwyn Garden City) |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Maurice de Soissons, Welwyn Garden City, Cambridge, Publications for Companies, 1988
- ↑ Review of C B Purdom, The Building of Satellite Towns, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1925
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hertfordshire.com
- ↑ Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
- ↑ Welwyn Garden City Conservation Area Appraisal 2006.
- ↑ The Times, Saturday, January 3, 1948, p. 5
- ↑ North London Flying School
- ↑ David Schuyler, From Garden City to Green City: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard, Johns Hopkins, 2002
- ↑ Tesco scheme for Broadwater Road http://www.broadwaterroad.com