Trustees were out celebrating a major coup following news from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The Trust had applied for £50,000 to finance their “Where Do You Think You Live?” project and were awarded the full amount. Champagne was the order of the day and the Howard Memorial seemed a fitting place.
After a few hitches the gathering of memories of the town’s early days is now in full swing. Dennis Lewis, who is leading the project expressed himself well pleased with progress. “We had a few problems with pressing the wrong buttons, but that is all sorted out now happily”, he said.
The possibility of some serious cash from the European Union has brought the Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust and the University of Hertfordshire together as partners. Funds up to several million Euros are on offer. Announcing the link-up Tony Skottowe explained that the Trust had been approached late last year to join a group from Paris and Liege to apply for funds. “Aimed at Garden Cities, and how the idea could help town planning now, part of the project is to find ways to reduce energy use in homes. To have any chance of being successful we needed an academic partner”, he said.
The Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust was recently invited to send a representative to an EU project in Paris based on the importance of Garden Cities throughout the Community. As it turned out Welwyn Garden was the only UK town to turn up out of all those contacted.
Sir Frederic Osborn (1885-1978) was, with Ebenezer Howard, one of the two most significant and influential figures in the British and International Garden Cities/ New Towns movement.
He was first employed at Letchworth in 1912, moved to WGC on its foundation in 1919, and from the 1930's onwards worked within the Town and Country Planning Association from where he was the prime mover in the campaign which resulted in the New Towns legislation after World War II.
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