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.

In Iran, girls are protesting against discrimination by men. In 1921, a young lady doctor, Dr Gladys Miall-Smith, declined a request from her employer, St Pancras Borough Council, to resign as an assistant medical officer following her marriage to another doctor, Hubert Fry.

The council then voted by a large majority to dismiss her on the grounds that jobs should be reserved for people who needed the pay. Gladys did not go quietly and became a national figure. Her sacking was clearly absurd as she was a superb doctor.

Born in 1888, she qualified in 1916, was a surgeon in Great Ormond Street Hospital, served two tours of duty in field hospitals in France during the First World War, and then specialised in obstetrics and public health. She was invited to apply for posts across the country by more enlightened employers. Richard Reiss, a director of Welwyn Garden City Ltd and a friend of Hubert, was one. She and Hubert moved in 1922 to 18 Brockswood Lane and thence to 17 Valley Road.

Gladys worked as a GP during the week and Hubert took the role at weekends, as he was a pathologist during the week. There was no NHS then, so together with a third doctor they founded a Health Association. For a subscription of one penny a week per family, members could benefit from infant welfare clinics (run by Gladys), a district nurse, and reduced rates for treatment at local hospitals. The association won many national awards; in 1931 the Ministry of Health declared that the town had the highest standards of care in the country. The town's mortality rate was considerably lower than the national average. She knew all the key figures in the gestation of Welwyn Garden City, including Ebenezer Howard, whom she described as very quiet but determined.

Gladys carried on campaigning to improve the lot of women, being an active member of the women's Freedom League. Sadly Hubert died young in 1930, having acquired an infection while carrying out a postmortem. Gladys was left as a single mother with three young children.

She retired as a GP in 1950, when her children had grown up, but carried on practising at infant and school clinics. These were not only in England, she worked for two years in hospitals in Ghana, and also in Rhodesia and South Africa.

The last years of her life were spent in Elizabeth House, Panshanger. Gladys Miall-Smith died on January 3, 1991, aged 102. Perhaps because of her upbringing - her parents were both outspoken radicals and humanists - and her challenging life, Dr Miall-Smith was assertive and could be intimidating. One young patient remembers being frightened of her and hiding under the bedclothes when she visited.

Her long life of service and dedication to public health mark her out as an outstanding woman.

Many talented people were needed to build up Welwyn Garden City and one of the most creative was Tom Heron. In our previous article we described Cresta Silks, the company he founded. This time we are going to look at the man himself.

Tom was born in 1890 into a middle class family in Bradford where his father ran a business wholesaling fabrics. One of his teachers had tried to persuade his parents to let him try for a scholarship to Oxford University but they wanted him to go into the family firm, which he did at age 16, as an office boy. As a young man he came under the influence of many talented individuals in the Leeds Art Club. There he met artists such as Paul Nash, who many years later designed patterns for him, and Stanley Spencer. He was a patron of avant-garde art and active in progressive causes, supporting suffragettes and becoming a lifelong pacifist.

At that time one had to be at least 21 to run a business. On his 21st birthday, in February 1911, he went into business in Leeds on his own account, making blouses. This prospered despite the outbreak of war in 1914, eventually employing 200 people. He registered as a Conscientious Objector, and - unusually for a company owner - embraced socialism, joining the Fabian Society.

He met Eulalie Davies, daughter of a congregational Minister, who shared his beliefs; they were married in a Quaker Meeting House in September 1918. Their marriage lasted until Tom's death at age 93 in 1983. She died in 1986. They had four children: Patrick, famous artist; Michael, Benedictine monk; Joanna, who cared for them both in their final years in her home in Cumbria; and Giles, an organic farmer. After a spell in Crysede Silks in Cornwall, Tom looked for somewhere to start a new business. He had "watched the Garden City movement with interest since its inception and had always thought the idea a good one". Also "having as a young man had to catch a train at 7.30am a mile away from my home in order to reach my father's business thirty miles away, I decided that as soon as I could manage it I would live near my work". So he brought his family to Welwyn Garden City where he founded Cresta Silks in 1929.

Tom and Eulalie were both committed Christians, eventually settling down as active Anglicans in St Francis Church. His religious and political beliefs were put into practice in Cresta. Following in the footsteps of William Morris, he sought to create a company which generated profits but where profit was not the main goal. Staff were valued as individuals - many stayed for decades; quality was overarching, and creative artists were at the centre. An article in the Welwyn Times in 1933 recognised that Cresta had a wider purpose than most manufacturing concerns: "It believes not only that clothes express personality but that they actually affect the future of civilisation." Initially the Herons lived in a large house at 76 Brockswood Lane. In 1961, they moved to number 38 ("half the number and half the size") and in 1978 retired to Cumbria. Space does not allow a full account of this exceptional man, who was also a poet and a writer.

His son Giles with author John S Peart-Binns wrote a biography 'Rebel & Sage' in 2001 which is highly recommended.