Letchworth

Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is noted for being the first garden city. The population at the time of the 2021 census was 33,990.

Letchworth was an ancient parish, appearing in the Domesday Book of 1086. It remained a small rural village until the start of the twentieth century. The development of the modern town began in 1903, when much of the land in Letchworth and the neighbouring parishes of Willian and Norton was purchased by a company called First Garden City Limited, founded by Ebenezer Howard and his supporters with the aim of building the first "garden city", following the principles Howard had set out in his 1898 book, ''To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform''. Their aim was to create a new type of settlement which provided jobs, services, and good housing for residents, whilst retaining the environmental quality of the countryside, in contrast to most industrial cities of the time.

The town's initial layout was designed by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker. It includes the United Kingdom's first roundabout, Sollershott Circus, which was built . The layout for Letchworth incorporates extensive parkland and open spaces, including Norton Common and Howard Park.

A takeover of First Garden City Limited in 1960 led to significant changes in how the company managed the town, which were opposed by the residents and local council who wanted the original garden city ideals retained. They secured an act of parliament which transferred ownership of the estate from the company to a public sector body, the Letchworth Garden City Corporation, in 1963. The corporation in turn was replaced by a charitable body in 1995, the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, which owns and manages the estate today.

Letchworth today retains large business areas providing jobs in a variety of sectors, and the landlord's profits are reinvested for the benefit of the community by the Heritage Foundation. The town lies north of London, on the railway linking London to Cambridge, and it also adjoins the A1 road, making it relatively popular with commuters. Residential areas in the town are mixed; large parts of the town are included in conservation areas in recognition of their quality, but the town also contains four of the five poorest-scoring neighbourhoods in North Hertfordshire for deprivation.

As the world's first garden city, Letchworth has had a notable impact on town planning and the new towns movement; it influenced nearby Welwyn Garden City, which used a similar approach, and aspects of the principles demonstrated at Letchworth have been incorporated into other projects around the world including the Australian capital Canberra, Hellerau in Germany, Tapiola in Finland and Mežaparks in Latvia.

History

Before the Garden City: Old Letchworth

The area now occupied by Letchworth has been inhabited since prehistoric times. A late Bronze Age hill fort, thought to date from , stood on Wilbury Hill, beside the ancient road of Icknield Way. The hill fort was refortified in the Middle Iron Age, and appears to have been occupied until the Roman conquest of Britain. Evidence for Bronze Age, Romano-British and late Iron Age settlement has also been found in the fields between Norton village and the A1.

By the time of the Norman Conquest, Letchworth was established as a village. The name is derived from the Old English "lycce weorth", meaning a farm inside a fence or enclosure. It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Leceworde", when it was described as having nine households of villagers, four cottagers, one slave and one priest. The presence of the priest suggests that Letchworth was by that time a parish. Letchworth's parish church was built in the 12th century, but likely on the site of an earlier building. The original dedication of the church is unknown, but it was rededicated to St Mary during the First World War. The village was along Letchworth Lane, stretching from St Mary's and the adjoining medieval manor house of Letchworth Hall up to the staggered crossroads of Letchworth Lane, Hitchin Road, Baldock Road and Spring Road. Letchworth was a relatively small parish, having a population in 1801 of 67, rising to 96 by 1901.

The early days of the Garden City

In 1898, the social reformer Ebenezer Howard wrote ''To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform'' (republished in 1902 as ''Garden Cities of To-morrow''), in which he advocated the construction of a new kind of town, which he called a "garden city". The idea was summed up in a diagram called the "Three Magnets", showing how the mixed advantages and disadvantages of town or country living could be combined into a third option, "Town-Country", offering the advantages of both cities and the countryside while eliminating their disadvantages. Industry would be kept separate from residential areas, whilst the residents would have good access to parks and the countryside. The garden city would be contained in a belt of open countryside, providing land not just for agriculture, but also for children's homes, asylums, new forests and brickfields. Echoes of this idea of a protected rural belt were later taken up more generally in town planning in Britain from the mid-twentieth century as the green belt.Hall, 1996, pages 92-97

Howard's ideas were mocked in some sections of the press but struck a chord with many, especially members of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Quakers. After examining several possible locations for establishing a garden city, the garden city pioneers settled on Letchworth as the chosen site. The Letchworth Hall estate had come up for sale, and although it alone was too small, secret negotiations with fourteen adjoining landowners allowed an estate of to be assembled and purchased for £155,587. A company called First Garden City Limited was established on 1 September 1903 to purchase the land and begin building the garden city.

