A guest post by Coralie Smith, work experience student from Bedford Sixth Form

During my time at North Herts Museum this week for my Year 12 Work Experience I have gained lots of experience in what it takes to work at a museum and found it very interesting as prior to coming here I had little knowledge on the work that was done for the museum to function. All the staff at the museum have been so friendly during my week here and I found it very interesting to learn all about the different roles that are taken on by them.

I found it very interesting to see how far back in time some of the objects displayed at the museum go and loved learning the history behind them, my favourite being a Denarius of Elagabalus from Baldock which is being shown in their LGBT+ display where I learnt is considered to be one of the first known genderfluid Roman rulers.

As well as this, I found it very insightful being taught how to accession objects which are donated to the museum and learning how to do this in both the accessions register and their online database Ehive. On Ehive I found it very interesting to see the variety of items that have been donated to the museum and then researching items that I found interesting and didn’t have prior knowledge in. Overall, my time at the museum has been very eye opening in developing an understanding about the jobs that are done while working at a museum and learning different skills that are needed to do these jobs.

Coralie working on the record for a Peter Rabbit plush

Guest post by Diane Maybank

April 2023

Anglia matchbox

Ensign matchbox

As your eyes skim the objects in the Connections display cabinets you might miss the two match boxes. Placed side by side, looking a little faded and fragile, you would never guess the story these neat structures of wood and paper have to tell. Their brand names, Anglia and Ensign appear undeniably British but their story is pan-European.

They contained safety matches and were manufactured in the mid-1930s by The Anglia Match Company, Letchworth. Founded in 1934, the Company was in business for 20 years. Aerial photographs from 1953 show the factory buildings on Works Road.

The label tells us that brothers Jules and Jacob Gourary from Ukraine were the owners of the factory.

On 24 February 2023 Hertfordshire people joined Ukrainian refugees at County Hall to hold a candle-lit vigil and minute’s silence in memory of those affected by the Russian invasion. It was a year to the day that the war had begun and since then some two thousand Ukrainian refugees have settled in Hertfordshire.

The label reminds us they are not the first Ukrainians to find refuge and work in Britain. The Gourary brothers made a similar journey a hundred years before. They were Jews, escaping persecution from Russian and Nazi aggression.

The war in Ukraine is not about Jews but it has brought the country’s past into focus. The tragic history of Nazi persecution following Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Russian shelling of Kiev’s Holocaust memorial site at Babi Yar in 2022, and the election of Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 are enough for the Gourary’s story to claim our attention today.

The brothers were born in the late nineteenth century in Kremenchuk on the River Dneiper. At the time of their birth Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and their home city was situated within the Pale of Settlement. This was land to the west of the Empire in which Jews were required to live by order of the Czars. They were subjected to periodic pogroms; these were murderous attacks on Jewish people and property.

Many Jews lived in poverty within the Pale; their movements and access to work severely restricted. By contrast, the Gourary family made a good living and were land owners. Jews were allowed to work in the timber trade as well as the manufacture of tobacco. We know that timber and tobacco played a part in the brothers’ commercial success in Austria. We can assume that the family wealth came from business linked to these commodities.

On 27 June 2022 Russian forces fired missiles into the Amstor shopping mall in Kremenchuk. The mall was packed with people and over 100 were killed or injured. Since then Russian missiles have continued to attack the city’s civilian infrastructure.

As Jews, the Gourary family were never secure in Ukraine. By the time the brothers reached their teens, continuing pogroms and the disintegration of the Russian Empire, hastened by the First World War (1914-18), led to large scale Jewish migration to Western Europe and the United States. We don’t know when the brothers left Russia for Austria but it’s safe to assume they started their journey during the period of civil war that followed the Russian Revolution, between 1917 and 1920.

The Gourary brothers were among one million people displaced by the civil war. Partly on foot, partly by train, they made it to Austria. One hundred years later eight million Ukrainians were seeking a place of safety, travelling west in cars, trains and planes, tracked by the world’s media.

The brothers quickly established their first match factory in Salzburg, drawing on funds from the sale of their Kremenchuck estates. The 1920s were successful years for the factory, its matches gained a reputation for quality and were exported to England. More family members joined them in the relative safety of Salzburg.

Everything changed in the 1930s. The Gourarys soon had good reason to feel more insecure than they had in Kremenchuk. The rise of Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany prompted the brothers to embark on a plan to move their family and co-workers to the safety of England. Their assets would be deposited in banks in London and New York. In Letchworth a new match factory would open in 1934. Paul Gerschonkron, a fellow refugee, was appointed Managing Director while the brothers remained in Salzburg.

One year later The Letchworth Citizen reported the sale of the first matches ever produced in the town. They went to a Mr St John Ryan, a shop owner in The Arcade. There were 25 employees at this stage, with an expected increase to about a 100. A photograph of the factory shows a single story building, painted white, looking fresh and orderly. As production got underway, it was convenient to have the boxes and splints made in Salzburg. The Letchworth workforce labelled the boxes, headed the splints and packed everything for distribution. Gradually the Salzburg operation was wound down and all production moved to Letchworth, shortly before or after The Anschluss of 1938.

By the 1930s Letchworth was well on the way to becoming a model manufacturing town when the brothers’ representative, Paul Gershonkron arrived. An industrial site of some 6 square miles, had been laid out by the town planners in 1903 and by 1926 there were 70 factories representing a variety of trades and employing 4,000 people. A number of factories had been built with the assistance of loans guaranteed by the Garden City Company. There was a choice of premises to rent and a favourable system of land tenure had been adopted.

With all this in place, the pairing of two Ukrainian refugees and Letchworth Garden City Company was not as unlikely as you might think.

A family like the Gourarys were up against terrible odds. On 19 August 1934 Hitler claimed absolute power in Germany. An Anschluss or annexation of Austria into the German Reich was one of his long term goals. When the Anschluss came on 13 March 1938 there followed an intensification of murderous hostility towards Salzburg’s Jewish population. Getting the paperwork to leave Austria was complex and stressful. As a condition of leaving, the brothers were forced to hand over 50% of their assets to the Reich. Those foreign bank accounts would save them from penury in their new life.

In 2022 Ukrainian refugees, for different reasons, struggled to assemble the correct documentation for entry into Britain. The process gradually became more streamlined and Hertfordshire is currently focussed on how to help our guests access all the benefits of a civil society and welfare state. When the brothers made their escape, the international response, or at least its rhetoric, was similar to today. Back then, The Red Cross played a major role in providing practical assistance. The mood of compassion, charitable giving, fair distribution of aid, were similar to today. The difference lies in scale, infrastructure and technology.

How did Letchworth come to play a part in this story of European conflict and ethnic cleansing? The answer lies in a combination of factors:

• migration – the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a small but continual settlement of Jewish refugees in Britain. The country became an established destination for Jews fleeing persecution.
• war – the rapid advance of the Kaiser’s army during the First World War resulted in Letchworth accepting nearly 3,000 Belgians in 1914. Their story is one of acceptance and co-existence. By the 1930s Letchworth had positive memories of taking in refugees. The Belgians made a welcome contribution to the town’s prosperity.
• vision – Letchworth was the world’s first Garden City, founded on the ideas of Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928). His vision was to create a community where people could live, work and enjoy their leisure time in rural surroundings. Such a bold plan attracted a wide range of idealistic people. The special composition of Letchworth’s population meant that Jewish refugees would have been welcomed, especially if like the Gourary brothers, they had the means and expertise to contribute to the town’s industries in the inter-war period.

By February 1940, Britain was at war with Germany. The Letchworth Citizen reported on the success of a fundraising bid to establish a hostel in Letchworth to support refugees. £800 had been raised. The list of donated items is impressive: furniture, household necessaries, various foodstuffs, cinema and concert tickets. Refugees were invited into people’s homes and treated for a reduced fee by doctors and dentists. Tradesmen offered cut rates, goods were sold at a discount. English lessons and activities at The Settlement were free of charge.

In February 1942 about 60 people attended a meeting of the Supporters of the Letchworth Scheme for Central-European Refugees. The purpose of the meeting was to mark the closure of the hostel at Robingate, Barrington Road. It had opened in 1939 with eleven refugees, over its three year existence it had supported 46 people. Once refugees got their visas some found jobs in the factories on Works Road. The difficult predicament of refugees, their fragile mental state and struggles to find employment are discussed with sensitivity. The hostel housed some people for a few days while others remained for the full three years. The meeting reflected on how successful its scheme had been and noted that funds were available for future support. It is possible that the Gourarys and their co-workers were supported as these reports describe.

The scale and complexity of the Homes for Ukraine scheme (2022) far outweighs anything within Letchworth’s power in the 1940s, but there is little to separate them when it comes to their sense of purpose and compassion. One major difference is the financial incentives hosts are now offered to share their homes. Today we have the machinery and experience of local government, led and funded by Westminster to enable refugees to settle in Hertfordshire. Access to the government’s £150 million homelessness support, announced in December 2022 is now urgently needed as councils struggle to maintain their commitments.

