Pram Town

A Memory of Harlow.

Harlow as we know it today was the first London-area ‘New Town’ to result from the Town and Country Planning Act of 1946, a long-term plan to build a number of new towns around London to ease the housing crisis after the Second World War, when thousands of London families had lost their homes. The small village that was there before the new town arrived is known as Old Harlow, just to the east of the modern town. The new town of Harlow was developed from 1949 onwards on the site of four sparsely-inhabited parishes, a little to the west of the ‘old town’ of Harlow. So many young families moved to Harlow New Town that in the 1960s it was given the nickname of ‘Pram Town’ because of the number or prams and pushchairs that could be seen there.