Student Researchers

Bradley Melton and Michael Kuhr, second year University of Hertfordshire students, have been undertaking some research into sport in WGC for our ‘Where Do You Think We Played?’ project as part of their Making Histories module.

Amongst their findings “this poster written in Dutch for a football fixture against Welwyn Garden City Football Club in 1947 shows that two years after World War II ended the ties between the two places were still relatively strong. Nor was this the only example showing the town’s international football relations being maintained/built after the war; an article in the Welwyn Times published 26th January 1951 describes the exchanging of gifts after a game with an Argentinean team.” The poster is part of the WGC local studies collection and is shown here courtesy WGC Library.

Another item they came across reported on athlete Joy Jordan. "Following the theme of sports/leisure, one notable figure in Welwyn Garden City during late 1950s to early 60s was Joy Jordan. Her performance in the Rome Olympics saw her come sixth with 2:07.8. This was a few weeks prior to her world record breaking run. In Welwyn Garden City September 1960, Jordan created the first (and only) world record in Welwyn Garden City running 2:06.1 for the 880 yards. This record was held for two years until Willis ran 2:02.0 in Perth. Joy Jordan was regarded as one of the best during this period, being ranked third worldwide in 800m in 1959, and sixth in the following years." The information on Joy was found in a collection of newspaper cuttings and articles labelled Welwyn Hatfield Sporting Heroes in WGC Library. The Rome Olympics 1960 ticket was part of a collection of WGC athletics material kindly loaned to the Trust by Chris Brunning to be scanned and added to the Trust's archive.