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. 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. 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. , the Quakers' Meeting House of 1907 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. 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. 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. 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 in Finland and
Mežaparks in
Latvia.
Letchworth today Ownership of the estate passed from First Garden City Limited to the
Letchworth Garden City Corporation in 1963, which in turn was replaced in 1995 by the
Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation. The estate eventually started yielding a financial surplus which could be used for the benefit of the town in 1973. This led to investment in a number of town amenities, including a working farm tourist attraction opened at Standalone Farm (1980), the North Herts Leisure Centre (1982), and a free hospital, the Ernest Gardiner Day Hospital (1984). The Broadway
cinema was extensively refurbished in 1996, and the Heritage Foundation has also supported several projects to enhance the town centre. 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, in parts of the Jackmans estate, Grange estate and Wilbury area. The town has extensive parkland and open spaces, with
Norton Common and
Howard Park being two of the largest open spaces in the town, both of which hold the
Green Flag Award for well-managed green space. As the town approached its centenary, there was a campaign to change the name officially from Letchworth to "Letchworth Garden City", this time without the parentheses of the 1904 version of the name. Proponents of the change argued that as the later
Welwyn Garden City incorporated the "Garden City" within its official name, so too should the first garden city at Letchworth. The Letchworth campaign was successful, with the name of the railway station being changed in 1999 and the
SG6 post town changing from Letchworth to Letchworth Garden City in 2003, the town's centenary year. == Governance ==