Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Letchworth Childhood

Seeing the fountain in this picture brings back childhood memories from the 1950/60s of sailing boats up and down the paddling pool at weekends or when your parents took you down on a sunny afternoon. Summer fetes and funfair on the grass area between the paddling pool and Norton Way South, last but not least playing in the small wood behind... [more]

Southern England

This is part of the marvellous system which by 1933 comprised the Grand Junction or Union Canal, linking the Thames with the Midland canal system, and providing a direct waterway link between London and Birmingham. Completed at the start of the 19th century, it brought the industrial revolution to rural Hertfordshire. Four male generations of one family worked as lock keepers here, providing nearly 200 years of service between... [more]

Hertfordshire Photographic Memories

One of the early buildings constructed as part of Ebenezer Howard's vision of a garden city at Letchworth, this fantastic structure was erected in 1906-7 by the architect Coulishaw, and was intended as a school of theosophical meditation. It made startlingly original use of traditional materials and familiar decoration, but engendered a mixed reaction from critics.

North and East Hertfordshire Photographic Memories

The name of the town of Letchworth appears to derive from 'lecha weorthig', 'the farm by the rivulet'. There is no mention of a church here at the time of Domesday, although there was woodland for 100 pigs. Robert Gernon held the manor, and his name is remembered in Gernon Road, home of the District Council Offices. St Mary's lies just... [more]