Edgar Wood Society Visit – Fairfield Moravian Settlement and Broadway garden village

Our guide will be North West Blue Badge Guide, Jean Bailo, who has taken visitors around the Moravian Settlement for many years.  The Museum and Church will be specially opened for us. Our guide for Broadway garden village will be Nick Baker, Edgar Wood Society archivist.

Fairfield Moravian Settlement is the largest of the model Moravian settlements that inspired reformers like Robert Owen and the later Garden City planners. It was built to a formal plan by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1784 and, today, is a peaceful beautiful place, though one of national importance. The houses and workshops have a restrained blend of Georgian and hand-made vernacular qualities that were especially attractive to Arts & Crafts designers. Latrobe subsequently emigrated to the USA and designed the famous white buildings of Capitol Hill.

Immediately adjacent is Broadway, a pioneering garden village designed by Edgar Wood and Henry Sellers for the Moravian Tenants co-operative and built 1913-22. Here there is a similar blend of the formal and vernacular, with great attention to detail, materials and the shaping of place. While there is some allegiance to the Georgian character of the Settlement, one also finds mild ‘art deco’ modernism and the then latest Garden Suburb ideas.