News
Earlier this year the Museum Service was fortunate to receive grant-aid to buy a William Ratcliffe painting called Reflections Ickleford, which shows part of the now-demolished Hyde Mill, Ickleford.
Cas outside Ickleford School with the copy of the Ratcliffe painting we have given them (it’s a photo on canvas, and came out really well)
Some of the generous Heritage Lottery funding was also for project work in Ickleford, to enable local residents to learn more about the history of their village, and particularly about Hyde Mill. Working with local volunteers, the Museum Service helped with displays in the church on the Open Village weekend, visited the school, and helped with the excavation of the mill site. The photos show some of the work which has taken place so far; watch this space for the rest of the project.
Display in the church on 23 June at Ickleford Open Village, showing the Hyde Mill pop-up panels.
Amanda helping young visitors at the Ickleford Open Village event
Looking at some of the excavated material from the Hyde Mill site
Jo Ward (seated), our Audience Development consultant, giving out her questionnaires at Ickleford Open Village
At Ickleford School last month, with our excellent pop-up panels (thanks to the HLF)
Back to Ickleford School to present the painting and a mounted Victorian map of the village
You will have seen, if you follow our blog or have come on one of our tours, that many staff are busy at work behind the scenes making preparations for the new museum. This does not mean, however, that we have withdrawn from the wider world. The “Discovering Ickleford” Heritage Lottery Funded project has recently involved our Learning Officer Cas and Cultural Services Manager Ros working with the local community and schoolchildren there. David Hodges, one of our curators, is working with local football clubs to develop a travelling exhibition about the history of football in the area to go with some of the fantastic objects in the football collection. Our Archaeology Officer, Keith, is out on the annual dig with the Norton Community Archaeology Group exploring the site of a Bronze Age Henge.
Hidden Landscapes Exhibition Poster
One of the other projects in which we have had some involvement is culminating in a exhibition which opens on 9th August. “Hidden Landscapes” presents the findings from the Hidden Landscapes Project, carried our by visual artist Christina Bryant. Christina spent 12 months exploring chosen sites located along the urban fringes of Letchworth Garden City. Her interest is in the spaces that straddle the urban and the country, the ‘wilderness’ that lies just beyond the codes and surveillance of the town. Her focus was on areas showing evidence of current or recent human occupation, recording, mapping and surveying the rubbish and debris from the selected locations. She met with me, as a museum curator, to talk about curation and display of objects, and worked closely with our archaeology officer Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews in order to understand and use the painstaking methods of an archaeologist to help explore what links us with our everyday landscape.
The exhibition runs from 9th – 30th August at the Letchworth Arts Centre, and on August 15 at 7.00, Christina will be at the Letchworth Arts Centre speaking about what she has uncovered. The exhibition is a fascinating blend of drawings, maps and finds from the various sites which include: Norton Common, the old quarry on Wilbury Hills and the A1(M) underpass.
Christina is keen to get local people involved with the project as much as possible. In addition to the exhibition, she is organising a ‘wilderness excavation’ at one of the sites on Saturday 17th August, 2-4pm, which anyone will be welcome to attend. This will give people a chance first hand to experience her project.
Our current work to prepare for the new museum extends beyond choosing objects from our stores. Sometimes, we are able to add objects to our collection that will enable us to tell the stories of North Hertfordshire. You may remember that earlier this year we acquired a painting by William Ratcliffe of Ickleford, and we have already been able to use this painting as the focus of some work with the Ickleford community. The latest addition to our collection is a watercolour painting by Francis King called “Garden City Revels”.
From left to right: Eleanor Harris; Harry Meyer ; a Letchworth Intellectual from a learned Society; Doris Meyer; the Arts and Crafts Devotee.
Francis King was trained in art at the Slade School in London between 1922 and 1924, and he was a contemporary of Anthony Gross, Rex Whistler and Stanley Spencer. In 1930 he became an art teacher, and in 1935 moved to Letchworth to teach at St Christopher School, where he remained until his retirement in 1970. He lived with his family first in Letchworth, then in Weston and finally in Ashwell, where he lived with his wife until his death in 2001 at the age of 96. He had two exhibitions of his work at Letchworth Museum, one in 1971, which was mainly of his cartoons, and one in 2005, which showed both his cartoons and his paintings.
We have a small number of his artworks in the museum collection showing local scenes, but this new painting is of particular interest to us for its illustration of life in the early Garden City and more particularly for its depiction of two people instrumental in setting up Letchworth Museum.
Francis King wrote of this painting:
“The early Letchworthians of the First Garden City were a by-word for alighting at Kings Cross station in anything from a toga to a farm labourer’s smock and sandals, clutching a shepherd’s crook. It was all part of the simple life movement. In my days at St Christopher School, I would walk along the quiet roads leading to Leys Avenue, to see notice boards in private gardens drawing attention to a Society promoting some obscure belief or other.
In my picture I tried to gather a representative collection of these by some individual characters known to me: for instance (reading from left to right): Eleanor Harris, co-Head of St Christopher School – a Theosophist and ardent vegetarian; our next door neighbour Harry Meyer – ‘Back to Nature’ – who could be seen first thing in the morning leaping in the air for joy with arms outstretched to greet ‘Glad Day’; next a Letchworth Intellectual from a learned Society; then Meyer’s Sister a keen botanist and illustrator by watercolour drawings; and finally on the right – the Arts and Crafts Devotee.
All are displayed in Bacchic dance in a little Public Garden (on the way to the centre) in which stood a lead grey statue of the lesbian poetess Sappho in a sad dejected posture, and so, clearly, un-united with my festive scene (strictly ‘tee-total’).”
Harry Meyer and his sister Doris were members of the Letchworth Naturalists involved in founding Letchworth Museum. Many objects in our collection came from the Meyer family, and we have several boxes of their archives in our Museum Resource Centre which we hope can be used as part of a research project in the future. Harry was also fascinated by windmills, and there is an extensive archive of his (20 albums of windmill photos from 1926 onwards, neatly arranged and listed by county) at the Mills Archive Trust in Reading. An exhibition of Harry and Doris’s photographs and drawing was held at Letchworth Museum in 2002.
This painting by Francis King delightfully captures something of the character of Harry and Doris Meyer and their surroundings, so that rather than remaining remote historic figures in the history of North Hertfordshire, we can glimpse something of their spirit. Through objects like these, we can really bring the past to life!