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!
This week at Burymead we found these two Medical bags in brilliant condition, one belonging to Dr. Machen, who recently retired from Regal Chambers Surgery in Hitchin.
One is an obstetrician’s bag containing cutting needle, Wrigley’s forceps, suture, cord powder and other assorted medical items.
The other was a general medical bag, containing bandages, scalpels and a syringe as well as other medical equipment (for example glass bottles).
We both thought these were both very interesting as it was fascinating to look at what actually was in a Doctor’s bag, but especially the obstetrician’s bag as some of the equipment isn’t commonly used any more. We hope you have found this as interesting as we did.
A Roman marble head, found in a shed in Radwell; it is a portrait of Germanicus, who died in AD 19, twenty-four years before the Roman conquest
This is the title of a talk I gave last night for the Hitchin Society as part of the Hitchin Festival. I have given a talk every year since 2004, when I started in my post with North Hertfordshire Museums, and each time I try to highlight a different aspect of Hitchin’s fascinating past. As the years have gone by, I have widened the scope to include the rest of North Hertfordshire, focusing on the buried sites and standing buildings that contribute to understanding our history. This year, though, I decided to do something different.
As my work is now much more focused on the objects in our collections, as we prepare for the displays in the new museum, I decided that this is what I would talk about. These are the “small things” of my title, a term inspired by the pioneering work of American historical archaeology, In Small Things Forgotten, by James Deetz, originally published in 1977. James Deetz used the often overlooked details of archaeological finds to piece together narratives to cover gaps in the story of how the Thirteen English Colonies became the United States of America.
A Dressel 1A amphora, dating to before 100 BC, found in a chieftain’s grave in Baldock: it is the oldest Roman amphora found in Britain
I wanted to look at a longer chronological sweep, from the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 BC through to the present day. This is a period when we think we understand how and why things changed, when we slice history up into over-neat categories such as Roman Britain, the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, Norman England and so on. Worse, from my point of view, is when we talk about these periods as if each one is populated by a different ‘people’: “the Romans”, “the Anglo-Saxons”, “the Normans”, “the Tudors”. Using labels in this way can make it seem as if there was a discrete time from 1485 to 1603 when everyone thought of themselves as “Tudor”, for instance: know that they did not.
Life doesn’t work like that. For the most part, the world changes slowly and imperceptibly. Things that can seem like dramatic events – the Roman invasion of AD 43, the Norman Conquest of 1066, the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 – because they figure so prominently in our histories rarely affect the lives of ordinary people. This is where the “small things” help to correct the picture we get if we rely on documents alone.
Looking at the objects in our collections, we can see how the changes that really do affect people take place gradually, over many years. In other words, they are processes that transform lives almost without being noticed. During the ninety-eight years between Julius Caesar and Claudius’s conquest, North Hertfordshire was in no sense part of the Roman Empire, yet people began to use Roman style objects, importing goods from places that were inside the Empire. Our kings issued coins with legends in Latin, people began to use samian ware for dining, they drank wine that they served in pottery flagons. By the time that the Roman “conquest” occurred, local people were so thoroughly “Romanised” that we can’t detect the conquest archaeologically. Our region has no forts and no military remains because there was no need to coerce people into being “Roman”: to a large extent they already were and they may even have welcomed the conquest.
A Roman cogwheel bracelet; popular in the fourth century, the type is found along the Danube and Rhine frontiers as well as in Britain
The same story can be seen at the other end of the Roman period, when trade with the Empire shifted from across the English Channel to across the North Sea, initially to the Rhineland. During the fourth century, there was increasing trade with Free Germany, outside the Empire. Mercenaries recruited from this area served in the army in Britain (the largest standing army in the Roman world by that time) and some may have brought families with them who settled permanently in Britain. By the fifth century, when Roman rule came to an end, germanic decoration was commonplace on a whole range of objects and this process continued as more settlers (whom we would call Anglo-Saxons at this period) arrived to join those already here.
The “small things” of our collections show that our neat period labels may be convenient – as human beings, we love to categorise the world around us – but they don’t reflect historical reality all that well. This is part of the challenge we face for telling the story of our District in the new museum: choosing appropriate and interesting “small things” that will engage and challenge our visitors.