Welwyn Garden City

After Letchworth comes Welwyn. Letchworth was founded in 1902 and so could take advantage of depressed land prices and few building restrictions. By the time Welwyn was begun in 1920 landowners had got wise to the fact that if people wanted to build a new town there had to be something in it for them. Eventually the state took over Welwyn and designated it a new town in the years after the second world war.

You enter Welyn Garden City through the Howard Shopping Centre, with the station built in. You find the usual shop suspects here and leave to go into a wide grassed area terminating in a fountain. This fountain is on Parkway which is a broad grassed boulevard leading up to the library and theatre. The houses are in classic garden city style and the master planning architect was Louis De Soissons.

The Church of St Francis (Church of England) was also designed by Louis De Soissons and has a very wide table - you could have about six clergy standing behind it. The church is quite plain but has a relief of st Francis above the former door.

There are various works of art around the town and a town trail incorporating a cheap cottages exhibition, but I didn't really have a lot of daylight left to do that in.

A really dull day for pictures though so no good ones