In 1904, architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker won a competition for designing the town's layout, and were appointed as consulting architects to the company. Most of the pre-existing trees and hedgerows were preserved in the layout. Unwin took the alignment of the town's main avenue (Broadway) from three old oak trees which stood on the central plateau of the estate and were incorporated into the central square (Broadway Gardens).

A temporary railway halt was built in 1903 on the Great Northern Railway's Hitchin, Royston and Cambridge branch line, which crosses the middle of the garden city estate. Initially, services were irregular special trains for excursions and construction workers. A more substantial temporary wooden station was opened in 1905 with a regular passenger service. The current railway station was built in 1912 in a prominent location at the end of Broadway.

The first new houses were occupied in July 1904. The following month First Garden City Limited held a vote amongst shareholders and residents on what name the new garden city should take. Several options were proposed, including "Garden City", "Homeworth" and "Alseopolis". The chosen name was "Letchworth (Garden City)". The company adopted this as its name for the town, but adoption of the name was not universal. The legal name of the civil parish and (after 1919) urban district remained simply "Letchworth". First Garden City Limited also gradually dropped the "(Garden City)" suffix from the name, partly reflecting common usage, and partly taking the view that as the town matured it should not permanently be seen as an experiment. Similarly, the town's railway station was initially called "Letchworth (Garden City)", but was renamed "Letchworth" in 1937. The station is now known as Letchworth Garden City, with direct trains to Brighton via St Pancras International and terminating trains to King's Cross to the South, and Cambridge and King's Lynn to the North.

Ebenezer Howard's wife, Lizzie (Eliza Ann Bills), died in November 1904 in London, shortly before she had been due to move to a new house in Letchworth with her husband. As a memorial to her a public hall was built, paid for by public subscriptions. The Mrs Howard Memorial Hall opened in 1906 and was one of the town's first public buildings.

In 1905, and again in 1907, the company held "Cheap Cottages Exhibitions", which were contests for architects and builders to demonstrate innovations in inexpensive housing. The 1905 exhibition attracted some 60,000 visitors. The popularity of the exhibitions was significant in leading the ''Daily Mail'' to launch the Ideal Home Exhibition (which later became the Ideal Home Show), in 1908. One possible visitor to the fledgling town was Lenin, who was reputed to have visited during May 1907 whilst attending the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London. Contemporary evidence confirming the visit is lacking, but the claim was published in the ''Daily Mail'' and the '' Daily Sketch'' in November 1916 as part of articles accusing the town of being a haven for communists and conscientious objectors—claims which the town denied.

For the first few years, the new town's Anglicans had to use the old parish churches at Letchworth village, Willian or Norton on the edges of the estate. Many of the town's pioneers had non-conformist leanings, in keeping with the radical spirit of the early town. The first new place of worship to be built was the Free Church, built in 1905 (later rebuilt in 1923). It was followed in 1907 by 'Howgills', the Meeting House for the Society of Friends.

Letchworth's founding citizens, attracted by the promise of a better life, were often caricatured by outsiders as idealistic and otherworldly. John Betjeman in his poems ''Group Life: Letchworth'' and ''Huxley Hall'' painted Letchworth people as earnest health freaks. One commonly-cited example of this is the ban, most unusual for a British town, on selling alcohol in public premises. This was initially decided by a public vote in June 1907, in which 54% voted against allowing a licensed public house. This did not stop the town having a "pub" however – the Skittles Inn or the "pub with no beer" which opened in March 1907.

Despite the ban it is not entirely true to say that there were no pubs in the Garden City. Pubs that had existed from before the foundation of the Garden City continued to operate, including the Three Horseshoes in Norton and the Three Horseshoes and the Fox in Willian, and benefited from the lack of alcohol to be had in the centre of the town, as did the pubs in neighbouring Hitchin and Baldock. New inns also sprang up on the borders of the town, including the Wilbury Hotel which opened in 1940 just outside the town's border. The ban was finally lifted after a referendum in 1957, which led to the opening of the Broadway Hotel in 1962 as the first public house in the centre of the Garden City. Several other public houses have opened since then, but to this day the town centre has relatively few pubs for a town of its size.

Industry

One of the most prominent industries to arrive in the town in the early years was the manufacture of corsets; the Spirella Company, an American business, founded its British subsidiary in the town in 1910. In 1912, they built the first phase of a large factory, the Spirella Building, designed by Cecil Hignett in the Arts and Crafts style. It was completed in 1920. The building's prominence in the town led to it being nicknamed "Castle Corset". During the Second World War, the factory was also involved in producing parachutes and decoding machinery.

