Welwyn Garden City

St Mary Magdalene, lnk, is a tick the box church - as in it falls in to the date range - but is utterly lacking merit. Designed, and I use the word loosely, by Ernest Balfour in 1882 and funded by the third Lord Salisbury for the use of his tenants and workers it was consecrated in 1883. The interior may, of course, be outstanding but as it's locked who knows.

Pevsner didn't bother.

Welwyn Garden City. It may not be a city, but it is surely a garden, a lovely place of lawns and flowers, which has not yet been growing 20 years. It is an ordered village in which the area devoted to gardens and green-verged, tree-lined roads so greatly exceeds the red and white houses that the impression is of light and air everywhere. If it is lovely now, it will be lovelier still when the trees rise to the height of the fine Sherrards Park Wood on its northern boundary, with the pretty village of Digswell close by and old Welwyn village beyond. A branch railway runs through a delightful glade in these woods, and from its beautiful bridge we look down along the great open space through the heart of the Garden City, set out with splendid avenues and beds of flowers; the view continues to the hills beyond the valley of the River Lea. The factory area of the village is spaciously laid out on the eastern side of the main line of the railway; the residential area is on the west.

The red-brick church is planned on spacious and striking lines. The nave inside is of mottled brick, the chancel and the chapels are white. The chancel is one of the biggest we have seen, mounting in seven steps to the altar, which is draped with blue and grey. Great grey draperies hanging from the roof take the place of an east window. The roof is timbered and painted.

On a wall by one of the lawns at the shopping centre we read that Ebenezer Howard founded this town. It is, of course, the child of his dreams, like Letchworth, where we come upon him again.

Flickr.