IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Broadwater Road, AL7 3FG

Broadwater Road is dead straight for about 800 metres so possibly warrants a speed camera...

Site of demolished factory, between Broadwater Road and the railway. Garden cities were designed to be places where people could work, live and play, but it might be difficult to fit a modern large employer on this town centre site.

Please see Image for details and a view of the south side. This is the north facade of the administration block, described on the English Heritage website as "To the right, the principal staircase in a glazed door, the only feature to break the austerely white cubic form of the group of buildings." The yellow posts mark the entrance way to Otto Road, which was presumably named after the Swiss architect of the building, Otto Salvisberg.

Now looking in a very sorry state with peeling render and boarded up windows this is the east end of the administration block of the former Roche Products factory on Broadwater Road. The actual factory was the four storey building behind the trees to the left. The factory was built to the designs of the Swiss architect, Otto Salvisberg, between 1938 and 1940, and is now a Grade II Listed Building. The English Heritage web page for the building is here http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1348142&searchtype=mapsearch and states that "The administration block is 2-storeyed with the bronze entrance doors set well back behind pilotis and with 7 narrow, deeply set vertical windows in the wall above." There is an aerial view of the factory in 1950 on the "Britain from Above" website here http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw028159 For a view of the other side of the building please see Image

In contrast with Image just down the road is this modern office block. The photographer thinks this was once a company headquarters building but is now multi-tenanted.

Broadwater Road serves a mainly Industrial area of the Town. The famous (for its aroma) Wheat Processing plant is the tallest building, seen on the left of shot.

Old Ordnance Survey maps currently available online show that there were two blocks of four of these parallel pitched roof industrial units facing onto Broadwater Road before the outbreak of the Second World War, and these two survivors therefore represent part of Welwyn Garden City's industrial heritage. Significantly virtually all the later large factories on the opposite side of the road, including the Shredded Wheat and Roche buildings, are currently disused or have been demolished. These two are currently in use as retail outlets, Topps Tiles occupying the far one.

The former Shredded Wheat factory complex awaiting re-development