There are two schools of thought on how Welwyn Garden City came to be so named. According to one of them, a bunch of cricket fans were sitting in a garden there during the Saturday of a Lord's Test and were overheard agreeing that a certain England batsman was now 'well in' and could be relied upon to get a hundred or more. As you can see, this story has all the markings of being apocryphal. The other school of thought holds that the name originates from the first Dickens Society in the land having been established in that vicinity by a group of enthusiasts for the novelist's work. These people were often to be heard asking one another how they were getting on with The Old Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, Great Expectations and such, and being enthusiasts, they would invariably answer, 'Oh, I'm well in now.' In course of time, 'well in' was corrupted to 'Welwyn', and 'Garden' and 'City' followed just as you'd expect them to. This is the true history of the name.
Tune in next week for the origin of 'Nuneaton'.