Welcome to the first issue of the Welwyn Garden City Society Magazine, full of fascinating information and fabulous photographs of our town. We hope you find it interesting! The magazine replaces the Society’s newsletter. It will be published twice a year, in October and April. We thank the editor of the newsletter, Shaun O’Reilly, and Sheila O’Reilly, the designer, for their many years of sterling work in these roles. Their act will be very hard to follow.

The team behind the magazine is Anneke Bambery, the editor, and Ruth Sykes, the designer (pictured left). We’re both fairly new members of the Society. We were inspired to take on this voluntary work to contribute to the Society’s valuable work and to help raise its profile.

One of the articles in this launch edition of the magazine features the town’s poster booths, the restoration of which is such a great achievement for the Society. Many thanks to Society secretary Stephen Bensley for writing this article. Another headline story earlier in the year was the installation of the wonderful new statue of Ebenezer Howard by the renowned sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies, and in the magazine we describe the story of its creation.

Planning matters are always of key importance to our Society, and in this issue we look back a decade to recall two planning applications for Broadwater Road, a location long in need of regeneration and today threatened by highly insensitive proposals. We also feature a thought-provoking article based on a recent talk given to our members by Brian Q. Love of ConnectedCities, in which the ideas of Ebenezer Howard are considered in the light of the current housing shortage.

We’re delighted to include some great photos of our town sent to us by Society members Will Davis, John Fogarty, Robert Gill, Bryn Jones and Paula Waspe. We hope more members will send photos and articles to us for future editions!

Each issue of the magazine will aim to provide a round-up of the news issued in the preceding e-bulletins, and of course to provide any updates.