Letchworth Walkabout #11 Traditional Geocache

A camouflaged hide with a log book only.

A ROLLERON CACHE

This is one of 100+ caches that I adopted from local Letchworth cacher rollerron. For posterity I have preserved the original cache description as follows:

Located very close to the front of a former corset factory built between 1912 and 1920. Its American founder, William Wallace Kincaid, came to Letchworth Garden City after hearing about the world's first Garden City - and the man behind it, Ebenezer Howard.  This building (and two of the green lamp posts) are Grade 2 listed. There are cameras at the front and rear of this building but they are aware of the cache.

The building provided the perfect environment for his workers to be happy, contented and highly productive, and was worthy of being called "The Factory of Beauty".

The complex contains a leisure club, a large dance floor (top floor) as well as many local firms. In 1898 Ebenezer Howard published a book entitled, ‘Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform.’ His Garden City ideas proposed solutions to his abhorrence at inner city squalor, terrible living conditions, with dirty industries and housing intermingled. In the Garden Cities different areas would have different uses:- industrial, commercial, housing, leisure. Green spaces, gardens, tree-lined streets were part of the plans. Money raised from rents would be re-invested in the community. Ebenezer Howard set up the Garden City Association. In only five years enough interest and financial support meant that the site was found and secured, architects engaged and building began in 1903. Today Letchworth Garden City has grown. We are thirty three miles from London and a popular commuter town. But we still have the green spaces, gardens, tree-lined roads and local industries. Money from rents is still re-invested in the community by the Heritage Foundation.

Permission to visit the front of the building obtained from the Heritage Foundation. Many thanks.

CACHE HISTORY