Live, Work and Play E-Book

Mark Clapson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Books about history using real life memories recorded specifically for the purpose are rare, Live, Work & Play is just such a book. Created from the hundreds of reminiscences of the residents of the town gathered by the WGC Heritage Trust and put into historical context by Prof Mark Clapson , one of the UK's leading social historians, the book offers a unique insight into the creation of the UK's second garden city. Timed to appear at the start of 2020, when Welwyn Garden City achieves its 100th year, the history of Sir Ebenezer Howard's final masterpiece, with all its imperfections, is laid out for all to read. Now thriving and at ease with itself WGC is an example of how to create homes for its community. Created as a Garden City in 1920, developed as a New Town from 1948 the lessons it offers are invaluable to both developers and governments alike.

Leseprobe

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Mark Clapson, 2020

The right of Mark Clapson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9531 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Timelines

Chapter 1:

Introduction:A New History of Welwyn Garden City

Chapter 2:

Dreamers and Doers:The Making of Welwyn Garden City

Chapter 3:

Expansion, Criticism and Controversy:Welwyn Garden City Between the Wars

Chapter 4:

From Garden City to New Town:Welwyn Garden City 1939–48

Chapter 5:

Growing Up and Settling Down:Welwyn Garden City 1948–2020

Chapter 6:

The Garden City in the Wider World

Chapter 7:

Conclusion:From the Past to the Present and the Future

Bibliography and Sources

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust for choosing me to write the Centenary History of Welwyn Garden City. The Trust funded a buyout from teaching while I was at the University of Westminster, which was very welcome. Angela Eserin, Vanessa Godfrey, Lorraine Dewar and Tony Skottowe of the Trust were always prompt in replying to questions, supplying materials, and generally being supportive.

I’m also grateful to the staff of the Hertfordshire Archives and Library Services, based in Hertford, and to the staff of the British Library; thanks also to WGC Library for the use of their images. And at some remove I express gratitude to those who were interviewed by the Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust, and of course to the interviewers, for their Where Do You Think We Played?, Where Do You Think We Lived? and Where Do You Think We Worked? projects. A quarter of all references in this book are to WGCHT materials.

ABBREVIATIONS

AE

Angela Eserin

AIA

American Institute of Architects

ARP

Air Raid Precautions

ATC

Air Training Corps

CNT

Commission for the New Towns

CPRE

Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England

FJO

Frederic James Osborn

HALS

Hertfordshire Archives and Library Services

HCC

Hertfordshire County Council

HUD

Department of Housing and Urban Development (US)

ICI

Imperial Chemical Industries

LDV

Local Defence Volunteers

LNS

Land Nationalisation Society

MTCP

Ministry of Town and Country Planning

NCSS

National Council of Social Service

NLS

Nationalisation of Labour Society

OU

Open University

RDC

Rural District Council

RFC

Rugby Football Club

RPAA

Regional Planning Association of America

RTPI

Royal Town Planning Institute

SHM

Special Housing Mission

SME

Small to Medium Enterprise

SOE

Special Operations Executive

TCPA

Town and Country Planning Association

TPI

Town Planning Institute

TS

Tony Skottowe

UDC

Urban District Council

WDYTWP

Where Do You Think We Played?

WDYTWW

Where Do You Think We Worked?

