The New Towns

‘Welwyn is so scandalously unique’, wrote Clough Williams-Ellis in 1928, ‘that few even of those who have heard of it really grasp what it is, what it has done, and what it stands for.’ ⁷⁰⁵ Those who grasped what it could stand for were the industrialists, who realized that amenities which their forebears like Robert Owen or Titus Salt had to provide, were here provided for them. For industrialists were now preferring a place where amenities were being either dealt with as part of a major problem affecting an area already industrialized, or were being voluntarily taken over by responsible bodies directly interested in the settlement of industry in a new area and undertaking the consequent responsibilities. ⁷⁰⁶ From the opening of the Shredded Wheat factory in 1926 Welwyn developed rapidly, becoming a trading estate as well as a garden city. The trading estate and the housing suburb were the two characteristic social growths of the mid-war years: and both owed much to the motor car. Welwyn built factories which firms might rent, and twenty-five acres were so developed. Firms became anxious to lease land for their own factories; about seventy were built, employing some 3,500 persons. By 1934 the Marley Report was recommending the building of satellite towns on the model of Welwyn.