Stevenage new town from conception to today

Stevenage continued to grow slowly but steadily until just after the Second World War, when the Abercrombie Plan called for the establishment of a ring of new towns around London. On 1 August 1946, Stevenage was designated the first New Town under the New Towns Act.

Owing to the widespread damage to London from the Blitz, new housing was deemed necessary for the displaced population of London.

This plan was not very popular and local people from the Stevenage area protested at a meeting held in the town hall before Lewis Silkin, minister in the Labour Government of Clement Attlee. As Lewis Silkin arrived at the railway station for this meeting, some local people had changed the signs ‘Stevenage’ to ‘Silkingrad’. Silkin was obstinate at the meeting, telling a crowd of 3,000 people outside the town hall, which amounted to around half the Stevenage residents: “It’s no good your jeering, it’s going to be done.” Despite the hostile reaction to Silkin and a referendum that showed 52% were entirely against the expansion, the plan went ahead anyway. The first significant building to be demolished to make way for a gyratory system was the Old Town Hall, in which the opposition had been expressed, in 1974.

In 1949 the town planner Dr Monica Felton became Chairman of the Stevenage Development Corporation but she was sacked within two years. There were a number of reasons for her dismissal by the government but a lack of hands-on town planning leadership and her opposition to the Korean War, negatively impacted her reputation. Felton was replaced first by Allan Duff and later Thomas Bennett, who carried the project to completion. Gordon Stephenson was the planner, Peter Shepheard the architect, and Eric Claxton the engineer. Claxton took the attitude that Stevenage should separate bicycles from the automobile as much as possible. Mary Tabor was the Housing Director of Stevenage New Town from 1951 until 1972. Tabor was a member of the Society of Women Housing Managers, which was founded by women trained under Octavia Hill. Mary Tabor, with the support of more than forty housing management staff by 1960, provided a notably personal and caring service to tenants of the town. Many early residents of Stevenage were very grateful for how much she had done for them and Stevenage as a whole.

In May 1953, Sir Roydon Dash took over the position of chairman from Bennett. In 1962, Sir Arthur Rucker was appointed Chairman of the Stevenage Development Corporation, retiring from the position in 1966. He was succeeded by Evelyn Denington, Baroness Denington, who joined the Board in 1950. Denington remained the chairman until the dissolution of the Corporation in 1980.

Stevenage to have six mini towns within a town

Stevenage was planned to accommodate six self-contained neighbourhoods that would make up the wider town as a whole. The first two of these to be occupied were the Stoney Hall and Monks Wood Estates, in 1951. The Twin Foxes pub, on the Monks Wood estate, was Stevenage’s first new public house and was named after local notorious identical-twin poachers Albert and Ebenezer Fox. Sadly, the public house closed in 2017. At least two other public houses have a direct relationship to local history. The Edward the Confessor pub, which closed in 2006 could have had a connection to St Mary’s Church in nearby Walkern as King Edward reigned from 1042 until his death in 1066 and Walkern’s church dates from this period. The second pub with a link to local history is the Our Mutual Friend in the Broadwater part of Stevenage. The name of the pub is the title of a novel by Charles Dickens. Dickens was an occasional guest of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton in nearby Knebworth House and knew Stevenage extremely well.

Next to be built and occupied were the neighbourhoods of Bedwell in 1952, and then came Broadwater and Shephall in around 1953, the Chells neighbourhood was developed in the 1960s and later Pin Green and Symonds Green. Another new development to the north of the town is Great Ashby. As of 2014 it was still under construction. The Government gave almost £2 million for a purpose-built homeless shelter, which was intended to serve a large part of Hertfordshire.

Stevenage is a major industrial centre

Around the Gunnels wood road area of Stevenage, sits a host of well-known business interests. For many years British Aerospace was the largest employer in Stevenage, but now GlaxoSmithKline has a large pharmaceutical research laboratory complex near to the junction of the A1 (M) Many refer to it as ‘Gotham City’, but the official local name for the building is ‘the Palace’. The British Aerospace site is now occupied by MBDA.

Gunnels wood road in Stevenage also has incubation centres for small business in the form of the Business and Technology Centre (BTC).