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.

In this, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year, Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust looks back on the day when Queen Elizabeth II opened the new hospital named after her in the third of their regular columns delving into WGC's past.

On July 22, 1963, the Queen visited Welwyn Garden City to open the first general hospital to be built after the war, and which was to bear her name. There were several hospitals named after Queen Elizabeth, who was by then the Queen Mother, so this one was designated QEII.

This was a Red Letter Day for the town, and many companies closed to allow their staff to watch. Roads around the hospital were packed by the crowds who had turned out to greet Her Majesty on the Royal visit.

School pupils walked in large groups from as far away as Digswell to line the route of her Rolls-Royce. They were issued with Union Jacks, reportedly paid for by Barbara Cartland. When the Queen had passed some were disappointed that they had to walk all the way back to school to restart lessons.

One man, who was seven at the time, recalled: "We had to write about what we had seen had in particular what the Queen was wearing. "I, as a boy, had no clue; being colour blind, even less clue! Luckily a girl next to me said she had green gloves on. What a day!"

When the Queen got to the new hospital, a nurse, Louise Fairbrother, presented her with a bouquet. When Louise died, a fountain was erected in the grounds bearing her name.

A lady shared her memory of what happened next with the Heritage Trust "A select few wives of consultants and GPs were allowed viewing space In what was the Outpatient Department overlooking the front of the building, beautifully planted with Masquerade roses - very fashionable at the time. It was a beautiful - warm and golden with sunshine. We looked at Her Majesty with some interest. One of the young GPs among us proclaimed, 'The Queen's pregnant - she's wearing elastic stockings'. A number of us were pregnant at the time so were well tuned into her condition. We felt a certain sympathy with her discomfort whilst also admiring her dedication to duty. A few weeks later the announcement came from the Palace that the Queen was with child - Prince Edward to be. We at the opening ceremony already knew."

The Welwyn Times printed a special supplement in colour to mark the occasion, which included some charming pictures of the Queen meeting patients and staff.