WGC

Welwyn Garden City

WGCCC

Welwyn Garden City Cricket Club

WGCDC

Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation

WGCFC

Welwyn Garden City Football Club

WGCL

Welwyn Garden City Ltd

WGCHT

Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust

WGCUDC

Welwyn Garden City Urban District Council

WHDC

Welwyn and Hatfield District Council

WVS

Women’s Voluntary Service

TIMELINES

Antecedents to Welwyn Garden City

1776 Cromford housing opened for Sir Richard Arkwright’s employees in Derbyshire

1776 New Lanark village initiated by David Dale in Scotland; later improved upon by Robert Owen

1853 Copley textile village opened built in Halifax, Yorkshire, by Edward Ackroyd

1860 Ackroydon workers’ village founded in Halifax

1869 ‘Garden City’ opened in Long Island, New York

1871 Ebenezer Howard moves to USA

1875 Bedford Park begun in London

1887 Port Sunlight founded in Cheshire

1893 Bournville village initiated by Cadbury in Birmingham

1898 Ebenezer Howard’s Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform published

1899 Garden Cities Association founded

1901 New Earswick founded by Rowntree in York

1903 Letchworth Garden City initiated by Ebenezer Howard

1905 Hampstead Garden Suburb founded in London

1906 Brentham Garden Suburb founded in London

1914 Outbreak of First World War leads to cessation of house building

1917 The New Townsmen formed

1918New Towns After the War first published

1918 Prime Minister David Lloyd George makes ‘Home for Heroes’ speech

1918 Tudor Walters Report recommends improved housing standards

1918 Ebenezer Howard and colleagues visit land near Hatfield Hyde

1919 Housing and Town Planning Act introduces nationwide council housing

Key Milestones in the Growth of Welwyn Garden City

1919 Welwyn Garden City (WGC) initiated by Ebenezer Howard

1920 Welwyn Garden City Ltd (WGCL) formed

1920 Louis de Soissons Plan for WGC adopted

1920 Temporary construction workers’ homes and WGCL offices open on Campus

1920 First homes available at Handside Lane

1921 A Civil Parish for Welwyn Garden City formed

1921Welwyn News begins publication

1921 First members of Welwyn Garden City Ltd elected to Rural District Council

1921 The first temporary branch of Welwyn Stores opens

1922 Welwyn Rural District Council build first houses

1922Daily Mail model village built and opened by Earl Haig

1923 Handside School opened, the first new school in WGC

1925 The White Bridge spanning the Luton to Dunstable railway line opens

1926 Railway station opened by Neville Chamberlain

1927 First election to the new Urban District Council

1928 Charles Purdom removed from WGCL

1928 Ebenezer Howard dies

1933 First Town and Country Planning Summer School held at WGC

1936 Frederic James Osborn leaves WGCL

1936 Co-operative Stores begin trading in WGC

1937 Council offices open on Campus

1937 Ten new shops open on Howardsgate

1939 New Welwyn Stores officially opened

1940Life and Work in Welwyn Garden City published

1942New Towns After the War republished

1943 Ministry of Town and Planning formed

1943 WGC Post-War Committee established

1945 Silver Jubilee Celebrations for WGC

1946 The first New Towns Act in Britain

1946 Green Belt established between WGC and Hatfield

1947 Town and Country Planning Act

1948 Public Enquiry into New Town designation

1948 Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield designated as new towns

1948 Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield Development Corporations established

1948 Reg Gosling appointed Chair of WGC Development Corporation

1949 WGCL winds up; assets transferred to WGC Development Corporation

1952 Harold Macmillan, Minister for Housing, visits WGC

1957 Sir Theodore Chambers dies

1958 Reg Gosling dies

1959 Death of Richard Reiss

1961 The Commission for the New Towns (CNT) established

1962 Louis de Soissons dies

1963 Queen Elizabeth opens QEII hospital

1964 A new Howard Memorial unveiled in Howardsgate

1965 The New Towns Act of 1965 creates a further phase of UK new towns

1965 C.B. Purdom dies

1966 CNT begins work at WGC

1970 Anniversary celebrations to mark fifty years of Welwyn Garden City

1970 Pre-war WGC west of railway line designated a conservation area

1973 Welwyn Hatfield District Council (WHDC) formed

1974 WHDC takes over

1978 Death of Sir Frederic Osborn

1981 Initial plans for major town centre redevelopment (the Howard Centre) published

1983 More assets transferred from CNT to WHDC

1987 Howard Centre plans published

1987 Redevelopment of Cherry Tree site announced

1990 Howard Centre and multi-storey car park opens

1990 Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Welwyn Garden City

2020 Anniversary celebrations to mark 100 years of Welwyn Garden City

Key Industries and Places of Employment in Welwyn Garden City

1921 Digswell Nurseries established; a subsidiary of WGCL

1921 Welwyn Builders Ltd established; a subsidiary of WGCL

1921 Welwyn Brickworks Ltd established; a subsidiary of WGCL

1921 Welwyn Stores Ltd first opened; a subsidiary of WGCL

1921 Midland Bank opens

1922 A.D. Dawney and Sons Ltd, steelworks, established

1922 Barclays Bank opens

1925 Herts, Gravel and Brickworks Ltd established; a subsidiary of WGCL

1925 Shredded Wheat Co. Ltd factory opens

1927 Barcley Corsets Ltd factory opens

1928 British Instructional Films Studios begins production

1928 Nabisco takes over Shredded Wheat

1929 Bickiepegs Ltd established

1929 Captain H.R.G. Birkin car engine research establishment opens, developing the ‘Bentley Blower’

1929 Cresta Silks Ltd clothing manufacturers established

1929 Murphy Radio Ltd established

1930 Andrew Buchanan and Sons Ltd confectionary makers established

1930 Norton Grinding Wheel Co. opens

1931 Pure Extracts Co. Ltd opens, food production

1932 Murphy Radio moves to purpose-built premises

1932 Beiersdorf Ltd pharmaceuticals opens factory

1934 Studio Lisa photographic studios open

1935 Neosid Ltd opens, making electrical components for radios

1935 Welwyn Studios Ltd opens, filmmakers

1936 Catomance Processing Ltd opens, making chemicals for textiles

1936 Lacre Lorries Ltd begins production

1936 John A. Weir Ltd, car bodies and sliding roof manufacturer opens

1936 Roche Ltd begins production in WGC

1937 ICI Ltd begins operations at WGC

1937 Atomised Food Products Ltd begins production at WGC

1937 Celtis Ltd opens

1947 Eylure Ltd begins operations in WGC

1951 Smith and Nephew buy Herts Pharmaceuticals

1959 Smith, Kline and French opens at WGC

1969The Guardian reports twenty-one new companies added to WGC since 1948

1976 Small and medium-sized workshops opened

1982 Smith and Nephew leave WGC

1982 ICI closes most of its operations in WGC

1983 John Lewis acquires Welwyn Department Stores

1985 Hi-tech employment park first mooted

2008 Shredded Wheat ceases production after seventy-three years in WGC

Living and Playing: Key Dates in Sport, Leisure, Religion and Politics in WGC

1921 Welwyn Garden City Cricket Club formed

1921 Welwyn Garden City Football Club formed

1921 Welwyn Garden City Theatre Society formed

1921 Welwyn Garden City Arts Club formed

1921 Welwyn Garden City Book Club formed

1921 Welwyn Garden City Music Society formed

1921 Cherry Tree Restaurant opens

1921 The Constitutional Club (Conservative) established

1921 Welwyn Garden City Labour Party established

1923 Golf course of nine holes opened by WGC Golf Club

1925 Welwyn Garden City Rotary Club formed

1926 Roman Catholic Church of St Bonaventure consecrated

1927 Congregational Church built

1927 Welwyn Harriers (Athletics) established

1927 Golf course extended to eighteen holes

1927Site Planning at Welwyn Garden City shows many facilities were open or being built

