So here is the village of Knebworth in the late 1950s – before Hornbeam Spring was built in 1957, but with the motorway shown, which did not open until 1962 (I am grateful to Adrian Entecott for fine tuning these dates). The first thing I see on this map is how Lutyens’ Garden Village areas – Stockens Green, Deard’s End Lane, Oakfields Road, the area around St Martin’s Church – still stand out as the dominant residential areas of the village. Infill is imminent, but not to Lutyens’ design and, as discussed last month, without any of Lutyens’ planned road infrastructure.
Stevenage New Town is being built at the time of this map, growing from an Old Town of about the same size as current Knebworth, to a modern settlement of over 80,000 people. Stevenage was chosen over Knebworth because the Hertford railway loop joined the East Coast line just to its south. If the railway connection had been just to the south of us, it would have been Knebworth New Town instead. You have to go back to the Domesday Book of 1086 – when Stevenage was 28 households and Knebworth 33 households – to find Knebworth bigger than Stevenage.
Britain’s first New Town boasted all sorts of modern transport ideas. Its showpiece was a town-wide network of cycle paths. This is something our Highways planners now want Knebworth to try and catch up with. Everyone welcomes cycle paths, but Stevenage did also have Chief Engineer Eric Claxton’s visionary “4-pronged ‘E’ of main roads”, which meant “you can get to every house without having to go through a lot of houses.” In other words, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
Nowadays the fashion (and Local Transport Plan 4) is that cycling comes at the expense of the car. New local roads are not to be built (because they encourage car use). Existing neighbourhood roads are to be closed up, or made one way (to reduce the convenience of the car). Roundabouts – which Claxton proved were safer and eased traffic – are discouraged; and some existing ones, like the one at Knebworth’s main crossroads, Highways are now considering replacing with traffic lights.
Claxton was proud that the Stevenage he built had no traffic lights, and almost completely reduced the need for right-hand turns across traffic, “You can route yourself so you go almost entirely left turn. This reduces the frustration. This reduces the delay.” No one wanted us out of our cars and onto bicycles more than Eric Claxton, but he – like Lutyens – would also be mystified by the blocking up of the road system that is about to come to Knebworth.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH