Putterills - Welwyn Garden City

Welwyn Garden City was built soon after the First World War according to the vision of Sir Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City movement. Howard planned ‘a town designed for healthy living’ where people could live, work and raise their families away from congested cities. People coming to live here would enjoy working and living within easy reach of the countryside and have their own gardens and open spaces. These ideas later inspired the 1946 New Towns Act and towns that followed.

Today, the population is over 42,000 and Howard’s name lives on with the main town centre thoroughfare named Howardsgate and the modern indoor shopping complex The Howard Centre. Great attention has always been paid to landscaping, with residential and commercial areas laid out along tree lined roads. The neo-Georgian style town centre has a large department store and many branches of major chain stores.