The 1939 Census records that Paul Gershonkron is living at a house named Lydialand on the Hitchin Road, Letchworth. Jacob Gourary is living at Scudamore, 1 Baldock Road, Letchworth. He shares the house with his wife Berthe and two others: Lambert Cahen, the company sales manager and Dora Howe, his secretary. The brothers lived in the town for no more than a couple of years.

The United States was their preferred destination. Jules was granted a visa to enter the States on 26 April 1939. His documents state that he is 6 feet 2 inches tall with brown hair, grey eyes and a fair complexion. There is a scar on his right cheek. Accompanied by his wife, Regina he sailed to New York on 11 August 1939. Jacob gained a Male Enemy Alien Exemption from Internment certificate on 23 November 1939 and a visa to travel to the States on 5 June 1940. On 1 July 1940 Jacob and his wife Berthe arrived in New York. Jacob became a naturalised American citizen in 1941. He is described as having grey eyes, grey hair and is 6 feet tall. His record shows he is resident at 122 East, 82^nd street, New York. His occupation is that of jewellery manufacturer. Jules applied for naturalisation later, on 27 December 1944 when he was 61 years old.

The brothers continued to manage the Anglia Match Company from their base in New York until it closed in 1954.

 Factory fires, competitors, problems with management, all contributed to the demise of the Company. Fires happened rather too often and were remembered as major spectator events amongst the townspeople, especially its children.

The company appears to have been in decline in the 3 years preceding 1954. The workforce had shrunk from about 100 to 12 employees. Things looked particularly bleak when in 1951 Mr Cohen, the Managing Director who had replaced Paul Gershonkron, collapsed and died on site. Rudolph Khan, who had travelled from Salzburg with the Gourarys and worked under Mr Cohen, took over running the company. He died soon after, leaving no clear leadership.

Jules Gourary prospered in New York; but he did not forget the country that gave him refuge and a good business opportunity. Incoming Passenger Lists show that Jules and Regina made 6 sailings between New York and Southampton beginning after the war in 1946. The trips ended in 1954, suggesting they were partly to oversee the fortunes of The Anglia Match Company.

Jules Gourary’s obituary was published in The New York Times 24 October 1964. It describes him as an investor and philanthropist. He died at his home at 888 Park Avenue. He was 81 years old.

The Gourary family are buried at Paramus Bergen County, New Jersey. The Jewish cemetery there is called Beth-El.

Ukrainian refugees, like the Gourary brothers have the means to empower themselves. A trawl through Hertfordshire newspapers on any week will offer headlines like these:

‘Ukrainian Girl staying in Bushey raising funds to Study at National Youth Music Theatre.’

‘Fleeing Ukrainians Embraced by Hertfordshire Business Community.’

Social media has been vital to what our Ukrainian guests did next. It is a source of information, ideas, connection and support.

 

Ukrainian flags fly from public buildings in Hertfordshire and social media is alive with grass roots activity from ‘Hitchin and Beyond Welcomes Refugees’. With many others they continue the county’s tradition of making sanctuary and opportunity possible for people escaping conflict.

About 700 m east of the village of Sandon lies a tree-covered mound, off Park Lane and north of Notley Green. According to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) in 1911, it is a ‘moated tumulus’. This is not a recognised term in archaeology and shows that the surveyor had difficulty recognising what it was. Indeed, there has long been speculation about its origins and purpose. It has been described as a prehistoric burial mound, an early medieval moot hill, a Norman motte, a medieval windmill mound or a combination of these.

It is almost circular, measuring about 26.2 m northwest to southeast, and 26.8 m northeast to southwest. The flat top of the mound measures 17.7 by 19.5 m and is raised a little over a metre above the surrounding ground level. A shallow ditch 4.3 m across surrounds the mound, with a gap of 4.9 m towards the northeast. Water collects in part of the ditch during wet weather. It was covered in trees by the time of the Tithe Award in May 1840; although trees are not shown here on Bryant’s map of 1822, he may have ignored small clumps in his survey.

The Mount lies in a field called Woodley Yards by 1910, although in 1840 it was called Knotley Field. A field east of it was known as Knotley Mill Field, to the south of which was Mill Field. Knotley is a variant of Notley, the name of the green south of the site, itself recorded as Knott Green in 1676. Mill Field is over a mile north of Mill End in the parish, so the names can hardly be connected.

