As many readers will know, an important new proposal to develop the Shredded Wheat site is currently being considered by Welwyn Hatfield Council. The site, and its listed buildings, have been languishing and steadily deteriorating since 2008. We invited the developers, IJM Land, to write a piece for us describing their vision for the site. We hope their article will give you more details and help to inform your opinion about the scheme. Our regular planning update keeps you abreast of other planning matters too.

The rest of the magazine features articles on a range of interesting topics. Malcolm Cowan tells the story of the railway lines and stations that were so important for the growth and the ultimate success of our town, and Anneke describes the evolution, between the wars, of our local bus services – and the surprising passions they aroused. Geoffrey Hollis has contributed a fascinating article about the architect Paul Mauger, who designed many excellent houses in a range of styles in Welwyn Garden City. Mauger had a major influence on housing in our town.

Ruth updates us on the progress being made to refresh the content and refurbish the fabric of the poster booths in the town centre. You may recall that the Society has been inviting sponsors to support new posters, and many of you will already have seen the first of these, a beautiful new creation promoting the Welwyn Garden City Horticultural Society. This drive for sponsored posters doesn’t mean that we’re neglecting the posters featuring historical topics, generously created for us by volunteer authors. We plan next to issue a poster about the Cherry Tree restaurant, kindly written for us by Angela Eserin. A small team from our Society is working on the poster booths, and we’re very keen to attract new volunteers to this effort. We’d love to hear from you if you can spare just a little time every month.

Howard Cropp describes another opportunity to contribute to our local community. He explains how the Digswell Arts Trust wants to hear from anyone who might be interested in being involved in its activities, or who might have ideas on how the Trust could be helping to develop the community’s interest and participation in the arts generally.

On a sad note, we carry a tribute to the Welwyn Garden City Film Society, which stopped meeting in May last year, after 77 proud years of showing art house films to Garden Citizens.

We thank all our contributors, who have given their time and expertise to make this such an interesting issue. We hope you enjoy it.

The next issue of the magazine will discuss the important issues surrounding the local government reforms being proposed by the Government, and what they might mean for Welwyn Garden City