1928 Boys’ Brigade established in GC

1928 Welwyn Theatre opens in Parkway, also showing films

1929 General Election returns Conservative MPs for WGC

1929 The Free Church and St Michael’s Church open

1930 Success for Bentley at Le Mans

1932 The Barn Theatre opens

193? Handside Playing Fields open

1933 Lea Valley Swimming Pool opens

1933 Welwyn Garden City Swimming Club formed

1933 King George V Playing Fields taken over by Urban District Council

1933I Was a Spy filmed in WGC

1934 Welwyn Town Band formed

1935 General Election returns Conservative MP for WGC

1935 WGC Welsh Male Voice Choir formed

1935 St Francis church consecrated

1936 Save the Woods Campaign initiated

1937 Welwyn Garden City Photographic Society formed

1938 Baptist and Congregational Church buildings completed

1940Life and Work in Welwyn Garden City criticises some aspects of leisure provision in WGC

1941 Air Training Corps Squadron for WGC formed

1942 Welwyn Garden City Bowling Club formed

1945 General Election returns a Labour MP for WGC

1948 Many sports and cultural facilities are transferred from WGCL to WGCDC

1952 Great Britain Olympics Hockey team captained by leading WGC hockey player

1953 Welwyn Athletic Club formed

1956 Welwyn Garden Residents Association formed

1957 Welwyn Garden City Literary Society formed

1959 Gosling Stadium opened

1960 Welwyn Athletic Club represented at Rome Olympics

1960 Housewives Register established in WGC

1964 Cyclists from WGC race at Tokyo Olympics

1965 Ludwick Club Badminton Team tours Denmark

1966 Many sports and cultural facilities transferred from WGCDC to the CNT

1970 Stanborough Lakes Park opens

1973 Campus West completed

1974 Many sports and cultural facilities are transferred from CNT to WHDC

Welwyn Garden City and the Wider World

1925 C.B. Purdom visits USA

1933 International Planning Conference held at WGC

1936 American green belt towns acknowledge influence of WGC

1937 Richard Reiss begins the first of three pre-war tours to the USA

1938–39 Jewish refugees arrive in WGC

1939 The Second World War begins

1939–40 Population of WGC increases by 21,000

1940 The Blitz on London and other British cities begins

1940 The Blitz comes to WGC

1945 Jubilee Celebrations

1946 The Crown Prince of Sweden visits Welwyn Garden City

1947 Welwyn Garden City FC tour the Netherlands

1952 Athletes from WGC compete in the Olympic Games (Helsinki)

1960 Athletes from WGC compete in the Olympic Games (Rome)

1964 Athletes from WGC compete in the Olympic Games (Tokyo)

1968 Athletes from WGC compete in the Olympic Games (Mexico City)

1965 Frederic and Margaret Osborn visit Japan

1970 Silver Jubilee celebrations; Queen Mother visits WGC; many international visitors

1990 Seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations attract international visitors

2020 Centenary anniversary of Welwyn Garden City

INTRODUCTION:

A NEW HISTORY OF WELWYN GARDEN CITY

The State of the Art

This book was commissioned by the Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust to mark the centenary celebrations of one of the most influential English towns in the world. Although countless words have been written about the origins, development and significance of WGC, a new history is long overdue. Beyond the symbolic significance of the anniversary itself, WGC deserves a fresh historical appraisal. In this book, its social, cultural and economic history is intertwined with an account of its planning, origins and expansion since 1920.

Until recently, histories of WGC have fallen into three broad fields. The first might be termed the ‘the insider histories’ written by followers of the ‘founding father’ of the Garden City Movement Sir Ebenezer Howard. Frederic James Osborn (FJO), Richard Reiss and Charles Benjamin (C.B.) Purdom are notable here. Howard had provided the rationale and key planning principles of garden cities in his Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1898), later published as Tomorrow: A Peaceful to Real Reform (1902). The book was essentially a template for the garden city he initiated at Letchworth in Hertfordshire in 1903. And in 1919 Howard was proactive in getting Welwyn Garden City, the second garden city, off the ground. The town centre shopping mall, the Howard Centre, and the thoroughfare Howard’s Gate, are both named after him.

A second and arguably more objective field comprises the town planning histories of WGC, undertaken largely by academic historians of town planning, and some scholars of urban development. While only a couple of academic planning history books exclusively examine the history of WGC itself, it features prominently in a number of scholarly works on the garden cities of the twentieth century. The significance of WGC in town planning history is evidenced, furthermore, in its place in many general academic histories of British town planning, and in evaluations of the international impact of the Garden City Movement during the twentieth century.

And the third pool of WGC histories might happily be summarised as ‘local history and heritage’. Many enthusiastic local historians, activists in heritage organisations, and oral and visual historians have been keen to document and promote the social history of WGC, particularly from the point of view of those who have lived there.

