Have you visited Basel in Switzerland? It is one of the top European cities, and has two things in common with Welwyn Garden.

Firstly, its historic centre is separated from its business area; Basel by the Rhine, Welwyn Garden City by the East Coast main line railway. Secondly, both have notable buildings by the healthcare company Roche in their business zones. Roche's headquarters in Basel is a pair of massive pyramidal towers by Herzog & de Meuron. Its Welwyn Garden site, in Shire Park, houses around 2,000 researchers in a beautiful modern building by BDP (Building Design Partnership) whose brief was to provide 'Quality without Ostentation' - very Swiss.

Roche arrived in Broadwater Road, Welwyn Garden City, in 1937, having outgrown an office in Tower Hill. In 1934 they were the first company to mass produce synthetic vitamin C, and its success meant they needed much more space. They commissioned a leading Swiss architect, Otto Salvisberg, to design an off-white modernist HQ and laboratory, complementing the adjacent Shredded Wheat factory. It was made of reinforced concrete with a steel frame and completed in 1940. In 1939 The Architect's Journal had designated it 'Building of the Year'. Our pictures show the stylish design incorporating a magnificent spiral staircase, and a grand boardroom. This had a specially designed mural showing the Roche sites in England, by a Czech artist Waiter Trier, a Jewish emigre. The building was listed Grade II in 1980.

The then new Roche building in Welwyn Garden City, with the Shredded Wheat factory in the background. Pic: WGC Heritage Trust

After the war, Roche added more buildings, initially around and matching the original one. In 1977 they ran out of space and added a large Brutalist office block on the opposite side of Broadwater Road. All these new buildings were designed by James Cubitt and Partners, leading architects of their time. In 2005, the company pulled all its staff into the new building in Shire Park and sold off previous sites.

The old HQ was bought by Taylor Wimpey. They were eventually granted permission to remove the later buildings, replacing them with blocks of flats, but were not allowed to convert the listed HQ. The council commendably wanted this preserved, either by using it still as offices or by the community in order to conserve original features such as the board room. Despite efforts to market it as offices there were no takers, and the building stood empty for ten years, gradually decaying and suffering vandalism. Eventually in 2016 another application was submitted for change of use and conversion to 34 high quality apartments. This was supported by ourselves the Heritage Trust as well as the Welwyn Garden Society and the Twentieth Century Society. Eventually the council caved in, despite misgivings that there was no affordable housing included.

The Roche factory spiral staircase. Picture courtesy Oakbridge Homes.

In 2018, Oakbridge Homes bought the site and began converting it. It was a challenge: the walls and floors throughout were covered in graffiti, windows had been smashed and frames removed for scrap, as was the bronze balustrade to the main staircase. Just as the units were ready for sale, Covid-19 put a stop to viewings. Happily their efforts were ultimately rewarded and all the units sold. It is now called Griffin Place, as a tribute to the city of Base!, which has a griffin as its heraldic symbol.

Above: The Roche factory boardroom in Welwyn Garden City with mural.

One hundred years ago a decision was taken that had a profound effect on Welwyn Garden City, and on Town Planning worldwide. Ebenezer Howard bought the land in 1919; Louis de Soissons was appointed Town Planner and Chief Architect in April 1920, aged 30, and came up with his famous overall plan.

House building started pretty quickly, initially to the design of a Letchworth-based architect, Courtenay Crickmer. He followed the Arts and Crafts style that had been employed at Letchworth, the first garden city, as indeed did de Soissons for the first house he designed, towards the top of Handside Lane. The Board of the Welwyn Garden City Company, set up to build the town, wanted to make a break with Letchworth and so Crickmer moved on.

De Soissons, who had trained in France in the classical school of architecture, decided that the residential areas of WGC should henceforth be in neo-Georgian style. Its characteristics were white timber sash windows, pan-tile roofs, and locally produced red bricks. This was in harmony locally as there are many examples of Georgian houses nearby, for example in Hertford, Old Hatfield and St Albans. Accordingly, in 1923 the Company issued Regulations laying down guidelines to be followed by architects. To ensure that these were met, all plans had to be submitted for approval before work commenced, either by de Soissons or his able deputy, Arthur Kenyon.

Above: A house in Handside Lane, Welwyn Garden City.

This policy was controversial. One of the leading directors of the Company, Richard Reiss (pronounced Rice), wrote in strong terms to the Board's Chairman. "I cannot consent to have de Soissons acting as a dictator on matters of taste, he has delayed building and caused a large amount of friction, if a young superman is to come and impose his will on us and stop work I for one shall have to resign". These threats did not work; de Soissons carried on; Reiss did not resign.

