Town in Essex, England
Harlow
Harlow was planned from scratch on farmland in 1947, and it now holds a public sculpture collection that includes Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Key information
- County
- Essex
- Nation
- England
- Population
- around 93,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Post-war new town, Frederick Gibberd's master plan, public sculpture, the Water Gardens
- Famous people
- Frederick Gibberd (planner), Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth (sculptors with works here)
- Football clubs
- Harlow Town
About Harlow
A town drawn on a blank sheet of paper
Harlow's story begins with the Blitz. After the Second World War, London needed somewhere to rehouse families from bombed and overcrowded districts. In 1947 an old market town of a few thousand people and the farmland around it became one of Britain's first new towns. The man given the job of designing it was the architect Frederick Gibberd. He didn't lay out a grid. He planned neighbourhoods, each with its own shops, school and pub, set among tongues of green that run almost to the town centre. The result is a place where woodland, fields and playing fields push in between the housing. It was a deliberate answer to the cramped terraces many of the first residents had left behind.
The tower block that started a trend
In 1951 Harlow got The Lawn, a ten-storey block of flats designed by Gibberd. It is usually cited as Britain's first modern residential tower block, and it is now listed for its architectural importance. It was designed to sit in the landscape rather than loom over it, with trees and open ground around the base. Plenty of later tower blocks across Britain borrowed the idea of a tall slab in a green setting, though few kept the care that went into this one. Gibberd also designed Harlow's Water Gardens beside the town centre, with pools, fountains and walkways. They are a listed landscape now.
The town where sculpture lives on the street
Harlow has been called Britain's sculpture town. The Harlow Art Trust, set up in the 1950s, built a collection of public works placed in squares, parks and housing areas rather than behind gallery doors. The list includes Henry Moore's Harlow Family Group, carved in Hadene stone, Barbara Hepworth's Contrapuntal Forms and work by Elisabeth Frink. Many were chosen to fit the new town's idea that ordinary residents should live alongside serious art. Town planners in the 1950s were not usually this ambitious. Harlow's collection is still one of the best reasons to wander round its estates with your eyes open.
Older than the plan: Romans and a market town
Harlow was not entirely blank. Old Harlow, with its market and its old church, existed long before the planners arrived, and the area has Roman remains too. A Romano-Celtic temple stood at Templefields, on high ground overlooking the River Stort, one of the more striking Roman discoveries in this part of Essex. Harlow Museum and Walled Gardens, in the former Mark Hall stable block, tells the story of both the old settlement and the new town. Gibberd himself also left a personal mark. His own garden at Marsh Lane, which he laid out over decades and filled with architectural salvage and sculpture, is open to visitors and is a good place to see how he thought.
Hawks, hospitals and the road to Stansted
Harlow Town Football Club are known as the Hawks, and have played in a stadium on the edge of town. The club's name is one of the few things everyone in Harlow seems to agree on. The town sits on the M11 and the main rail line between London and Cambridge, and Stansted Airport is a short drive away. That mix of green space, good transport links and cheaper homes was the new-town recipe from the start. Harlow was meant to be a fresh start for tens of thousands of families. Today it is one of the best-preserved examples of what a fully planned British town looked like in the 1950s.