This book aims to embrace all three approaches, to provide a well-researched and scholarly account of the social and planning history of WGC, drawing upon a wide range of sources: official reports; academic histories, local histories; oral histories; newspapers and journals. It is hoped that the book will be of interest not only to an academic but also to a popular readership, which will hopefully include many citizens of the Garden City itself, whether they are long-established residents or more recent migrants.

The ‘Insider Histories’

Most people living in Welwyn Garden City have heard of Frederic Osborn, or ‘FJO’ as he called himself and as he was often referred to by his contemporaries. He has both a school and a major road near the railway station named after him. As we will see, he was a major player in the development of WGC, serving as Secretary to Welwyn Garden City Ltd for many years. On the national and international stages, he was also a key mover in professional town planning organisations, an adviser to British political parties and governments, and possibly the most influential exponent of the Garden City Movement during the twentieth century. Osborn moved from Letchworth to Welwyn Garden City soon after WGC was designated in 1919. He lived at Guessens Road, in the opulent heart of town, just down the street from Howard, who died in 1928. During his long lifetime, most of it spent in WGC, Osborn wrote a number of histories of the town. His Genesis of Welwyn Garden City (1970) covers the earlier days of the garden city and Welwyn Garden City Ltd, to its transition to a new town after the Second World War, and its near-completion as a planned entity by 1970. And in his co-written book New Towns: Their Origins and Achievements (1970) Osborn assessed the national and overseas impact and legacy of the Garden City Movement, and gave a summary history of WGC. As both activist in and chronicler of the British Garden City Movement at home and abroad, Osborn always placed his experiences at WGC at the centre of his work. His transatlantic correspondence with his friend Lewis Mumford also provides much information on how FJO evaluated life and the built environment in WGC, and interpreted social and economic change between the 1930s and the ’70s.

In the Woodhall area of WGC a couple of culs-de-sac are named after other leaders in the development of WGC. One is Chambers Grove, named after Sir Theodore Chambers, who became Chairman of Welwyn Garden City Ltd in 1920. Chambers also has a footpath named after him – Sir Theodore’s Way – in the shopping area, and a monument to him in Parkway. There is another little street in Woodhall called Purdom Road, named after C.B. Purdom. It is a modest little street compared with Osborn Way, a spatial expression of the pecking order in the movers and shakers that made Welwyn Garden City. As we will see, Osborn and Purdom were allies for many years, both followers of Howard and enthusiasts for the WGC that they were building. Purdom was an advocate of planned new ‘satellite cities’ to be designed along the Garden City model, writing a book on this, The Building of Satellite Towns, during the 1920s. He viewed WGC as a key exemplar of both. But as early as 1928, just eight years after the beginnings of the town, Purdom was out of favour with many of his elite colleagues. He would later write a somewhat jaundiced autobiography, Life over Again (1951), which also acts as a partial history of WGC. Purdom updated his analysis of WGC as a satellite town during the wartime debates on the future of housing and town planning in Britain. Following the destruction and losses to property caused by the Blitz and other air raids, WGC would play a major role in the emergent new towns programme following the New Towns Act of 1946, becoming a new town itself in 1948.

The memoir to Captain Richard L. Reiss, written by his wife Celia, also provides invaluable information about life in Welwyn Garden City. A politician, housing reformer, humanitarian and a leading member of Welwyn Garden City Ltd, Reiss played an important role not only in managing the growth of the Garden City, but in his patronage of sports and leisure clubs. He also spread the word about WGC to the wider world. Osborn, Purdom and Reiss figure prominently in this book.

Town Planning Histories of Welwyn Garden City

The most recent, readable and thorough history of WGC is to be found in Stephen V. Ward’s The Peaceful Path: The Hertfordshire New Towns (2016). His book takes its title from Howard’s Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. WGC is viewed as at least as important as its predecessor, Letchworth, and the significance of the actions and writings of Frederic Osborn are given their due weight. In addition to his work on WGC, Osborn was a leading national campaigner for garden cities, and during the Second World War, as head of the Town and Country Planning Association, he fought tirelessly for both a new towns programme, and a more systematic national town planning apparatus. Osborn could, and did, claim some credit for the formation of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in 1943, and the New Towns Act of 1946.

Osborn personifies the link between the Garden City Movement and the new towns. WGC has been viewed both by Ward and by this writer as the metaphorical umbilical link between the British garden cities of the first half of the twentieth century, and the new towns programme after the Second World War. Unlike Letchworth, WGC was redesignated as a new town in 1948, gaining a second phase of planned growth. This history is also examined in Frank Schaffer, The New Town Story (1972), a book that almost but not quite qualifies as an insider history. Schaffer was a founder member of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, established in 1943, and from 1965 became the Secretary for the Commission for the New Towns. The Commission took over the management of WGC from the Development Corporation in 1966. Schaffer was also a leading light in the Town and Country Planning Association, and known to Osborn. As an advocate of the post-war new towns programme, Schaffer pointed to the achievement of the new towns in providing a new and more prosperous life for millions of people, and he defended them, including WGC, from unfair criticisms that they were more ‘soulless’ or prone to social problems than older urban cities and towns.

One of the leading planning historians was Gordon E. Cherry, whose studies of British town planning during the twentieth century have contributed much to our understanding of Howard, Letchworth and WGC as influencers on the nature and trajectory of new community planning. However, Cherry’s The Evolution of British Town Planning (1974) and Town Planning in Britain Since 1945 (1996) suffer from a sometimes simplistic account of the rise of British town planning, and of the influence of Howard and his followers within it. Dennis Hardy’s Garden Cities to New Towns (1992) underplays the importance of WGC in the history of British new communities of the twentieth century.

Back during the 1970s, when the Open University (OU) was beginning to make a splash in distance learning across Britain, it provided a popular second level unit entitled ‘Urban Development’. In The Garden City (1975) Stephen Bayley critically discussed the origins of planned new towns and garden cities, from the factory villages of the nineteenth century to the larger new towns of the last century. WGC was given a great deal of attention, not least because of the role of its influential architect Louis de Soissons, who was appointed Chief Architect by WGCL in April 1920. His synthesis of modern town planning with a Georgian-influenced architectural style was also much praised by Ray Thomas and Peter Cresswell, The New Town Idea (1975). It is pause for thought that these course units are among the most detailed and thought-provoking histories of WGC from garden city to new town. In establishing the national and international reputation of the OU in the new city Milton Keynes, the academics were drawing upon the histories of WGC and Letchworth and earlier planned new towns.

The importance of WGC is also explored in studies of the British Garden City Movement. The work of Anthony Alexander, Robert Beevers, Michael Hebbert and Standish Meacham, to take just four examples, has delved into the history of WGC from many different angles, demonstrating that there is not one agreed interpretation of the history and significance of the town. Alexander for example, in Britain’s New Towns: Garden Cities to Sustainable Communities (2009), argues that the history of WGC from garden city to new town and now towards a more sustainable urban environment fulfils some key aspects of Howard’s original intentions while demonstrating the town’s adaptability to change. By contrast, in Garden City Utopia: A Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard (1988), Robert Beevers shows how the original, perhaps naïve, idealism of Howard’s thought was undermined by the actual process of building garden cities, and the constraints and political realities faced by their exponents. WGC is an obvious case in point. In Regaining Paradise: Englishness and the Early Garden City Movement (1999), Standish Meacham also analyses a process of dilution of Howard’s ideals, arguing they relied on romantic notions of past living that would find a difficult fit into the twentieth century. In a number of scholarly contributions to books on the Garden City Movement, for example, ‘The British Garden City: Metamorphosis’ (1992), Michael Hebbert also demonstrates some key mismatches between the original template of Howard and developments in Letchworth, WGC and other experiments in garden cities during the twentieth century.

Local and Heritage Histories of Welwyn Garden City

Among the most useful books to anyone, academic or otherwise, interested in WGC is Maurice de Soissons’ Welwyn Garden City: A Town Designed for Healthy Living (1988). Maurice was the son of Louis, yet his history of WGC, whilst properly noting its achievements and successes, also draws attention to some of the problems in the town’s history, from internal divisions in Welwyn Garden City Ltd, to local opposition to both the garden city and the new town, tensions between local political organisations, social problems between the wars and since, and also difficulties in meeting demand with the supply of materials and services. It is a skilful book, moreover, blending a corporate and planning history of WGC with its social, economic and political development. The current book has been quite dependent upon it.

The work of the Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust (WGCHT), funded by successful applications to the Heritage Lottery Fund, makes the most significant contribution to Live, Work and Play. The Trust was begun in 2005 when a few people, who later became trustees, took up arms successfully against a planning application in the garden city. There followed a realisation that the town lacked a dedicated champion for its heritage and so the Trust was established as a charity and not-for-profit company in December 2006. Since then it has created an invaluable collection of oral testimonies and other materials. Of particular value to this book has been the collection of oral history interviews with Welwyn Garden City residents for Where Do You Think We Worked? and Where Do You Think We Played? Two publications carry the same titles and draw upon those interviews. Another series of interviews was Where Do You Think You Lived?, although these remain unpublished at the time of writing. Oral history can be problematic, as people tend to remember selectively, and often reinterpret the past in a positive light. This is known as ‘retrospective contamination’ by oral historians. But oral history also supplies lively memories and personal experiences of life and work in twentieth-century WGC that are often absent from the printed record.

The DVD Welwyn Garden City: A Brave Vision (1996) was the idea of the WGC Society, who obtained sponsorship and practical help from Rank Xerox to create the original film. It was issued to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the town in 1995. The initial format was a cassette with copyright held by Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) but by 2006 this format had been largely replaced by the DVD and sales had dried up. Recognising the quality of the production, the Trust approached HCC with a view to acquiring the copyright and converting the format to a DVD, which HCC were happy to accept. The film was relaunched to celebrate the town’s ninetieth anniversary, since when over 500 copies have been sold throughout the UK and overseas. The ability of the Trust to gain funding for the promotion of local history is a testament both to those who have worked for it, and also to the ‘can-do’ culture that had been instilled in WGC since its earliest days. The WGCHT web address is www.welwyngarden-heritage.org. The website contains many quotes from interviews, pictures and photographs, many relevant to this present book.

Another example of an active and concerned citizenry is the aforementioned Welwyn Garden City Society, much of whose work is available online at http://welwynhatfield.co.uk/wgc_society. The Society is dedicated to preserving the character and qualities of the built environment and the amenities of the town. In addition to publicising WGC, conserving its buildings, and promoting an engaged and well-informed civic culture, the Society is now at the forefront in defending the Garden City from a new phase of planned development and infill that threatens the very essence of the Garden City principles that have served WGC so well over the past 100 years.

