Una Stubbs tribute

A single pink rose was left in tribute to Una Stubbs, at the memorial sculpture of Ebenezer Howard in Howardsgate.

Una Stubbs, who died earlier this month, had a career in film, television and theatre that spanned decades. In 2013 she took part in the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? programme to learn more about her family and found not one but two connections with Welwyn Garden City.

Never having met her paternal grandparents even though they didn't die until she was in her twenties, Una, who was the face of Rowntree's Dairy Box in the 1950s, discovered that her grandfather worked for the chocolate manufacturer thirty years before. When increasing mechanisation put her grandfather out of a job, the family relocated to Welwyn Garden City. By extraordinary coincidence Una's maternal great grandfather was Sir Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City movement and the creator of Welwyn Garden City.

Angela Eserin, local historian and a Trustee of the WGC Heritage Trust, was invited by the Who Do You Think You Are? producers to participate in the filming of the programme, talking to Una on her visit to Welwyn Garden City.

“I found her to be a genuinely lovely person. Not the least bit "actressy", but modest and unassuming and really easy to talk to. She instantly put me at ease. She did say how proud she was of her great grandfather and how beautiful she thought Welwyn Garden City was.

At the end of the filming she said goodbye and walked into John Lewis and I remember thinking it unlikely that anyone in the store would realise that the small figure in the black coat and beret was the wonderful actress Una Stubbs.”