As those of you who follow me regularly know, I am a Pride and Prejudice fan, then you must realize I am exceedingly interested in any little bit of information that comes my way regarding Hertfordshire, the home shire of the novel’s heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.
Letchworth was a “city” envisioned by Ebenezer Howard, who had the notion to relieve the crowded conditions of London’s slum. He was supported in his efforts by prominent Quakers and by what was known as the Arts and Crafts Movement. The idea was to provide clean industries, low-rent housing, services to the poor, a healthy country “air” environment. Howard advocated the construction of a new kind of town, summed up in his three magnets diagram as combining the advantages of cities and the countryside while eliminating their disadvantages. Industry would be kept separate from residential areas—such zoning was a new idea at the time—and trees and open spaces would prevail everywhere.
The original Letchworth was a small, ancient parish. St Mary the Virgin, the parish church, was built around the latter part of the 12th Century or early 13th Century. The village was located along the road now called Letchworth Lane, stretching from St Mary’s and the adjoining medieval manor house (now Letchworth Hall Hotel) up to the crossroads of Letchworth Lane, Hitchin Road, Baldock Road and Spring Road, where there was a post office. Letchworth was a relatively small parish, having a population in 1801 of 67, rising to 96 by 1901.
Along comes Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE, who in 1898 had written a book entitled To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was the groundwork for Howard’s first Garden City, a utopian city in which people lived harmoniously together with nature. Other Garden Cities followed: Welwyn Garden City, also in Hertfordshire, (1920), and those in other countries, Forest Hills Gardens (in the borough of Queens, New York), designed by F. L. Olmsted, Jr. (1909), Radburn, New Jersey, (1923), and the Suburban Resettlement Programs towns of the 1930s, including Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; Greenbrook, New Jersey; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Canberra, Australia (1913). [Stern, Robert (1981). The Anglo American Suburb. London: Architectural Design Profile. pp. 84, 85.]
“According to the book the term ‘garden city’ derived from the image of a city being situated within a belt of open countryside (which would contribute significantly to food production for the population), and not, as is commonly cited, to a principle that every house in the city should have a garden.
“The concept outlined in the book is not simply one of urban planning, but also included a system of community management. For example, the Garden City project would be financed through a system that Howard called ‘Rate-Rent,’ which combined financing for community services (rates) with a return for those who had invested in the development of the city (rent). The book also advocated a rudimentary form of competitive tendering, whereby the municipality would purchase services, such as water, fuel, waste disposal, etc., from (often local) commercial providers. These systems were never fully implemented, in Letchworth, Welwyn or their numerous imitators.” [Letchworth]
Ebenezer Howard’s “Three Magnets” diagram, 1898 Copyright status This was published in the book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898, and so is now out of copyright. The text The text reads: THE THREE MAGNETS THE PEOPLE Where will they go? Town Closing out of nature. Social opportunity. Isolation of crowds. Places of amusement. Distance from work. High money wages. High rents & prices. Chances of employment. Excessive hours. Army of unemployed. Fogs and droughts. Costly drainage. Foul air. Murky sky. Well-lit streets. Slums & gin palaces. Palatial edifices. Country Lack of society. Beauty of nature. Hands out of work. Land lying idle. Trespassers beware. Wood, meadow, forest. Long hours, low wages. Fresh air. Low rents. Lack of drainage. Abundance of water. Lack of amusement. Bright sunshine. No public spirit. Need for reform. Crowded dwellings. Deserted villages. Town-Country Beauty of nature. Social opportunity. Fields and parks of easy access. Low rents, high wages. Low rates, plenty to do. Low prices, no sweating. Field for enterprise, flow of capital. Pure air and water, good drainage. Bright homes & gardens, no smoke, no slums. Freedom. Co-operation. http://www.spatialagency.net/database/garden.cities
A competition was held to find a town design which could translate Howard’s ideas into reality. Richard Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin were appointed architects, and 6 square miles (16 km²) of land outside Hitchin were purchased for building. The town was divided into three zones, with industrial areas kept well away from the residential sections. In keeping with the ideals only one tree was felled during the entire initial construction phase of the town, and an area devoted to agriculture surrounding the town was included in the plan – the first “Green Belt.” Additional contests were held to secure builders for inexpensive housing, which attracted some 60,000 visitors. This had a significant impact on what we now refer to as “pre-fabricated” building techniques. It also alter the ideas regarding gardens in the yards, both floral and vegetable. The exhibitions were sponsored by the Daily Mail, and their popularity was significant in the development of that newspaper’s launching of the Ideal Home Exhibition (which has more recently become the Ideal Home Show) – the first of which took place the year after the second Cheap Cottages Exhibition.
Railways often brought sight-seers to the town, who found the social experiment both interesting and amusing. Letchworth’s founding citizens, attracted by the promise of a better life, were often caricatured by outsiders as idealistic and otherworldly. John Betjeman in his poems Group Life: Letchworth and Huxley Hall painted Letchworth people as earnest health freaks. The idea of banning pubs was often criticized, for example.
Spirella Building A view of this magnificent former corset factory, now a base for small businesses. To me this restoration shows how a great old building can be retained in all its glory, sympathetically modernised inside with high quality design, and thus serve a useful purpose in the twenty-first century.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letchworth#/media/File:Spirella_Building_-_geograph.org.uk_-_988178.jpg
The Spirella Company, the maker of ladies’ corsets, built a large factor close to the town’s middle in 1912. Despite its central location, the Spirella Building complements the town’s other buildings. It resembles a large country house, complete with towers and a ballroom. During WWII, the factory was also produced parachutes and decoding machines. Because corsets fell out of fashion, the factory closed in the 1980s, and was eventually refurbished and converted into offices.