2

DREAMERS AND DOERS: THE MAKING OF WELWYN GARDEN CITY

Industrialisation, Urbanisation and the Search for Solutions

The County of Hertfordshire in south-east England is the home, some might say the cradle, of the world’s earliest modern garden cities. Letchworth was the first, designated in 1903, but its successor, Welwyn Garden City, is just as well known in the county, the country and across the world as its slightly older sibling.

The story of Ebenezer Howard and his founding of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities has been told extensively, but historical context is required in order to understand the antecedents of WGC, and the ideas and working examples that influenced Howard. The two Hertfordshire garden cities were the latest chapters in the story of planned industrial villages and model communities, a story stretching back to the Industrial Revolution that began during the later eighteenth century, and which continued to evolve throughout the nineteenth century.1 These were the factory villages built for the working population, and some innovative garden suburb experiments. They were a fascinating part of the wider story of humanitarian interventions and progressive reforms to improve the social, cultural and economic conditions of the unplanned industrial towns and cities, particularly the poorest, overcrowded and insanitary districts.

Factory Villages in Britain During the Industrial Revolution

Among the most famous British examples are the company housing experiments built by paternalistic employers for textile workers during the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Two stand out: Cromford in Derbyshire, and New Lanark in Lanarkshire. Built during the 1770s, Cromford was a factory village for textile workers, financed by the paternalistic employer Richard Arkwright. In addition to the nearby mill, the houses for the workers were also accompanied by a church and a community hall, an early version of living, working and playing in a community setting.2 Robert Owen, the utopian socialist, bought out David Dale, the founder of New Lanark, providing further recreational facilities such as schools and meeting places. Owen also established New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, an early example of the international diffusion of idealistic planned new communities. These were practical empirical examples of utopian ideals made real, unlike the grand but unrealised schemes of French philosophers such as Proudhon and Saint-Simon.

The mature phase of the Industrial Revolution saw the birth of Copley in 1849, and Saltaire in 1850, named after its capitalist benefactor and employer Sir Titus Salt. And in 1860 the factory village of Ackroydon was begun in the industrial zone of Leeds and Bradford in Yorkshire, named after its industrialist benefactor Colonel Edward Ackroyd, who had also previously financed Copley. Another famous new community, founded during the 1870s, was the upscale suburb of Bedford Park in London. Influenced by a number of leading Victorian architects, including Richard Norman Shaw, it created Arts and Crafts residences for high-minded aesthetes who consciously rejected mass production.3 The jam-making company Hartley’s, based in Liverpool, developed a model village at Aintree from 1880 for its workers, while soon afterwards Port Sunlight was established on the Wirral, a model village established by the Lever Brothers for their workforce and named after ‘Sunlight Soap’. William Hesketh Lever, a contemporary of Howard, brought into existence an aesthetically fine village, which was to influence the Garden City Movement as that movement emerged and saw its first expression at Letchworth. Its romantic Arts and Crafts domestic architecture was designed by the architect William Owen, and also bears the imprint of Richard Norman Shaw. As the respected architectural historian Stephen Bayley argues, ‘No two blocks of cottages at Port Sunlight are the same’:

… and although over 1,000 were eventually built, most of this took place in a short period of time for there was relatively little building activity after the First World War. There were two basic types of accommodation: the ‘kitchen cottage’ with kitchen, scullery and three bedrooms, and the ‘parlour cottage’, which differed in that it had the advantages of four bedrooms and an added parlour.4

Lever also funded the village of Thornton Hough in Cheshire, during the 1890s, and later during the 1920s, as WGC was being constructed, he funded the extensive new housing estate of Wythenshawe in Manchester. By then he was Viscount Leverhulme in recognition of his industrial and humanitarian achievements. The importance of Port Sunlight, however, was to introduce variety into cottage-style domestic architecture that influenced the Garden City Movement.

If Port Sunlight was fashioned from profits made from soap, two other important influences on the emerging Garden City Movement owed much to revenue gained from the manufacturing of chocolate. These were also privately funded company villages. The Cadbury Co. began Bournville in the Midlands in 1898, the year that Howard’s Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform was published. Following its first phase of construction, a second building campaign began in 1905, hence coterminous with Letchworth’s early development.5 The significance of Bournville for the twentieth-century design of garden cities was again in the cottage-style housing, with gardens, and the subsequent low-density residential development, but also in innovations in street planning, such as the 7m (20ft) setting back of houses from the street, allowing for a generous provision of front gardens.6 This was a distinctive break from the terraced by-law houses of late Victorian Britain that were built following the Housing Act of 1875. With front doors opening out directly onto the street, and containing a toilet and a small backyard, by-law houses were a distinct improvement on the jerry-built back-to-backs and slums of the Victorian years.7 Yet the types of homes being offered by Bournville were an improvement on by-law terraces, offering more outdoor space and better interior design.

Ebenezer Howard.

