Letchworth

"Letchworth Garden City", is a town in Hertfordshire, England. The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded. The land used was first purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the area and build a Quaker community. They very quickly discovered the soil to be chalky and of poor agricultural use. Founded and created in 1903 by Ebenezer Howard, it was one of the first new towns, and is the world's first Garden City. Its development inspired another Garden City project at Welwyn Garden City, and had great influence on future town planning and the New Towns movement. Today it has a population of around 33,000. Canberra, the Australian capital was influenced by its design concepts.

1 The town's development
2 Schools
3 Black squirrels
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The town's development

[edit] The early days

Howard's depiction of the choice of town design as a contest between three magnets (select image for transcript)

In 1898, the social reformer Ebenezer Howard wrote a book entitled Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (later republished as Garden Cities of Tomorrow), in which he advocated the construction of a new kind of town, summed up in his Three Magnets diagram as combining the advantages of cities and the countryside while eliminating their disadvantages. Industry would be kept separate from residential areas-- such zoning was a new idea at the time-- and trees and open spaces would prevail everywhere. His ideas were mocked in the press but struck a chord with many, especially members of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Quakers.

A competition was held to find a town design which could translate Howard's ideas into reality, and within a few years the company "First Garden City Ltd." was formed, Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin were appointed architects, and 16 km² of land outside Hitchin were purchased for building. In 1905, and again in 1907, the company held the Cheap Cottages Exhibitions, contests to build inexpensive housing, which attracted some 60,000 visitors.

Railway companies often ran excursions to the town, bringing people to marvel at the social experiment and sometimes to mock it: 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 not lifted until a referendum in 1958. Until that time pubs and inns sprung up on the borders of the town, one such example being the Wilbury Hotel which was just outside the towns border.

One of the most prominent industries to arrive in the town in the early years was the manufacture of corsets: the Spirella Company began building a large factory in 1912, close to the middle of town and the railway station that opened the next year. The Spirella building, completed in 1920, blends in despite its central position through being disguised as a large country house, complete with towers and a ballroom. During the Second World War, the factory was also involved in producing parachutes and decoding machinery. Because corsets fell out of fashion, the factory closed in the 1980s, and was eventually refurbished and converted into offices. Another significant employer in the town was Shelvoke and Drewry, a manufacturer of dustcarts and fire engines which existed from 1922 until 1990; as was Hands (Letchworth), James Drewry joining them in 1935, who manufactured axles, brakes and Hands Trailers. Letchworth had a very diverse light industry, including K & L Steel Foundry, often a target for German bombers in World War II, the Letchworth Parachute Factory, J M Dent and Son (also known as The Aldine Press, Garden City Press, and the biggest employer British Tabulating, later to become Hollerith, then ICT and finally ICL (International Computers Limited). At one time the "tab: as it was known had occupancy of over 30 factories in Icknield Way (the original Roman Road, Works Road and finally in Black Horse Road. Black Horse Road was built on what was the continuation of the original Roman road the "Icknield Way". Upon building the new ICL building the remains of a large Roman camp was found, many articles being found and saved for display in the Letchworth Museum.

[edit] Civic History

Arms of Letchworth Urban District Council (defunct since 1974)

One of Letchworth Garden City's founding principles, unlike any previous British attempt at new town design, was that land should be held in common for the good of all. First Garden City Ltd owned the entire estate, but leased plots to citizens for building houses, to farmers for growing crops, and so on. The rents would provide income for the company, which would then invest the money back into the community. All citizens were shareholders, so all money was invested for the common good, and developments which the citizens disliked (tower blocks, for example) could be restricted as they pleased.

This arrangement began to go wrong and many residents in the town would often remark about the town being run by the "forty thieves" which in 1961 came to a head when Amy Rose and a company named Hotel York Ltd realised that if it bought enough of the shares from the citizens it could have a controlling interest in the town's estate, with no guarantee that the money would be used for the common good. To remedy this, the then Member of Parliament, Martin Madden sponsored a bill in Parliament, and Parliament passed the Letchworth Garden City Act 1962, which created a public body, the Letchworth Garden City Corporation, to take on the business of First Garden City Ltd; as a statutory corporation it could not be bought. The Corporation's officers were appointed by the Crown; later, the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation Act 1995 replaced the Corporation with a charity, the Foundation, whose officers were appointed by local residents.

Many of the original ground leases were written to last for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, but some ran for only ninety-nine; around 2001 many of these shorter leases began to expire, whereupon the Foundation sold the freehold of the land to the houseowners.

The civic local government of Letchworth has always been separate from the Company, Corporation or Foundation. It was formerly the responsibility of the Letchworth Urban District Council. After that body's abolition in 1974, local government became the responsibility of the North Hertfordshire District Council.

In 2003/2004 the closure of a Norton School, the threatened closure of the outdoor swimming pool and problems with planning in the town (planning applications need to be cleared by both the District Council and the Foundation) saw campaigners agitate for a separate town council. A petition was duly raised and presented to the District Council. In response to this the District Council held a referendum in December 2003, the results showed 60% in favour of creating a town council. Elections to the new body were held in late May 2005. Though the political parties all put up candidates for all seats, a group of independent candidates, citing Ebenezer Howard and the principles of the Garden City as a motivators won all the seats. It was described the following day as 'not so much a landslide, more so a revolution in local government'.

[edit] Letchworth today

First Garden City Heritage Museum, Letchworth

Several housing estates have been added to Letchworth since its inception: the Grange in 1947, Jackmans in 1961, and the more prosperous Lordship Farm and Manor Park in 1971. However, Jackmans is rather cut off from the rest of the town by major roads.

The Garden City estate began to turn a profit in the 1970s, leading to investment in a number of town amenities: a working farm, Standalone Farm, in 1980, a leisure centre and a theatre named Plinston Hall in 1982, a free hospital (the Ernest Gardiner Day Hospital) in 1984, and major refurbishment of the town's cinema and shopping centre in 1996 and 1997. The Foundation celebrated the town's centenary in 2003 by building a landscaped path for walkers and cyclists. The path, known as the Greenway, forms a 20km loop around the town.

During January 2005 Letchworth Garden City was recognised as having the first roundabout on a public road in the United Kingdom, dating from circa 1909.

Letchworth is twinned with:

[edit] Schools

Letchworth hosts a mixture of both private and state schools. State schools include "Highfield" and "Fearnhill". The private schools in Letchworth are "St. Christopher School" and "St Francis's College". St. Christopher is arguably the most famous school in Letchworth, it is vegetarian and has a strong Quaker ethos. "Knight's Templar" is another local school, although in the neighbouring town of Baldock, many children from Letchworth are taught there. In 2002 "Norton School" closed down in the town. Teacher shortages at the school had lead to significant numbers of temporary staff, with the quality of teaching by some staff deemed unsatisfactory by an Ofsted report.

[edit] Black squirrels

Letchworth Garden City is home to one of the UK's only colonies of black squirrels, thought to be a genetic mutation of the common grey squirrel. Sightings of black squirrels are common in and around the gardens and parks of the town.