Howlands

A new home

By Elaine Spooner

We moved into Welwyn Garden in the late 50’s, early 60’s coming from North London. The day that we moved into our brand new home, was awful. Very wet, windy and cold.

Fields and open spaces!

We had the last house that was built, next to us was nothing but fields and open spaces. Coming from London we found that very hard to cope with.

A building site with no paths, mud and builders rubble everywhere!

The area was like a building site with no paths, mud and builders rubble everywhere. As we had a toddler and young baby, the workmen gave us some wood, so that we could light a fire and put wooden planks down, from the front door to the road, so that we could bring in our furniture and belongings.

One big communal area

Our gardens were not fenced off for some time, so it was one big communal area. All the top soil had been removed from our gardens and replaced with rubble. It took us a lot of hard work to get the soil fit for growing things in.

This page was added on 22/07/2009.

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  • It probably sounds a bit daft but i always liked the area around the Cole Green Lane roundabout at the top of Howlands and the bottom of Heronswood Road where it begins and ends it has a nice atmosphere to it and even though we left that area of WGC back in 1974 and WGC it’s self back in 1979 on occasional visits back to WGC in more recent years since 2008 i make a habit of visiting the area and then walking down the footpath to the Hall Grove shops for old time sake, that whole Cole Green Lane roundabout area (like large parts of WGC) hasn’t really changed much at all over the last 40+ years it still looks pretty much the same as it did back in 1969/70. I also attended Heronswood secondary school between 1968-1972 so does anyone remember a Margaret Knowles and her best female friend Michelle Peters they were both in my class at Heronswood at the sametime and they would both be in there late 50s by now, Michelle Peters lived further along Cole Green Lane in a eastwards direction towards where the old Hatfield Hyde railway level crossing use to be but her and her family use to live in a old farm house off of Cole Green Lane at the end of a muddy lane on the eastern edge of WGC back in the late 1960s & early 1970s i vaguely remember.  

    By Michael S (08/10/2015)
  • I moved to Ryelands.No13 near the electric transformer.about1956or7 so we must have known each other.That area was a wonderland for young boys,so many unfinished buildings!I went the Howlands and Heronswood SM.If you would like to get in touch my email is alissanick101@yahoo.com.Like to hear from some one from the good old days.

    By Eric Goodwin (13/06/2015)
  • My Family moved into Ryelands around 1957 and I had to go to Applecroft over the otherside of WGC. If we wanted shops we had to walk to Woodhall, most of the area around Howlands/Ryelands was still being built so we had to navigate a Building site.

    By Frank Sheperd (28/09/2012)