In York, the Rowntree Co. began New Earswick in 1902, its development continuing in earnest with the establishment of the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust in 1904. Its significance to the Garden City Movement, alongside the fact it was initiated at almost the same time as Letchworth, is that its architects were Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, who drew up the master plan for Letchworth, and also Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London. With its straight main roads, curved minor roads and culs-de-sac, New Earswick was an early expression, in miniature, of what was built in Letchworth. It also anticipated the street pattern at WGC, from 1920.8

‘The Garden City Geyzer’: Ebenezer Howard

Following an uninspiring clerical career in London, Howard spent the years from 1871 to 1876 in the United States of America, where in Nebraska he came to understand the importance of communal self-help in rural communities. His life as a farmer there did not go well, so he moved to Chicago where he witnessed many experiments in new community building in low-density suburbs and semi-rural areas, and mixed with leading American writers and reformers. As the writer Lewis Mumford observed, Howard’s time in the USA provided him with the ‘constant spectacle of new communities being laid out every year on new land, and he was impressed by the possibility of a new start’.9 The sense of pioneering in the United States, of creating active new forward-looking communities some distance from the, as he saw it, moral degradations of the industrial city, was a powerful influence on Howard’s developing utopianism. On his return to England, he gained employment as a shorthand writer working in the Houses of Parliament, where he mixed with people in positions of power. Howard took full advantage to promote his ideas as his real talents lay in imagining new planned communities, and he was fortunate enough to live in a historical context where many ideas and proposals to reimagine urban-industrial societies were forthcoming. This was the ‘Progressive Era’ in American and European social thinking and politics, lasting from 1880 to 1940. Howard would make his own unique contribution to the case of progressive social reform.

A key theme in the British radicalism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was land reform. The English writer and utopian thinker Thomas Spence laid some of the ground for Howard’s work by arguing in his lecture The Rights of Man in the 1770s that everyone deserved an equal right to land and liberty. Sometimes called ‘the first English socialist’, Spence envisaged utopian communities in ‘Crusonia’ and ‘Spensonia’, experiments in communal living and collective land ownership.10 Howard was no socialist but he deserves to be viewed within the utopian-radical tradition of questioning industrial capitalism and its social and environmental consequences, and of proposing grand alternative visions.

Although he was no intellectual, Howard was incredibly open-minded, hungry for ideas and influences to mould his vision for a reinvigorated and optimistic urban future. Hence he drew upon an eclectic set of writers and thinkers. During the 1880s he read Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s The Art of Colonisation, originally published in 1849, which called for a more systematic approach to the construction of new communities in the Empire.11

At much the same time as Wakefield was developing his ideas, the Christian radical utopian writer James Silk Buckingham saw his plan for a radical new model industrial community published in National Evils and Practical Remedies (1849). Calling for an end to unplanned and dangerous urbanisation, he proposed his vision for Victoria, ‘a model industrial town laid out on rectilinear principles.’12 The importance of self-containment, as well as of thinking big, is evident in Victoria.

A more contemporary and significant influence on Howard were the arguments of the influential American political economist Henry George. George was exercised by the great paradox of urban-industrial societies, and particularly in his own country, that as increasing levels of wealth and prosperity were generated by the economy, growing levels of inequality and poverty accompanied the material achievements of the nineteenth century. His book Progress and Poverty (1879) called for the producers of wealth to keep the value of what their labour had created. He also argued that the economic values based on land should belong to each and every member of society, and that the state should compulsorily acquire the land, rather than private interests and rentier capitalists.

Howard acknowledged that George’s Progress and Poverty was an eloquent and inspiring call for land reform, but he refrained from the negative caricatures of landlords as ‘pirates and robbers’ and was reluctant to countenance the forceful acquisition and nationalisation of land under the auspices of the state. Instead, Howard called for ‘“force of example” that is by setting up a better system, and by a little skill in the grouping of forces and the manipulation of ideas.’13 These principles led Howard to argue that the land in his proposed garden cities would be in held in trust, and on lease, on behalf of all the citizens by the company that would manage the birth and development of the new town.

Howard did not completely reject the proactive role of the state in land for planned urban development, however. He was acutely aware that ‘large areas of land must be obtained’ for any major planned new community, and he argued that just as the Government had assisted in the purchase of private land to extend the railway network nationwide, so the state could involve itself in land purchase for an expanding network of ‘social cities’, or ‘town clusters’ each individually designed to ‘a well-thought-out plan’.14 This idea later eventuated in the British post-war new towns legislation.

Another, and in some ways more surprising, influence on Howard was the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who first visited London in 1881. Howard was not particularly enamoured of the revolutionary and libertarian components of anarchism, but derived from Kropotkin the significance of local economic initiative both on the land and in towns, and the importance of self-government by local people. As Beevers notes, Howard cited Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops in his second edition of Tomorrow.15

In 1888, a year of urban protest at poverty and unemployment in Britain, Howard organised a reprinting of the visionary book Looking Backward, by the American writer Edward Bellamy. A key argument that a future where land was in common ownership rather than at the mercy of private interests exercised a profound impact upon Howard, evidenced in his own efforts to publicise these arguments. In 1890 the Nationalisation of Labour Society (NLS) was established to promote Bellamy’s ideas, and as Stephen Ward argues, the NLS provided Howard with one of his earliest opportunities to speak publicly about them.