The town attracted and developed a diverse range of industries. Other significant early businesses included:
* J. M. Dent and Son, publishing house, moved to Letchworth from London in 1907.
* Kryn & Lahy Steel Foundry founded in 1915 by Belgian refugees, and which was a target for German bombers in World War II.
* Irvin Great Britain, a parachute factory established in the town in 1926 as the British subsidiary of an American company.
* Shelvoke and Drewry, a manufacturer of dustcarts and fire engines which was founded in the town in 1922 and traded until 1991.
* Westinghouse Morse Chain Company, making parts for engines, set up in Letchworth in 1920, later becoming part of Borg-Warner after the Second World War.

The biggest employer for a number of years was the British Tabulating Machine Company, which moved from London to Letchworth in 1920. In 1958, it merged with Powers-Samas to become International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and finally became part of International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1969.

A power station was built in the 1920s on Works Road to supply electricity. There were two coal-fired generators, called Letchworth A and Letchworth B, with rated outputs of 8 megawatts (MW) and 13 MW respectively.''CEGB Statistical Yearbook'' (Various years). CEGB, London. Letchworth A was decommissioned in 1968, followed by Letchworth B in 1974. A gas turbine power station was then built on the site, with two 70 MW turbines and two reinforced concrete chimneys. The first turbine was commissioned in 1978. Output peaked during the 1984–1985 miners' strike. The power station was demolished in 2007.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many of the town's large manufacturing businesses closed. The Kryn and Lahy Steel Foundry closed in 1979. Spirella and ICL both closed their factories in 1989. Borg-Warner also closed its factory during this period. The town went through a period of relatively high unemployment in the early 1980s. Some of the vacated factory sites were redeveloped as business parks and serviced offices, and the town's economy shifted away from a small number of large manufacturing businesses to a large number of smaller office-based businesses.

Housing

Early housing development in Letchworth largely followed Unwin and Parker's masterplan. The first houses built after the founding of the garden city were a group of six houses called "Alpha Cottages" at 22–32 Baldock Road, where the first residents moved in during July 1904. Much of the town's early housing was to the east of the nascent town centre, within walking distance of the main industrial area on the eastern edge of the town. Many houses were built in a modest cottage style, finished with cream painted render, green doors, and clay-tiled roofs. To the south-west of the town centre towards Letchworth village was an area of larger individually-designed houses for the upper middle classes.

After the Second World War the focus for new development was on large council estates. To the north of the town work began on the Grange estate in 1947. The estate included its own primary schools, recreation ground, public house and a neighbourhood shopping centre. The land for the estate was compulsorily purchased from First Garden City Limited by Letchworth Urban District Council. In 1959, land to the south-east of the town was also compulsorily purchased for the development of the Jackmans estate, another large council estate, with funding provided by London County Council as the area was to accommodate London overspill. The Jackmans estate was developed on the " Radburn principle" which had been pioneered in Radburn, New Jersey, a town which was itself inspired by the garden city movement. The idea was to minimise the impact of traffic by having houses face onto pedestrian-only green lanes and open spaces, with parking and servicing provided in garage courts behind the houses.Miller, 2002, page 160

Private housing resumed more slowly after the Second World War, partly due to the tight controls on building materials and licences which were imposed and remained in force until 1954. As these restrictions eased, additional areas of private housing were built to the south of the town. This area south of the town was significantly enlarged by the Lordship and Manor Park estates, begun in 1971. Following the completion of these developments in the 1980s, most new housing in the town has been on previously-developed land, as sites vacated by closed schools and businesses have been redeveloped.

UK's first roundabout

Innovation in Letchworth was not confined to the design of buildings. The 1904 layout plan included a point on the main avenue where six roads converged, with the roads later being named Broadway, Spring Road, and Sollershott. Plans drawn up in July 1908 proposed a circular traffic island at this point, influenced by the in Paris, which Unwin wrote about in 1909. The Letchworth roundabout is known to have been in use by 1910. When first built, traffic could circulate around the central island in both directions; the instruction to keep left was not added until 1921. It was named "Sollershott Circus" and is recognised as the first roundabout on a public road in the United Kingdom. Two signs were erected on the roundabout in 2006 saying "UK's First Roundabout Built circa 1909" This was after a petition was made by Andrew White of Letchworth for a school project.

Wider impact of garden city

As the world's first garden city, Letchworth had a notable influence on town planning and the new towns movement in the twentieth century. It directly influenced Welwyn Garden City, founded by Ebenezer Howard in 1920 using a similar model to Letchworth, and Hampstead Garden Suburb, founded in 1906 and also designed to a layout by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker. Aspects of Letchworth's approach to blending town and county were subsequently used in the Australian capital Canberra, Hellerau in Germany, Tapanila

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