The Board supported Louis because it was far more than a speculative property developer. Frederic Osborn, company secretary, wrote later that it sought to educate the public in architectural appreciation, and that he had invented the slogan "Houses good to live in as well as good to look at." Louis wanted to design every aspect of the town and its buildings. Earlier architects such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh or Frank Lloyd Wright had the same idea (Gesamtkunstwerk in German - literally total work of art) but they had been limited to individual structures. Louis had a whole town to play with. So, every tree was mapped, every contour line plotted, and every structure carefully designed to be harmonious.

Above: Louis de Soissons' former home in Guessens Road, Welwyn Garden City.

The Regulations, issued in 1923, specified that:

- Elevations should be of good appearances on all sides;

- Walls and roofs should be of sound and pleasing materials; 

- Principal rooms should have a sunny aspect; 

- Projections to the rear should be kept to a minimum; 

- Out-buildings should form part of the design.

Even boundary fences and gates had to have Louis' stamp of approval. He did not slavishly stick to neo-Georgian though. See, for example, his Free Church (now known as the United Reform Church) in Church Road of Dutch/ Expressionist style. Also, the industrial buildings on the east side of the railway line, particularly the Shredded Wheat factory that he designed, set new standards in modernism.

Above: Site Planning in Practice at Welwyn Garden City by Louis de Soissons and Arthur Kenyon.

Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust continues its look back at the history of the second garden city. This week it's the Hertford and Luton branch lines through the town.

Great technical breakthroughs have made some people rich but others poor. Good examples are the dot.com revolution and cryptocurrencies.

In Victorian times it was the railways. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened; it was the world's first inter-city passenger railway with scheduled services. There soon followed a rush of applications to build lines. Each required an Act of Parliament, but this was easy to obtain as the Government did not vet applications. All it needed was a supportive MP and speculative investors. Railway mania broke out in the 1840s with the price of railway company shares rocketing then collapsing.The mania peaked in 1846, when 263 Acts of Parliament were passed approving new railway companies.

About a third of the railways authorised were never built the companies either collapsed, or were bought out by larger competitors, or turned out to be fraudulent enterprises. The lines around Welwyn were typical of these speculative efforts. The Great Northern Railway was set up in 1846 to connect London and York. It quickly saw that seizing control of territory was key, and acquired many local railways along its route, whether actually built or not.

Above: A map of the Hertford, Luton & Dunstable Railway. Picture: Afterbrunel, Creative Commons.

The Hertford & Welwyn Junction Railway was authorised in 1854, to boost the fortunes of Hertford by linking it to the GNR. The plan was to merge with it at Digswell, via spurs running both north and south. A similar initiative by the burghers of Luton led to the Luton, Dunstable and Welwyn Junction Railway in 1855. This also envisaged joining the GNR at Digswell via similar spurs, plus a bridge over the main line connecting to the Hertford line directly. These two lines were both under financial pressure and amalgamated in an Act of 1858, to form the Hertford, Luton and Dunstable Railway (see map). This was itself swallowed up in 1861 by the GNR, which scrapped the plans to build a bridge and the northbound spurs. Thus, Hatfield became an important junction acting as a terminus for both these branch lines as well as another from St Albans.

After Ebenezer Howard set about creating Welwyn Garden in 1920, a Halt was built on the Luton branch just before it joined the main line. This was important for builders and commuters because special trains ran directly from there to King's Cross a few times a day. It was only a stop gap and made redundant when Welwyn Garden station was opened in 1926, 200 yards to the south of the Halt. It was by then run by the LNER (London and North Eastern Railway), a grouping of railways including the GNR formed in 1923.

Above: The Welwyn Garden City Halt in the early 1920s. Picture: Disused Stations - http://disused-stations.org.uk/

The Luton branch line was well used. Goods trains took gravel from a pit near Wheathampstead and subsequently filled it with rubbish from London. Nurseries were served by daily deliveries of manure from London Zoo. Passengers included playwright George Bernard Shaw travelling from his house in Ayot St Lawrence. The Hertford branch was important too because sidings were constructed off it to serve the new industries on the east side of the town. Goods trains could run from there to the London docks via a link at Hertford.

After serving the town well, these single lines lost traffic to road transport and were closed to through traffic in the mid-1960s. Today parts of both have been converted to attractive level paths for walkers and cyclists. The Luton one - the Ayot Greenway - runs for three miles from the White Bridge.

Above: A view of Cole Green Station, demolished c1975. Picture: David Hillas, Creative Commons.

The Hertford one - the Cole Green Way - runs for six and a half miles, starting from Cole Green Lane. They still serve the town although in ways that would surprise the Victorian speculators who built them.