During the early 1890s Howard used the term ‘Rurisville’ for his new settlement, but by 1896 he had begun to refer to ‘garden city’ instead.16 He did not coin the term but Howard would become its most prolific exponent, and his name synonymous with it. The American writer and expert on urban history, Lewis Mumford, who came to know WGC very well, suggested that Howard may have taken the name ‘garden city’ from the eponymous ‘Garden City’ built on Long Island, New York, from 1869. Howard was also well acquainted with Chicago during his time in the US, which had once been known as ‘the garden city’.17 Other scholars of architecture and planned new communities have made the same point.18

A further important influence on Howard was the British economist Alfred Marshall, who in 1884 argued strongly for the decentralisation of manufacturing away from the overcrowded cities into factory villages located in rural settings. Here was another key theme – dispersal – that influenced Howard.19

Howard was aware of most of the important utopian proposals for new communities in Britain, Europe and the USA, and was versed in those experiments that had been realised, as discussed above. Howard’s philosophy of garden city planning was explained extensively in his 1898 publication Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, republished with the slightly catchier title of Garden Cities of Tomorrow in 1902. As Roberts and Taylor have argued, the second title was also more palatable to the conservative-minded Victorian capitalists to whom Howard was appealing for forward-funding for his projects.20 It is widely acknowledged by planning historians that Howard was ‘neither architect nor scholar’ but more of an urban reformer and idealist.21 The book was a synthesis of the influences on Howard, and an ambitious statement of his garden city vision. His key principles may be summarised as follows:

•   Self-sufficiency: the garden city was to harness agriculture and industry within the local economy, providing local employment and cutting down on the need for commuting to other towns for work, and on the long-distance transfer of goods. Local services, shops, and leisure facilities would enable every citizen to be able to live, work and play in a garden city.

•   Self-containment: spatial limits of growth were to be constrained by a green belt upon which development would not be permitted in order to prevent the much-detested suburban sprawl of which Howard, in common with many writers, artists and reformers, was critical.

•   Zoning: as a considered reaction to the mixed-use, noisy often squalid and overcrowded streets of the town centre, Howard proposed a separation between residential areas and those containing industrial and commercial activities. Homes were to be upwind from industrial pollution and smog.

•   Collective land-ownership: the land upon which the garden city was built should not be privately owned but held in trust by a development company. (However, changes of governance and land ownership in the history of WGC, and the rise of private owner occupation, undermined this aspiration.)

•   Decentralisation: the planned new community drew upon a dispersed population from the existing industrial city, and from the more remote rural areas where there was little opportunity for employment. The garden city was thus intended to prevent urban growth by rural to urban migration, and provide an improved environment for those from the town or country. This was the magnet, the attraction of the garden city as the best of both urban and rural. And this was evident in the final principle:

•   A balance of town and country: the perils of rural isolation on the one hand, and of overcrowded and insanitary city life on the other, would be solved by the harmonious environment of the planned new community.22

Howard’s Garden City diagrams portray the town centre with a Central Park and a Crystal Palace for shopping and socialising. Grand boulevards radiate out from the centre, dividing the town into distinct areas, or ‘wards’. The ward was to be within easy access of the centre, but also to contain its own retail and social facilities. As Osborn argued in his preface to Howard’s republished Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1965), the ward idea prioritised ‘the need for local facilities for local life and popularised in Britain the theory, familiar for many years in America, of the “neighbourhood unit.”’23 Mervyn Miller, an architectural expert and historian, agrees that the ward was ‘the forerunner of the neighbourhood unit’.24 The neighbourhood unit was a planning concept finessed in the USA and applied to British new towns, including WGC, after the Second World War, which is discussed later in the book.

Howard drawing, ‘Central city’.

After ‘garden city’, the term that most succinctly crystallises Howard’s vision is ‘social city’. All of the above came together to produce what he hoped would become living new communities, socially engaged, culturally progressive, and economically self-sustaining. Each garden city would be a social city, a place where people could live, work and play all their lives.

For all his achievements and the grandness of his vision, Howard remained essentially a modest man, living a modest life. His home in Guessens Road, WGC, during the 1920s was a medium-sized, semi-detached house, where he lived with his second wife. One man recorded by the Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust (WGCHT) who moved to Guessens Road as a young boy in 1924 lived just across the street from Howard, and recalled him as a kind and quiet gentleman.25

Howard drawing, ‘Three magnets’.

There is an old saying that it is the quiet ones you should watch. Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform marked ‘a turning point in British planning history’.26 In the year following its publication, the Garden Cities Association (GCA) was formed, renamed in 1909 as the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (GCTPA). In both guises, the association was at the heart of a progressive network of intellectuals, social reformers, writers and politicians.

The first Secretary of the GCA was a Scots surveyor, Thomas Adams. Relatively young and ambitious, he played a key role in promoting the garden city idea in principle and practice; for example, organising a national conference at Bournville in September 1901. George Cadbury provided not only financial assistance to the conference but also accommodation. Speakers included George Bernard Shaw, Ebenezer Howard and a number of advocates of planned developments.27

According to Beevers, Shaw went down much more positively than Howard, partly because he was more charismatic, more famous, and a better speaker. It is worth noting here that Shaw was ambivalent towards ‘the heroic simpleton’ Howard, whom he called ‘the garden city geyzer’, adding that the planner was ‘a fountain of benevolent mud’. Yet Shaw was a supporter of the garden city idea, and even called, in John Bull’s Other Island, for garden cities to be built in Ireland. In Britain, Shaw invested ‘sizeable sums of money’ in both the companies at Letchworth and WGC.28 He lived in the Hertfordshire village of Ayot St Lawrence, just a few miles from the second garden city.