Collection: Garden City Collection Study Centre

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Natural Science

  The extensive biological collections are held at the Museum Resources Centre, with some displays at Letchworth Museum. They include birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibia, insects and other invertebrates. The Museum Resources Centre also houses the Hertfordshire County Herbarium. The Natural History department also holds a photographic archive relating to the natural environment. Collections of all kinds, but especially chalk fossils. Named collections include Fordham and C J Torbet.

  Fine and Decorative Art

  The Museum has good collections of works by local artists and of works by artists who visited or spent time in the area. It includes oils, watercolours, prints and drawings. The most significant artists represented in the collection are William Ratcliffe and Spencer Frederick Gore, both members of the Camden Town group, and Margaret Thomas.;The museum has a representative collection of ceramics, including some interesting examples of fairings and other decorative wares.; William Ratcliffe moved to Letchworth in 1906, producing a number of postcard views of the town for the Garden City Press. He moved to London a few years later, where he became involved with the Camden Town Group of artists. In about 1930 he returned to Letchworth. In 1946, he held his first one-man exhibition, in London, and in 1954 Letchworth Museum put on an exhibition of his work. The museum purchased a number of water-colours from this exhibition. Ratcliffe died in 1955. After his death his family distributed the best oils to provincial galleries, including Liverpool and Manchester, giving Letchworth the residue of his studio – a large collection of drawings and watercolours, with a few oils.;Spencer Gore was a founder of the Camden Town Group in 1911 – a society of sixteen of the most promising modern male artists. Gore came to Letchworth in August and November 1912, where he painted a series of paintings of the new town which, with their intensely bright colours, and stylised forms are now seen as the most radical works of his career.;Letchworth Museum has a large collection of works by Margaret Thomas. Born in Croydon, she emigrated to Australia as a child, returning to England to study art at the Royal Academy. From 1911 to her death in 1929, she lived in Croft Lane, Norton. She travelled widely, in the Holy Land, Spain, Italy, Egypt and Denmark, and some of the paintings she produced on her travels are displayed in the museum. he bequeathed twenty five of her oil paintings to the museum.

  Archaeology

  Letchworth museum holds substantial archaeological collections, including stray finds, but mainly archaeological excavation archives from North Hertfordshire. The collections range from prehistory to the nineteenth century. There are particularly important collections from excavations at the Iron Age/ Romano-British settlement of Baldock, which has been the subject of systematic investigation since 1968, including the burial goods of an Iron Age chieftain, cinerary urns used to bury cremated remains, metalwork and high quality Samian ware pottery used by the Romano-British townspeople. The archaeology displays are undergoing refurbishment during 2003-4. There is a programme of publication for the Baldock excavations due for completion in 2006.

  Ancient Egyptian Collection

  The museum holds 40 ancient Egyptian objects. Classes of objects represented in the collection include: jewellery; metal figures; pottery; scarabs; shabtis; stone vessels; other.

  Subjects

  Antiquities; Ancient civilizations; Antiquity; Archaeology; Egyptology

  Local and Social History

  Locally provenanced and British coins. There is a small collection of costume, mainly local and dating from the 19th century. Small collection of photographs of people, places and events in Letchworth.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC