Letchworth Garden City, United Kingdom

By the time of the Norman Conquest, Letchworth was established as a village. The name is derived from the Old English "lycce weorth", meaning a farm inside a fence or enclosure. It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Leceworde", when it was described as having nine households of villagers, four cottagers, one slave and one priest. The presence of the priest suggests that Letchworth was by that time a parish. Letchworth's parish church was built in the 12th century, but likely on the site of an earlier building. The original dedication of the church is unknown, but it was rededicated to St Mary during the First World War. The village was along Letchworth Lane, stretching from St Mary's and the adjoining medieval manor house of Letchworth Hall up to the staggered crossroads of Letchworth Lane, Hitchin Road, Baldock Road and Spring Road. Letchworth was a relatively small parish, having a population in 1801 of 67, rising to 96 by 1901.

In 1898, the social reformer Ebenezer Howard wrote To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (republished in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow), in which he advocated the construction of a new kind of town, which he called a "garden city". The idea was summed up in a diagram called the "Three Magnets", showing how the mixed advantages and disadvantages of town or country living could be combined into a third option, "Town-Country", offering the advantages of both cities and the countryside while eliminating their disadvantages. Industry would be kept separate from residential areas, whilst the residents would have good access to parks and the countryside. The garden city would be contained in a belt of open countryside, providing land not just for agriculture, but also for children's homes, asylums, new forests and brickfields. Echoes of this idea of a protected rural belt were later taken up more generally in town planning in Britain from the mid-twentieth century as the green belt.

Howard's ideas were mocked in some sections of the press but struck a chord with many, especially members of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Quakers. After examining several possible locations for establishing a garden city, the garden city pioneers settled on Letchworth as the chosen site. The Letchworth Hall estate had come up for sale, and although it alone was too small, secret negotiations with fourteen adjoining landowners allowed an estate of 3,818 acres (1,545 hectares) to be assembled and purchased for £155,587. A company called First Garden City Limited was established on 1 September 1903 to purchase the land and begin building the garden city.

In 1904, architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker won a competition for designing the town's layout, and were appointed as consulting architects to the company. Most of the pre-existing trees and hedgerows were preserved in the layout. Unwin took the alignment of the town's main avenue (Broadway) from three old oak trees which stood on the central plateau of the estate and were incorporated into the central square (Broadway Gardens).

A temporary railway halt was built in 1903 on the Great Northern Railway's Hitchin, Royston and Cambridge branch line, which crosses the middle of the garden city estate. Initially, services were irregular special trains for excursions and construction workers. A more substantial temporary wooden station was opened in 1905 with a regular passenger service. The current railway station was built in 1912 in a prominent location at the end of Broadway.

The first new houses were occupied in July 1904. The following month First Garden City Limited held a vote amongst shareholders and residents on what name the new garden city should take. Several options were proposed, including "Garden City", "Homeworth" and "Alseopolis". The chosen name was "Letchworth (Garden City)". The company adopted this as its name for the town, but adoption of the name was not universal. The legal name of the civil parish and (after 1919) urban district remained simply "Letchworth". First Garden City Limited also gradually dropped the "(Garden City)" suffix from the name, partly reflecting common usage, and partly taking the view that as the town matured it should not permanently be seen as an experiment. Similarly, the town's railway station was initially called "Letchworth (Garden City)", but was renamed "Letchworth" in 1937. The station is now known as Letchworth Garden City, with direct trains to Brighton via St Pancras International and terminating trains to King's Cross to the South, and Cambridge and King's Lynn to the North.

Ebenezer Howard's wife, Lizzie (Eliza Ann Bills), died in November 1904 in London, shortly before she had been due to move to a new house in Letchworth with her husband. As a memorial to her a public hall was built, paid for by public subscriptions. The Mrs Howard Memorial Hall opened in 1906 and was one of the town's first public buildings.