The granddaughter of Letchworth master planner Barry Parker has welcomed the renewed attention around his work. This comes after the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation commissioned historian Dr Mervyn Miller to write the biography of the architect and planner who took his garden city designs around the world.
Barry Parker was an architect member of the Northern Art Workers Guild. He and his professional colleague Raymond Unwin were a good friends of Edgar Wood, whose assistant Cecil Hignet, joined them in designing Letchworth. Parker considered his finest house to be, “Whirriestone”, 15 Broadhalgh Avenue Bamford. (Bamford, like Birtle and Ashworth is a Middleton township which was transferred to Heywood in late Victorian times before being ‘rejoined’ with Middleton in 1974 via Rochdale Metropolitan Borough).
Letchworth Garden City broke the mould in town planning but possibly Barry Parker’s greatest achievement was the much larger third English Garden City, Wythenshaw near Manchester which was significantly bigger than the first two, Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, combined.