The Hertfordshire folklorist William Blyth Gerish (1864-1921) recorded a gruesome story about The Mount. A house belonging to a wealthy man stood on the top of it and a local boy overheard some men plotting to burgle it. They spotted the boy, captured him, and threated to flay him (remove his skin) if he told anyone what he had overheard. The brave lad did tell the owners what he had heard, so they could defend their property. The attempted burglary was foiled, but the thieves caught the boy and carried out their threat. The boy survived the ordeal, saying that the most painful part of being flayed was having the skin removed from his fingertips and his toes. Letchworth Museum’s archives (now in North Hertfordshire Museum) have a typescript bearing the name of R J Kingsley of Nelson in New Zealand dated May 1904, which may be the source of Gerish’s published tale.

The East Hertfordshire Archaeological Society organised a trip to The Mount on 24 July 1929. The visit reignited interest in it. The headmaster of Sandon School, James W Sherlock (1898-?), suggested that it was a ‘Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age’ burial mound in 1932. He reported that the owner of the site, Joan Bowman of Sandon Bury, had given permission to excavate in the near future. As it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, Percival Westell of Letchworth Museum got permission from the Ministry of Works to undertake investigations.

He organised a cross-shaped trench across the centre of the mound between April and September 1933. Local volunteers, including many residents of the village who had attended an adult education class run by Mr Sherlock, did the bulk of the work. Westell was rarely on site, and Mr Sherlock kept him informed of progress by letter. Around the time of the excavation, a schoolboy discovered a Romano-British melon bead from the field surface near The Mount, raising the possibility that it was of Roman date.

The excavators began by sinking a cross-shaped trench across the centre of The Mount, labelling each arm as a separate trench (1 to the north, 2 to the south, 3 to the east and 4 to the west). Each branch was three feet (0.9 m) wide and none went deeper than six feet six inches (2 m). Two extensions made later were labelled 5 and 6. At the centre of the mound, the deepest part, the top deposit was a layer of loamy topsoil, one foot (0.3 m) this. Beneath this was a layer of chalky clay two feet six inches (0.75 m) thick above a band of loamy clay-with-flints six inches (0.15 m) thick. The lowest two feet six inches (0.75 m) consisted of boulder clay containing glacial erratics. This was the underlying natural subsoil.

The first finds were made immediately beneath the topsoil, with those at the lower levels found in an area of 16 by 3 feet (4.9 by 0.9 m). The excavators found 757 potsherds, four small copper alloy objects, 200 iron nails, a knife blade, a key and other iron objects, animal bones (cattle and pig, including teeth) and oyster shells. On 27 April 1933, Mr Sherlock wrote to Westell mentioning the discovery of a coin. According to the Royston Crow of 21 April 1933, all the finds made by that time were made at depths of between six inches and five feet (0.15 to 1.5 m) but no deeper.

Six feet (1.8 m) down, the excavators discovered two wooden beams, arranged at right angles. They extended away from the sides of the trenches in which they were found (1 and 3) and numbered these extensions Trenches 5 and 6. The beams were made from oak, 16 feet (4.9 m) long and one foot (0.3 m) square and at each end, there were recesses to take angled uprights. The excavators correctly identified the beams as a cross-tree, the base elements of a wooden post mill, the earliest type of windmill. They lay at the bottom of a pit cut through the layers of the mound, apart from the topsoil, and into the underlying subsoil; it was the fill of this pit that contained all of the finds. The cross trees were no longer in their original positions, one lying on top of the other in such a way that they were disconnected at the mortices that originally held them together.

Although Percival Westell reported that all the finds went on loan to Letchworth Museum (accessioned as 1935.6922), there are only 13 potsherds in the collection. Perhaps the loaned material was returned (to Mr Sherlock or Mrs Bowman?) or it suffered from a ‘rationalisation’ of the archaeological collections in the early 1970s. However, the thinning out of archaeological material involved mainly disposing of unfeatured body sherds, yet only one of the ten handles, none of the twenty-five base sherds and none of the thirty-six glazed or decorated sherds remains in the collection.

However, Gerald Dunning of the British Museum examined the entire collection of pottery in the 1930s, after visiting the site. He identified about 75% of the material as being of thirteenth-century date, with some extending into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and a few residual Romano-British sherds. He reported that the most common form was cooking pots, followed by bowls and jugs. In a letter to Westell dated 30 May 1933, he stated that ‘I see no reason for dating the mound earlier than 13th or even 14th century’.

