Many talented people were needed to build up Welwyn Garden City and one of the most creative was Tom Heron. In our previous article we described Cresta Silks, the company he founded. This time we are going to look at the man himself.

Tom was born in 1890 into a middle class family in Bradford where his father ran a business wholesaling fabrics. One of his teachers had tried to persuade his parents to let him try for a scholarship to Oxford University but they wanted him to go into the family firm, which he did at age 16, as an office boy. As a young man he came under the influence of many talented individuals in the Leeds Art Club. There he met artists such as Paul Nash, who many years later designed patterns for him, and Stanley Spencer. He was a patron of avant-garde art and active in progressive causes, supporting suffragettes and becoming a lifelong pacifist.

At that time one had to be at least 21 to run a business. On his 21st birthday, in February 1911, he went into business in Leeds on his own account, making blouses. This prospered despite the outbreak of war in 1914, eventually employing 200 people. He registered as a Conscientious Objector, and - unusually for a company owner - embraced socialism, joining the Fabian Society.

He met Eulalie Davies, daughter of a congregational Minister, who shared his beliefs; they were married in a Quaker Meeting House in September 1918. Their marriage lasted until Tom's death at age 93 in 1983. She died in 1986. They had four children: Patrick, famous artist; Michael, Benedictine monk; Joanna, who cared for them both in their final years in her home in Cumbria; and Giles, an organic farmer. After a spell in Crysede Silks in Cornwall, Tom looked for somewhere to start a new business. He had "watched the Garden City movement with interest since its inception and had always thought the idea a good one". Also "having as a young man had to catch a train at 7.30am a mile away from my home in order to reach my father's business thirty miles away, I decided that as soon as I could manage it I would live near my work". So he brought his family to Welwyn Garden City where he founded Cresta Silks in 1929.

Tom and Eulalie were both committed Christians, eventually settling down as active Anglicans in St Francis Church. His religious and political beliefs were put into practice in Cresta. Following in the footsteps of William Morris, he sought to create a company which generated profits but where profit was not the main goal. Staff were valued as individuals - many stayed for decades; quality was overarching, and creative artists were at the centre. An article in the Welwyn Times in 1933 recognised that Cresta had a wider purpose than most manufacturing concerns: "It believes not only that clothes express personality but that they actually affect the future of civilisation." Initially the Herons lived in a large house at 76 Brockswood Lane. In 1961, they moved to number 38 ("half the number and half the size") and in 1978 retired to Cumbria. Space does not allow a full account of this exceptional man, who was also a poet and a writer.

His son Giles with author John S Peart-Binns wrote a biography 'Rebel & Sage' in 2001 which is highly recommended.

An interesting way to spend half an hour in Welwyn Garden City is to take the Cresta Walk. Start at one of the Sectional buildings on Broadwater Road, such as occupied currently by Topps Tiles. These flexible units were built by the Welwyn Garden City Company in the 1920s to attract start-up companies.

One was taken in 1929 by Tom Heron, who wanted to create a business producing and marketing block printed silk garments for discerning women. He had started making blouses when only 21 in Leeds, then moved to Cornwall to work for Crysede, a leading designer of silks. He was successful there but felt he could do more.

Choosing Welwyn Garden because of its forward looking image - and because the Company provided essential funding - he set up Cresta Silks. Heron employed modern artists to design his products, including his young son Patrick, who went on to be an outstanding figure in British art. He chose modernist Wells Coates to design his retail shops, in London, Bournemouth and Brighton, which broke new ground. They attracted go-ahead women who wanted reasonably priced but stylish and well made clothes.

Cresta flourished. It moved in 1938 to a new building, our second stop, beside the railway station in the town centre, with a shop and factory behind. Heron had to conform to neo-Georgian styling because of planning restraints. It stood in splendid isolation on the corner of Howardsgate/ Stonehills. Now it is McDonald's, Stonehills has been narrowed and a matching building has been infilled.

Silk was hard to come by during the war so Cresta turned to wool. Heron helped his country by joining the Board of Trade to set up the Utility Clothing Scheme, which provided well-designed clothes at minimum cost. In 1951, with Heron looking to retire, the business was taken over by the Howardsgate Trust, which had been set up to facilitate disposal of the assets of the Welwyn Garden City Company when it had been wound up. In 1954 Cresta moved to Welwyn Stores, also owned by Howardsgate Trust.

Our walk concludes in the toy department of John Lewis. Imagine it full of machinists, working behind windows which were blacked out (and still are) because residents objected to seeing a factory on Parkway. Cresta continued successfully for some time but moved away from block printing. Debenhams bought it in 1957, moved it out of Welwyn Garden, then closed it in 1980.

Tom Heron was a remarkable man and an important citizen of Welwyn Garden. We will write more about him in our next article.

Russians attacking Ukraine have fired missiles with apparently little regard for civilian casualties. It puts the clock back to World War Two, when more civilians were killed than military personnel. WGC suffered bombing attacks being near Hatfield, where the de Havilland factory was manufacturing Mosquito aircraft.

Arthur and Dorothy Brown were downstairs in the kitchen of 61 Handside Lane on the evening of 26th September 1940 when a bomb fell in their front garden. Displaced soil came through the roof and crushed their bed. If they had retired early they would have been killed. Happily they only suffered minor injuries but their house was heavily damaged. As we mentioned in an earlier article, it and the adjoining number 63 had to be demolished.

Arthur made an important contribution to the look of Welwyn Garden City. He was born in 1889 and in 1920 was recruited from Rochester Row School of Arts and Crafts to work for the Welwyn Garden City Company doing lettering layouts. He had started his career as a letter cutter in stone, apprenticed to Eric Gill, but broadened his work to include calligraphy.

Arthur’s most obvious work was the first road signs for which he designed an alphabet using the Nuneaton script. He made large wooden letters and screwed them to a wooden backing to spell out a street name. From this a cast was taken and used as a mould at the foundry for molten metal. Some of these signs survive; later ones use a typeface called Kindersley, after its designer David Kindersley, who also was once apprenticed to Eric Gill.

A contemporary recalled: “You would see Arthur dangling his legs high up on a scaffold, lettering a huge board depicting the site of some factory which is probably a household name today. “He also helped to teach the early citizens good manners, with little cream and green boards warning ‘Please keep off the grass’.”

Arthur opened his own sign-writing business around 1933 in a hut at 28 Bridge Road and was a founder member of the WGC Craftworkers Guild.

He died of a heart condition on 20th July 1950. Dorothy outlived him by 31 years. Some of his road signs are with us still.

Water has always been an important resource and the Romans made great engineering efforts to pipe it into their cities. So successful were they that there was often some to spare. To celebrate their success they introduced fountains - literally splashing out!

Fountains are great symbols of urban pride, and it was natural for Welwyn Garden City to build one to mark the Coronation in 1953 of Queen Elizabeth II. The designer was Kenneth Peacock, a partner in Louis de Soissons Architects. The site is in the middle of Parkway at the top of Howardsgate - a wonderful focal point.

The fountain has a bronze crown for a base comprised of 16 leaves, set within a basin edged in stone, 17 metres across (55 feet), holding 20,000 litres (4,400 gallons). There are nine jets and floodlighting both inside the ground and around the basin of the fountain. It cost £4,600, equivalent to nearly £1.5 million today.

It was 'unveiled' on a summer evening by Arthur Vickery, chairman of Welwyn Garden City UDC. Mr Scoffham, the UDC's engineer, had been on site at sunrise that morning to test the fountain while there was no one around. His efforts were rewarded. Arthur Cornner, the corporation's senior engineer, said "that's the first 'opening' of a public fountain I've been at where the jets were not set awry and did not spurt spectators with cold water." In spite of rain and wind, there were street parties to celebrate the Coronation, and a 25-mile cycle race.

The Fountain has kept going more or less ever since, but not without incident. In the harsh winter of 1962-63 it froze over in a great mound of ice on which children could climb.

In 2012, it was switched off because of a hose pipe ban but this coincided with the Olympic Torch being carried through the town centre (remember?). The council controversially paid £450 to refill it from a lake.

It was garlanded in poppies in 2018, the centenary of the end of World War One. Several times it has been dyed pink to signal breast cancer awareness. In 2019, ahead of the town's centenary, the council spent £22,000 to burnish the bronze, refurbish the jets, and upgrade the lighting.

The fountain remains a much loved feature of the town; long may it continue to entertain us.

Open any popular newspaper and there is a good chance of seeing an informal picture of a member of the Royal Family. But it was not always thus - before 1936 Royal images were strictly formal. All that changed one day in June of that year when photographers Lisa and Jimmy Sheridan set off from Welwyn Garden City to photograph the Duke and Duchess of York and their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, then aged ten and six, who lived in the Royal Lodge in Windsor Park.

Lisa was the artistic one of the pair, deciding when pictures should be taken, while Jimmy was a skilled photographer. Their images of the family relaxing in the garden with their dogs went around the world.

The Sheridans, who traded as Studio Lisa, became Royal photographers and had many more photoshoots with the King and Queen, as the Duke and Duchess became in 1938. When Queen Elizabeth II broadcast her first televised Christmas message in 1957, two framed Studio Lisa photographs of Prince Charles and Princess Anne were displayed on her desk. Lisa and Jimmy were justifiably proud of this connection and displayed a large Royal Coat of Arms on the front of their house, as well as a Warrant above the door 'By Royal Appointment'.

They had started in Broadstairs, Kent, but in 1934 decided to move nearer to London and discovered Welwyn Garden. Number 14 Parkway was newly built and proved ideal with room to add a studio in the back garden. As well as Royal commissions they had a large commercial practice. Lisa kept an eye out for photogenic local children to advertise products such as baby foods.

Jimmy enjoyed watching the town's expansion and recorded its growth. His photographs now comprise a unique historical collection. One of their two daughters, Dinah, became a top film actress, starring in Genevieve in 1953.

You can read more about Studio Lisa in a well-illustrated book by Rodney Laredo, 'Informally Royal - Studio Lisa and the Royal Family 1936-1966'.

Number 14 is on the west side of Parkway near the Campus. Look out for the frame above the door where the Royal Warrant was displayed.