Shelvoke and Drewry, a manufacturer of dustcarts and fire engines was part of Letchworth from 1922 to 1990. Hands, another of the industries found in Letchworth, manufactured axles, brakes, and Hands Trailers. Other such industries included Kryn & Lahy Steel Foundry, the Irvine’s Airchutes Parachute Factory, and British book publisher, J. M. Dent and Son.
British Tabulating Machine Company (later International Computers Limited) was one of the largest employers in the area, with over 30 factory sites along Icknield Way and the surrounding area.
Other Resources:
Letchworth, England (Britannica)
Letchworth Garden City: Heritage Foundation
Spatial Agency: Letchworth Garden City
Colonel Matthew Locke was a Revolutionary War leader, as well as a member of Congress, who just happened to have been born in Northern Ireland. Like many in the present day North Carolina, Locke’s ancestors first settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. A few years after his father died, his mother married a man by the name of John Brandon and moved to Anson County, North Carolina. Anson is the next county over from I live outside of Charlotte, and I can tell you there is LOTS of history to found in this area. Later, around 1752, the Brandons moved to Grants Creek, which was part of Mecklenburg County at that time, but is now part of Rowan County, North Carolina. 
Carolina’s first state constitution was drafted. He was in charge of the militia pay of six frontier counties. He procured supplies for the Continental Army. He served in the North Carolina House of Commons on and off from 1777 to 1793. He was known to support universal manhood suffrage, an idea to remove owning property as a right to vote and holding office, in other words, removing the stipulation of ownership of 50 acres of property or the payment of taxes as a prerequisite to vote. He also supported the endowment of Queen’s Museum (later Queen’s College and now Queen’s University) in Charlotte, which is considered the first institution of higher learning in North Carolina. [Just as a side note, my daughter-in-law earned her masters degree at Queens, and my son was an assistant track and cross country coach at the college. It is still a vibrant piece of Charlotte’s history.] In the vote to ratify the U. S. Constitution, Locke took a stand for the new country’s many farmers, who could not afford an expensive, nor oppressive, government. 
On Friday, May 19, I presented you a piece on the first Declaration of Independence, a year before Thomas Jefferson’s document. Today, permit me to introduce you to the hero of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, Captain James Jack. 
In 1766, James Jack married Margaret Houston, and the couple soon moved to Charlotte, where the elder Mr. Jack had purchased lots on the south side of West Trade Street. The family built a house on one of the lots and operated a tavern out of it. James Jack earn a fortune from real estate speculation. He was later appointed as a tax collector, as well as an overseer of the poor in Mecklenburg County. [Note: The county of Mecklenburg and the city of Charlotte were named after King George III’s queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg.]
Captain James Jack returned to his home in Charlottetowne on July 7 of the same year. He rode an average of 30 miles each day—hard riding for the time and the geographic challenges—completing his journey of some 1100 miles in 38 days.
With the war’s end, Jack moved his family to the western part of North Carolina, which at the time stretched all the way to present-day Nashville. He signed the petition to the North Carolina Assembly to make North Carolina a separate state. Later, he moved to what is now Wilkes County, Georgia, where he was not so successful as a farmer. Finally, he and his wife Margaret moved again to neighboring Elbert County, to live with their son William and live out their days. James Jack died in December 1822. His obituary lists his age at death as being 84, but in December 1819, he wrote of being 88 years of age. Therefore, he was like 91 years old at his death. 
After the French and Indian War, King George and the British Parliament sometimes ignored the American colonies and sometimes saw them as a source of income for the numerous wars in which they engaged. The Stamp Act and the taxes on tea, however, provoke the colonists into breaking with Great Britain. When the British Army occupied Boston and close the port, word of the aggression quickly spread, even to the backwoods of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. Not liking what they heard, those within the county authorized Colonel Thomas Polk, the commander of the county militia, to call a meeting where the “aggression” might be discussed. Two representatives were named by each of the nine militia companies within the county. Whatever decision theses men would make would be binding on the county’s citizens. These men met at the county courthouse, which was located in Charlotte, a town named for King George III’s queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
The five resolutions explained how Great Britain had “wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.” It went on the say, we “dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother country” and declare ourselves “a free and independent people.” The laws were to remain the same but “The Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.” To read the complete text of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 
“Even as they were debating and approving what came to be known as The Mecklenburg Declaration, the delegates had realized that it lacked coherence and organization and they appointed a committee to revise it. By May 31st the committee had completed their work which was not a revision but rather a completely new document, and which came to be called the Mecklenburg Resolves. This new document was less emotional, more logical, and much better organized than the original:
“In short, finding themselves declared outlaws by the King, they set up their own government and prepared to defend themselves. And note that they did this not just for Mecklenburg County, but for the whole thirteen colonies. To read the complete text of the Mecklenburg Resolves, 
“Gibbets were not removed once the condemned finally became reduced to a skeleton. They were left up for years at a time. They became landmarks, and a few even had
“Because gibbeting was so rare, blacksmiths had little to go on when called upon to make a gibbet. Some were heavy, some were very loose, some were adjustable. One had a notch where a nose would go. In some cases, the gibbet held only the torso, allowing the arms and legs to dangle outside its confines. After a gibbet was removed (or fell down from wear) the gibbet and its components were sometimes turned into souvenirs, such as a post that was carved up into tobacco bowls.”
Every Woman Dreams... 
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