Letchworth starts the Garden City trend

In 1898, the social reformer Ebenezer Howard wrote To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. This was to be 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. His vision of a garden city was illustrated 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 ready access to parks and the countryside. The garden city would be contained in a belt of open countryside. Howard saw this surrounding band of countryside an integral part of the garden city concept, providing land not just for agriculture, but also for children’s homes, asylums, new forests and brickfields. This idea of a protected rural belt were later taken up more generally in town planning in Britain from the mid-twentieth century and came to be referred to as the green belt.

Howard’s ideas for Letchworth and other areas were ridiculed in some sections of the press but were recognised for their wisdom and welcomed with many, particularly members of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Quakers. After looking into several possible locations for establishing a garden city, the garden city pioneers settled on Letchworth as their chosen site. The Letchworth Hall estate had come up for sale, and whilst it alone was too small, secret negotiations with fourteen adjoining landowners allowed an estate of 3,818 acres 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 Letchworth Garden City.

In 1904, a competition was held for architects to design the Letchworth layout, and architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker won 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, now the Broadway, from three old oak trees which stood in the centre of the estate and were incorporated into the central square.

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 Letchworth Garden City estate. Initially, the services were irregular special trains for excursions and the many construction workers. A more substantial wooden station was opened in 1905 with a regular passenger service. The current railway station was built in 1912 a little to the east of the wooden station, in a prominent location at the end of Broadway.

Letchworth: What’s in a name?

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.

Although Letchworth was officially the first garden city, unlike Welwyn Garden City, Letchworth is generally known as Letchworth, without the ‘Garden City’ suffix. Letchworth railway station was initially called “Letchworth Garden City”, but was renamed “Letchworth” in 1937.

In 1905, and again in 1907, the company held some exhibitions, which were set up as contests for architects and builders to demonstrate innovations in inexpensive housing. The 1905 exhibition attracted about sixty thousand visitors. The exhibitions were surprisingly popular and led the Daily Mail to launch the Ideal Home Exhibition, which later became the Ideal Home Show, in 1908.

Letchworth and Lenin

One visitor to the new 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 his 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 magnet and a haven for communists and conscientious objectors, claims which Letchworth town officials strongly denied.

Letchworth promised a better life

Letchworth attracted new residents by offering the promise of a better life. These claims were often criticised and ridiculed by some as somewhat idealistic and otherworldly. Some people even believed that Letchworth was intended to be the headquarters of some sort of utopian cult.

Letchworth the temperance town

Letchworth was most unusual for a British town, as there was a total ban 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” opened in March 1907.

Despite the ban it is not entirely true to say that there were no pubs in Letchworth. Pubs that had existed from before the foundation of Letchworth Garden City, including the Three Horseshoes in Norton, and the Three Horseshoes and the Fox in Willian, continued to operate, and undoubtedly benefited from the lack of alcohol to be had in the centre of the town, as did the pubs in neighbouring Hitchin and Baldock. 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 Letchworth Garden City. Several other public houses have opened since then, but to this day the town centre has only about six pubs, a very low number for a town of its size. Compared to its small neighbour of Baldock, which has many pubs in its High Street alone.