WELL-IN, IN WELWYN

Ebenezer Howard, the father of the English garden city, was educated for a time at  a boarding school in Sudbury, Suffolk. It was the kind of school that sent its pupils out walking on Saturday mornings.  On once of these walks Ebenezer picked some wild flowers and carried them back at school, where he went to his room and scattered the petals around the floor.  

I’ll let Ebenezer take it from here, “This being discovered I was ordered to meet my teacher down stairs. The younger one, Miss Emma Foster, set about me pretty severely with a cane, and presently said to her sister, 'Do you think I have given him enough?' Her reply was, 'No, I think he should have some more.'  Shortly afterwards I went to my room in order to discover the localities of my various wounds which were not very severe.” He was about eight years old at the time, as far as I can tell.

Now, I can’t speak for conditions in Sudbury in the mid 19^th century but if any eight year old lad at my school. some hundred years later, had picked flowers while walking, much less strewed the petals around when he got back, he’d have received various wounds from his fellow pupils long before any teacher could get to him.  It was a different age.

I went for a walk in Welwyn Garden City last weekend, Ebenezer Howard’s second attempt at a garden suburb, much less ambitious and impressive than Letchworth.  I did see the occasional flower in wintery bloom, but I didn’t pick any. I was more tempted by these mushrooms but I didn't pick them either, since my mycological identification still isn’t up to snuff.

I went to see the house Howard had lived – 5 Guessens Road, it's the one on the left and yep, it’s a semi:

And nearby was a house that one of city’s architects – Louis de Soissons - built for himself, detached, and somewhat grander than Howard’s, though still comparatively modest given the kind of houses architects tend to build for themselves.

Perhaps it was crass of me to see something phallic in the arrangement of the city’s central streets but I did:

Actually my pal Matthew Licht said it looks more like a bong, and he's right). 
          There was also a certain amount of public nude statuary here and there.  This one is titled “Ad Astra” and yes, it was a cold day:

This one is “Dawn,” a fleshier specimen:

The best thing that happened in Welwyn Garden City was this: I was walking around, mooching you’d probably say, looking at things, occasionally taking pictures, and I spotted a house that was having its roof worked on, but the existing tiles were being replaced with new tiles that were of a wildly unmatching colour.  

Knowing that most conservation areas are beset with rules and regulations about the most minor changes people can do to their houses, this seemed surprising and well worth a photograph or two.   

And as I was taking a picture, the front door of the house next door opened and a neighbour came running out – a formidable, chunky middle-aged woman, obviously somebody not to be trifled with, although I did intend to stand my ground if, as I expected, she started telling me I wasn’t allowed to take pictures.  But that wasn’t what she had in mind at all.

She said, “I saw you taking a picture of that roof.  Isn’t it awful?   It’s completely the wrong colour.  Even when they were starting I kept saying those tiles are all wrong but they just carried on, and they said they’d blend in once they’d weathered.  But I knew that couldn’t be right,  And anyway finally the builder admitted that he’d ordered the wrong colour tiles and now he's going to have to take them all down and start again with the right coloured tiles. And in the meantime it just looks absolutely dreadful.”

The suburbanite in me stirred.  I agreed with her completely.