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Letchworth Garden City

Letchworth Garden City
Letchworth Garden City is located in Hertfordshire
Letchworth Garden City
Letchworth Garden City
Letchworth Garden City shown within Hertfordshire
Area 7.767 sq mi (20.12 km2)
Population 33,249 (2011 census)
• Density 4,281/sq mi (1,653/km2)
OS grid reference TL215325
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY
Postcode district SG6
Dialling code 01462
Police Hertfordshire
Fire Hertfordshire
Ambulance East of England
EU Parliament East of England
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
HertfordshireCoordinates: 51°58′41″N 0°13′48″W / 51.978°N 0.230°W / 51.978; -0.230

Letchworth, officially Letchworth Garden City, is a town in Hertfordshire, England, with a population of 33,600. It is a former civil parish.

The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded (the other two being Willian and Norton) – all of which featured in the Domesday Book. The land used was purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the area and build a Quaker community. The town was laid out by Raymond Unwin as a demonstration of the principles established by Ebenezer Howard who sought to create an alternative to the industrial city by combining the best of town and country living. It is also home to the United Kingdom's first roundabout, which was built in 1909.

As one of the world's first new towns and the first garden city it had great influence on future town planning and the New towns movement; it influenced Welwyn Garden City, which used a similar approach and inspired other projects around the world including the Australian capital Canberra, Hellerau, Germany, Tapanila, Finland, and Mežaparks in Latvia.) There is a link to town planning in Stalingrad through the architect V. N. Semionov and an account of Lenin visiting the town when he visited England for a congress of the Russian Bolshevik party, then banned in Russia.

Letchworth was one of the ancient parishes of Hertfordshire. The parish church of St Mary the Virgin was built in the 12th or 13th Century. The village was located along the road now called Letchworth Lane, stretching from St Mary's and the adjoining medieval manor house (now Letchworth Hall Hotel) up to the crossroads of Letchworth Lane, Hitchin Road, Baldock Road and Spring Road, where there was a post office. Letchworth was a relatively small parish, having a population in 1801 of 67, rising to 96 by 1901.


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