Ebenezer Howard first saw the site of Welwyn Garden from an LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) train, as he commuted from Letchworth (his first Garden City) to London, where he worked as a Parliamentary Reporter for Hansard. He looked out on the sparsely inhabited farmland, and in his imagination thought it would be the ideal spot for a second Garden City.

In May 1919 he got a surprise call giving him some good news - these very fields were coming to auction. The bad news was that the sale was in just six weeks' time. Miraculously he managed to buy the land, without even the funds to meet the deposit; he then turned his mind to planning and building a new town from scratch. Howard had envisaged that railways would be crucial to Garden Cities, and the LNER proved he was right. Firstly, the company specified exactly where it would build a station 200 yards south of the existing Hunters Bridge- which effectively determined where the town centre would be. Next, it demanded 72 acres at a bargain price to provide a stretch of land over 500 yards wide for extra lines.

This cut the site in two; Louis de Soissons, chosen by Howard to be the city planner and chief architect, decided to put houses and shops on the west side and factories on the east. Now that the land directly to the east of the station has been cleared for development one has a panoramic view from the long footbridge over the lines of the impact of these decisions. Next, the LNER was vital in transporting building supplies for the emerging town. These were delivered to a site just off the main line on the branch line that travelled west towards Luton. A halt was constructed there too which for the first few years served to ferry the early settlers to and from London where many of them worked. Sidings were constructed alongside the main line and the Hertford branch line to serve industries like Shredded Wheat, which used them to bring in cereals and send out finished goods.

The main station was opened in 1926 by Neville Chamberlain then Minister of Health and well known to Sir Theodore Chambers, the chairman of the Welwyn Garden City Company. The station was developed into the Howard Centre in 1990. Howard envisaged that Garden Cities would provide employment for those who lived in them but this was never true of Letchworth or Welwyn Garden. Instead, a significant proportion of their citizens were commuters, relying on fast trains to London.

With the growth of working from home this group may dwindle, so perhaps Howard's dream may be not so farfetched after all.

At 11.28pm on Saturday 15th June 1935, Wilson Bibby was arriving at the Cherry Tree restaurant in Welwyn Garden City (now the site of Waitrose) to take people home from a dance. Suddenly he heard a dull-sounding explosion, followed by a series of heavy grinding noises.

"I looked towards the station and saw a great red glare reflected in smoke and escaping steam. People came rushing out from the dance hall, many of them in evening dress to help shift the wreckage. They were met by a scene of horror, with dead and injured scattered along the track, and buried under tons of wreckage.

One of the most cool-headed workers was a woman, Dr Miall-Smith [subject of our previous article]. She had heard the fire alarm, was the first doctor on the scene, and worked all night to help the injured. We had to make improvised stretchers out of coach seats. Some of the people were terribly mutilated, and many of the rescuers were overcome with nausea. I saw a small black dog lying on one side of the track. Nearby was a bowler hat with a piece of wood sticking out of the dome. One of the most dreadful sights was that of a baby which had been crushed."

The crash was caused by human error: a signalman in the Welwyn box had mistakenly allowed two trains travelling north from King's Cross to enter the same section of track. The first, the 10.53 express to Newcastle, had been slowed by a signal and was leaving the station at 20mph; the second, which had started its journey at 10.58, ploughed into it at 50-60mph. The guard's van in the first train was pulverised, killing the guard and his dog instantly. The carriage in front of it was badly damaged but none of its occupants were seriously injured. The remaining nine carriages ahead were amazingly undamaged as they were modern with heavy duty couplings which kept them upright.

Above: A double page spread from The Illustrated London News reporting on the fatal collision at Welwyn Garden City on 15 June 1935 between two LNER trains, one from King's Cross to Leeds, the other from King's Cross to Newcastle. Picture courtesy Illustrated London News / Mary Evans Picture Library.

The first train was allowed to continue its journey after decoupling the damaged carriages. One of its passengers, Henry Robinson, had fallen asleep when it had left King's Cross and slept through the whole crash, only waking next morning and wondering where he was. The passengers in the second train were not so fortunate. Several of its carriages were of older design and were thrown off the track causing many casualties. The engine driver, Charles Barnes, survived because the locomotive was tremendously strong. It was able to move away under its own steam after the wreckage had been cleared the next day.

Fourteen people were killed, of all ages, in the crash. Several families suffered multiple losses: one poor man had to identify his mother, his wife, and their young son, who were among the dead. Twenty-nine people were seriously injured.

There were many acts of heroism that night, none more so than those of Dr Gladys Miall-Smith.

An enquiry found that the signalling system was poorly designed. It recommended changes which automatically prevented two trains being on the same section; this became known as the Welwyn Control and became a national standard. The jury at the ensuing inquest found the signalman not culpably negligent, and that the deaths were accidental.