Welwyn Garden Heritage

Absolute delight was how the Trustees of the Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust (WGHT) greeted the ‘fantastic’ news that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) had approved their bid for £50,000. The funding is to support a broad ranging heritage project in Welwyn Garden City.

Where Do You Think You Live?’  will be an opportunity for homeowners to research the origins of their homes. Working with Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) the Trust will offer workshops and study visits to the County Archives in Hertford to enable people to learn how to research stores of information. The sort of data which the project is hoping to unearth is the date when the house was built, who was the architect, the builders and who has lived in the house since and any other unique information about the house

Running alongside the research part of the project will be an expansion of the ‘Thanks for the Memory’ programme of audio recordings of residents’ recollections of their early days living in WGC. The funding available from the HLF grant will enable recordings to be typed up and the Trust is planning  to recruit an oral history specialist to help develop the programme and make the original recordings and the text versions more accessible to the general public.

The third arm involves photographic projects by school pupils with the title ‘My favourite place in WGC’ or ‘My Neighbourhood’ which can be developed by a group of residents to show the rest of the town what is special about where they live. To assist anyone wanting to get involved the Trust is planning workshops for old and young alike to improve their skill is using digital cameras. The town’s junior schools will be invited to get involved in some designs based on one of the odd features of some houses in the older parts where the bricklayers have created pictures the size of a single brick in the walls. Both these ideas will be supported by an Artist-In-Residence employed by the Trust.

The whole project will link to the Our Welwyn Garden City community archive
www.ourwelwyngardencity.org.uk  and is supported by the involvement of the University of Hertfordshire’s Humanities Faculty, which has a very active local history unit.

Commenting on the project Tony Skottowe said “We have been very lucky to have such tremendous support from both HALS and the University. It is also a great coincidence that this has all come together during the year of the 90^th Anniversary of the town and we are hoping lots of people will want to get involved in finding out and showing off the special nature of this wonderful place”

To get involved in any of the parts of the project go to the Trust’s website at www.welwyngarden-heritage.org, or write to Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust,

c/o 60 Bridge Road, WGC, AL8 6UR.

The Trust held a meeting to outline its ideas on creating a Heritage Centre in Welwyn Garden City on 25th March to gauge the reaction of representatives of industry, retailers and public bodies. The result according to Tony Skottowe and his fellow Trustees was " A resounding chorus of approval."

An audience of around twenty 'movers and shakers' from the town were invited and were given a visual presentation by Rob Cowan of Urban Design Skills the consultants appointed to carry out an initial feasibility study for the Trust. Guests were shown what it might be possible for the Centre to offer the town and other local organisations if it becomes a reality.

Particularly encouraging was the response from one major retail operator who commented that "An outstanding building offering exciting new reasons for visiting the town would be a great asset". Understandably concerns were expressed about obtaining the funding for such an ambitious venture but the Trustees are already investigating potential support from a European Union scheme involving the importance of the Garden City ideals to modern urban living and the issue of sustainability.

The Trust will be holding a similar presentation for its supporters and any members of the public who are interested on the evening of Tuesday 12th May in Campus West. Please check our Events listing for details.

The Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust was recently invited to send a representative to an EU project in Paris based on the importance of Garden Cities throughout the Community. As it turned out Welwyn Garden was the only UK town to turn up out of all those contacted.

The meeting took place in St. Denis opposite The Stade de France, which is just to the north of central Paris, and involved people from Belgium, Germany, The Czech Republic, Hungary and France. There are numerous garden cities across Europe all based on the original ideas of Ebenezer Howard but adapted to create green havens in cities such as Paris and Budapest. The two themes of the meeting were “Tourism & Culture”, looking at how garden cities could work together to promote their towns and increase tourism, and “Garden Cities and Sustainability”, which concerns combining all the main features of the garden city concept with the need to create sustainable communities for the future. As part of the meeting delegates were taken on a tour of one of the ‘garden cities’ in St Denis.

Following its commitment to consult on implementation of the revived Estate Management Scheme (EMS) with both the WGC Society and the Trust an initial meeting was held on 22nd October.

First item on the agenda was publicising the EMS to everyone in the town, whether in the scheme or not, given that it is likely to affect all the residents in some way over time. The Council will be publishing and distributing a new booklet on the EMS that will be delivered to very house affected. WGCS and WGHT promised to promote the scheme to the best of their abilities via their members and supporters as well as using the respective websites.