Controversy arose from the identification of three potsherds from low down in the trenches. Fortunately, they survive in the museum’s collection. Gerald Dunning concluded that they were from a single vessel, which he dated to the seventh to ninth centuries. Westell seems not to have been satisfied with Dunning’s dating and he approached O G S Crawford, M O’Reilly, L A Curtis Edwards and Sir Cyril Fox for further opinions. Their estimates of the date of the pottery ranged from Pre-Roman Iron Age to High Medieval. Puzzled, but realising that the date of these sherds might throw some light on the date of the mound, Westell left a note with the sherds: ‘Please keep these 3 sherds separate & kindly date if possible. ?Iron Age or Romano-British? Found 6 ft down in Sandon Mount resting on undisturbed, original ground level. ?Urn containing cremated interment. ?Do these a/c for origination of the Mount? ?Tumulus.’.

Dunning’s published description of the sherds was wrong in several ways. Although he was correct to say that the outer surface of the sherds is black, the ware itself is a reddish-brown and the surface has been blackened by smoke action, suggesting that they are from a cooking vessel. His dating is also wrong. These sherds are identical to the Museum Service’s reference sherds of St Neots-type Ware, a fairly rough fabric tempered with fossiliferous shell and a slightly soapy feel to the surfaces. This ware was produced in the south and east Midlands, centring on the towns of Cambridge, St Neots, Bedford, Northampton and Oxford. Several kiln sites exist, including St Neots and Olney Hide. The date is firmly Saxo-Norman (AD 850-1200).

Westell also changed the stratigraphic position of the sherds between the original draft of the text and the publication. In the published version, Dunning states unequivocally that they came from ‘the old ground level below the mound’, presumably because this is what Westell had told him. However, the typescript contains the crossed-out phrase ‘found close to, if not upon, the original ground level’, suggesting that while they were indeed found at a considerable depth, they were nevertheless contained in the mound material.

The excavators found a coin towards the northern end of Trench 1, at a depth of three feet (0.9 m). Mr Sherlock sent it by post to Letchworth Museum on 27 April 1933. He described how it had been ‘encased in clay’ and ‘covered in a greenish deposit’. However, we do not know what the coin was as it is not mentioned in Westell’s report. There is a medieval coin from Sandon, donated by a Miss Field, which is an issue of Edward IV, dated 1464×70 and minted in London. Although it is possible that this is the one from The Mount, Miss Field’s two other donations of coins (a Roman coin of Antoninus Pius and a late medieval jeton) both came from Roe Green.

The excavation at the Mount shows that it was undoubtedly the site of a sunken post mill, the pottery suggesting that it was raised in the thirteenth century. Although Westell was determined to demonstrate that the mound pre-dated the mill, there is little reason to believe this to be the case. The pit dug through the mound down to the level of the cross-trees could have been dug after the mound to insert them or, perhaps more likely, to remove timbers at the time of its demolition. If the latter, the ceramic finds suggest that it happened in the fifteenth century at the earliest.

Westell angered Ruth Pym of The Settlement, who read his account of the excavation in The Times. In a letter of 12 November 1933, she said ‘I have seen the Times article & find it almost unconceivable that you should have let the Settlement down so completely – the “elder scholars” were in the Settlement Class, which gave you the opportunity of making the whole excavation – that is where you should have paid your debt to us & given us our due place – no wonder you did not show me the draft report.’ He was evidently taken aback by this and the published version of the report acknowledges ‘Miss Ruth Pym and members of Sandon Adult Educational Settlement Class’.

Westell did his best to create an air of mystery about The Mount by creating a ’manufactroversy’ around the three sherds found low down in the excavation. Having received an answer from Gerald Dunning that he did not like – that they were medieval – he sought the opinions of other experts and we no doubt he was delighted that they did not agree. It is fortunate that they remain in the museum collection, it is clear that they are contemporary with the other pottery found, albeit at the early end of the range.

Westell also tried to establish the mill on the mound as one of the earliest in England, if not the earliest. The earliest documented mill in England is from 1185 at the ‘lost’ village of Weedley in Yorkshire, but they were known in the Arab world before AD 800. The earliest types in this country are the post mill, as at Sandon, in which the entire body of the mill pivoted around a central post to allow the miller to catch the best wind direction. There is a documentary record of a mill in Sandon as early as 1222, on land belonging to the manor of Gannock. Whether this is the windmill at The Mount (which is close to Gannock Green) or the lost mill that gave its name to Mill End is uncertain. The mill at The Mount was probably known as Knotley Mill, to judge from the nearby field names.

Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews