Car Hire Welwyn Garden City

Welwyn Garden City, home to approximately 48,000 residents, sits conveniently along the A1(M) motorway just 20 miles north of London. The town enjoys a temperate maritime climate with mild winters averaging 1°C in January and pleasant summers reaching 22°C in July, making it an ideal destination for year-round exploration. You’ll find that this planned garden city offers a perfect blend of historical significance and natural beauty, which we can fully appreciate when travelling at our own pace.

Welwyn Garden City represents the second garden city ever built (founded 1920), showcasing remarkable architectural heritage with its distinctive Arts and Crafts housing, spacious boulevards and abundant green corridors that seamlessly blend residential areas with recreational spaces. The town centre features excellent shopping at Howard Centre, Campus West entertainment complex with cinema and restaurants, plus the beautiful Coronation Gardens and numerous parks that maintain the garden city’s founding vision of healthy living environments.

Attractions In Welwyn Garden City

Social housing experiment evolved into successful community where Ebenezer Howard’s garden city principles created balanced living through industrial heritage, extensive parkland, cultural facilities and architectural heritage that continues inspiring urban planners.

Hatfield House, Park and Gardens

This magnificent Jacobean mansion stands as one of England’s finest historical landmarks, where you can immerse yourself in over 400 years of fascinating history. Open for touring on weekends from 11 AM to 4 PM, the house has earned a stellar 4.5-star rating from more than 2,500 visitors who have marvelled at its opulent rooms filled with priceless paintings and exquisite furniture. The sprawling gardens provide equally impressive displays of vibrant flowers across meticulously maintained grounds, whilst the free car park makes accessing this treasure particularly convenient.

Digswell Viaduct

The Digswell Viaduct (also known as the Welwyn Viaduct) is a prominent railway bridge carrying the East Cioast Main Line over the Mimram Valley in Hertfordshire, England and lies between Welwyn Garden City and Digswell. Its location is on Digswell Park Road. On Google, it enjoys an average rating of about 4.6 out of 5 from over 200 reviews; users commonly praise its impressive structure, lovely walks around the area and convenient parking.

Welwyn Garden City Fountain

The Coronation Fountain, often called the Welwyn Garden City Fountain, is a landmark feature located in the centre of Welwyn Garden City at Parkway. It was erected in 1953 to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, designed by Kenneth Peacock of Louis de Soissons Architects. The fountain comprises a stone-edged basin approximately 17 metres wide, a bronze crown base with 16 leaves, nine water jets and lighting both in the basin and around its perimeter. It underwent a refurbishment in 2020, costing around £22,000, which included cleaning, polishing, replacing filters, improving water flow and upgrading the lighting.

War Memorial

The War Memorial on Howardsgate is located in the town-centre Gardens at Howardsgate Gardens, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England. It is a stone of remembrance, freestanding and external, commemorating local citizens who lost their lives in the First World War, the Second World War and the Northern Ireland conflict. The memorial is integrated into the layout of the central green spaces designed by Louis de Soissons in 1920, forming a controlled view toward the distant fountain and framed by mature trees. It has been the focus of annual Remembrance Day services, with the parade usually assembling from The Campus and proceeding to the memorial for the service.

Mill Green Museum And Watermill

Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM and Sundays, 12 PM to 4 PM, visitors can explore this working watermill located at Bush Hall Lane in Mill Green. Legendary homemade cream teas, crafted with flour from the ancient mill, have become renowned among regulars, while interactive exhibits showcase machinery that has been in operation for over three centuries. Murder mystery escape room adventures add modern excitement to this delightful historical gem.

Welwyn Roman Baths

Nine metres beneath the thundering A1 motorway, this extraordinary archaeological wonder preserves Roman luxury bathing practices in a purpose-built steel chamber. Guided tours along Welwyn By Pass Road reveal sophisticated engineering techniques, particularly fascinating when learning about excavations from the 1960s and 1970s. This unique location offers rare glimpses into nearly two millennia of history, making it one of Britain’s most unusual attractions.

Ebenezer Howard Statue

The Ebenezer Howard Statue, sculpted by Ben Twiston-Davies and installed in April 2021, stands 2.2 metres tall in bronze on a Welsh slate plinth in Howardsgate, Welwyn Garden City. The sculpture depicts the garden city movement founder holding a spade, symbolising his drive to create self-sufficient communities and was commissioned by the Welwyn Garden City Centenary Foundation to mark the town’s 100th anniversary. Funded through public donations and private sponsorship, the statue honours the visionary who founded both Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities as pioneering examples of combining urban and rural living.

Stanborough Park Water Sports Centre

A rating of 4.5 stars from over 4,000 visitors makes this Stanborough Road destination the area’s most beloved family attraction. Daily operations run from 6 AM to 10 PM on weekdays and 8 AM to 6 PM on weekends, offering flexible hours for water sports adventures. Two scenic lakes provide the perfect setting for rowing, fishing and peaceful walks, with excellent playground facilities and ample picnic areas.

Vertigo Adventures

Open every day from 11 AM to 5 PM at Stanborough Park North, adrenaline-pumping high ropes courses challenge both children and adults on specially designed aerial obstacles. Safety protocols ensure that everyone enjoys their experience, regardless of their skill level, while ice cream rewards provide a sweet celebration for conquering fears. The facility combines physical challenges with family fun across various difficulty levels.

Explore more destinations throughout Hertfordshire with our convenient car hire services:

• Welwyn
• Hatfield
• Essendon
• Knebworth
• Wheathampstead
• Stapleford
• Hertford
• Brookmans Park

Lemsford Springs

Lemsford Springs is a 4-hectare nature reserve in Hertfordshire, managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust since 1970, featuring historic watercress beds dating from at least 1862. The site’s nationally rare spring-fed chalk lagoons never freeze, making it home to the UK’s largest concentration of wintering Green Sandpipers, plus Water Rail and Snipe that feed on abundant freshwater shrimps. Located where the River Lea flows through the reserve, this hidden gem near Welwyn Garden City offers excellent birdwatching from two hides overlooking pristine spring-fed waters that have sustained wildlife for over 160 years.

Tewinbury

Tewinbury is a 7.5-hectare Site of Special Scientific Interest near Tewin in Hertfordshire, featuring rare alluvial meadows and marshes alongside the River Mimram. The reserve contains diverse wetland habitats including tall fen, swamp and spring-fed lagoons and is notable for being possibly the only site in Hertfordshire where otters have been observed, alongside thriving Water Vole populations. Managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust with wheelchair-accessible viewing hide, this SSSI supports excellent birdlife including Kingfisher, Little Egret and Cetti’s Warblers.

Tewin Orchard Nature Reserve

Tewin Orchard and Hopkyns Wood is a charming 4.3-hectare nature reserve in Hertfordshire, managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust since being donated by its last private owner, Molly Hopkyns. Originally planted in 1933 by the Hopkyns family, this traditional village orchard preserves rare Hertfordshire apple varieties including the historic Hitchin Pippin, which was propagated from the last known century-old tree. The reserve combines an 80-year-old fruit orchard with adjacent Hopkyns Wood, which features oak and hornbeam woodland carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic, plus a mature badger sett.

The Commons

The Commons is a 13.2-hectare Local Nature Reserve in Welwyn Garden City, owned and managed by Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council. Located around the southern boundaries of the QEII Hospital, this diverse reserve hosts a rich variety of habitats including oak woodland, calcareous fen, flower-rich meadows, wet ditches and ponds. The site supports an impressive array of wildlife including slow worms and great crested newts among its diverse animal and plant species. Access is via footpaths from The Commons, Howlands and Caponfield roads, making this urban nature reserve a valuable green sanctuary for both wildlife and local residents seeking countryside experiences within the Garden city.

Brocket Park

Brocket Park is a magnificent 543-acre estate surrounding the Grade I listed neo-classical Brocket Hall, built around 1760 by architect Sir James Paine for Sir Matthew Lamb near Welwyn Garden City. The estate has an illustrious history as home to two British Prime Ministers—Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston—and hosted frequent visits from Queen Victoria and other royalty, with both Prime Ministers dying peacefully within the Hall’s walls.

The Lagoon

The Lagoon, officially known as Black Fan Lagoon, is a historically significant water body in Welwyn Garden City that originated in the 1920s as a sewerage settling pond during the town’s garden city development. Located at Waterside near the historically named Blackfan Valley, this community gathering place has served generations of local teenagers and was recently featured in the ITVX drama “Tell Me Everything.” The site offers free public access via a 20-space car park and remains an integral part of the local water management infrastructure whilst maintaining its status as a beloved community space that embodies Welwyn Garden City’s heritage.

Mimram Stream Waterfalls

The River Mimram features several artificial waterfall features created by historic weirs and water management structures, including “an artificial cataract below Tewin” built by 18th-century landowners as part of their landscape schemes. Today, prominent weirs at Tewinbury and Mill Lane create waterfall-like cascades along this precious Hertfordshire chalk stream, though these structures now impede fish migration and are being considered for removal by the Environment Agency. The river’s historic mill sites, including Kimpton Mill, also feature engineered water features from centuries of industrial use along this twelve-mile chalk stream that flows from Whitwell to join the River Lea at Hertford.