Blog

A Virtual Festival Literay Event

As part of this year's reduced Elstree & Borehamwood Town Festival we present for you a Virtual Literary Event featuring among others Tony McHale (Actor, writer, Producer, Director); Alexander S. Bermange (Composer and Lyricist) and Paul Welsh (Film Historian and Author) as well as members of our own "Writers in the Wood", Lorraine Reed, Rosemary Wiseman and Steven Pemberton. Please click here to see the Event on YouTube.

Object Of The Week : Keystone Knitting Mills

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature from our collections.

Object of the Week : K is for Keystone Knitting Mills

Keystone Knitting Mills was a major employer in Borehamwood for more than 40 years.  Keystones was built in 1927 and opened a year later on a site between Glenhaven Avenue and Clarendon Road now occupied by ‘the Boulevard’ shopping park. The factory  produced pure silk seamed stockings and lingerie.  The Museum has a large collection of items relating to Keystones, including a letter of a job offer.  People would come from as far away as the North of England to work at the factory after the Depression in the early 1930s. During the Second World War, part of the factory was taken over for munitions work and silk parachutes were produced on site.  It was also used as a drawing office for aircraft parts.

Some of the Museum volunteers had relatives who worked in the Factory.  Actors and Actresses modelled for the company, which made a great deal of garments for the film industry. Fully fashioned stockings went out of favour in the 50's  and tights were manufactured instead. Keystones closed in 1958 and moved to Wales. The site eventually became the Boulevard in the 1980s. Here are images of their silk thread and stockings, their local activities, and the current Keystone Passage in the 1980s before demolition.

Object Of The Week : Jubilee Kitchen Towel

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature from our collections.

Object of the Week : J is for Jubilee Kitchen Towel!

Well if the Garden City Museum in Letchworth can win Hertfordshire Museums Object of the Year Award for an 83 year old toilet roll and have the story taken up by the BBC and the Sun Newspaper, then Elstree and Borehamwood Museum can celebrate its Golden Jubilee Kitchen Roll from 2002.  A little secret – this is one of the collection team volunteers’ favourite object!

The Kitchen Roll is part of a small collection of souvenir items produced in celebration of the 50^th year of the Queen’s reign.

The 'Virtual' Flower Festival 2020

This year our annual Flower Festival is being held ‘virtually’ – you can see photos of the flower displays at various sites around the town.  Please see the poster above for the locations.

The theme this year is films made in Borehamwood and the Museum’s contribution is based around a little–known Peter Sellers film ‘Mr.Topaze’ shot at MGM in 1961.  (It’s little-known because Sellers had all the prints destroyed after its critical and public failure).

Object Of The Week : I is for Illustrated News

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature from our collections.

Object of the Week : I is for Illustrated News

These engravings appeared in the Illustrated London News in the mid 1800s.  The artist was one Frederick Tayler, whose watercolour paintings the Museum has in its collection.

Tayler was a famous 19^th Century English landscape and watercolour painter and President of the Royal Watercolour Society.  He was a particular favourite of Queen Victoria.

He was born in Boreham Wood in 1802 and at one time lived in Barham House, Elstree.  Educated at Eton College and Harrow School, it was here he began to show artistic talent as a painter.  He pursued his ambition by attending Sass’s School before moving onto Paris and Rome. Henry Sass was an English artist and teacher of painting, who founded an important art school in London to provide training for those seeking to enter the Royal Academy. Many distinguished British painters received their early training here including John Millais

Cottage Life is one of his works which resides in the Museum’s collection.

More of his works can be found here    For additional information about his life, please see our Newsletter 17 here :

Object Of The Week : H is for Hanson’s and History

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature from our collections.

Object of the Week is H. It has to be H for Hanson’s

Here is just a selection of the Hanson Shop memorabilia in the Museum’s collection :
Sheet of Sandwich Labels
Hanson’s Executive Luncheon Menu
Christmas Letter from Hanson’s, 1^st December 1996 with Menu
Hanson’s Menu Booklet April 2000

Penny Sweets & Tizer Floats

Hansons Sweetshop and Tearoom is probably the most fondly remembered family establishment in Borehamwood. Standing on the corner of Shenley Road and Keystone Passage, this little shop was most famous for the delicious homemade ice cream; described as ‘blissful’ by some.

Elsie and Bert Hanson from Huddersfield took over a sleepy Borehamwood village store with its small tearoom in 1933. The later, more familiar tearoom was made ready by 1954. When wartime sweet rationing ended in the early 1950s, a huge queue formed outside Hansons and all confectionary stock quickly sold out.

In addition, the business also acted as a booking agent for a local coach company, offering trips to coastal resorts and abroad.

Elsie and Bert’s children, Mary and John, later ran the business until its closure in 2001. Many remember the iconic fireplace, on which sauce bottles would be stored, the serving hatch, the gingham table cloths and wooden paneling. Most fondly talked about though are the ice cream tizer floats, black cherry ice cream sodas, sausage rolls, meat pasties, toast and beef dripping and take-away sandwiches.

The decision to close the tearoom, part of the oldest retail outlet in Borehamwood for nearly 70 years, was a very sad day for their customers.

H is also for History

Did you know, we have a specific team of volunteers here at the Museum, whose role is to work with the collections? This team is responsible for documenting, photographing and cataloguing every object in the Museum’s entire collection. The team work with all kinds of objects ranging from photographs, stories, oral history collections and all manner of Borehamwood related items.

It’s not just old things we collect, we welcome objects which reflect life in the current time, as this will too become history one day. Therefore, as this current situation with Covid 19 unfolds, if you have any items which you think might be of interest reflecting this time in our history, please keep them aside for the Museum to consider as a potential acquisition. Do bear in mind that we will not be able to keep everything, and we will review and process any material offered at a later date.  Thank you.

Object Of The Week : G: is for Games

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature from our collections.

G: is for Games

We must all have played a few board games during this lockdown.  But how many of you have this game in your vintage collection?  Originating from the mid 1930s, this week’s Museum Object is called PM.  It stands for ‘Plus Minus’ but it’s slogan was: Play PM to AM! It boasted it was “the most intriguing game ever invented, the game everyone has been waiting for for years!” And: “Absorbing for the Adults, Interesting & Instructive for the Children”.

Its rules were so simple, they could be summed up in one paragraph.

Each Player has a board and 4 men. The object is to move the 4 men from the stars at the top of the Board onto 25. Eleven cards are dealt to each Player. A Player plays any card from his hand and adds the number on it to the number on the TOP CARD ONLY. (i.e. the card that was played by the previous Player) moving one of his men accordingly. Men driven over 24 return to stars and restart. The Minus Cards are subtracted. 

Scoring was thus:

50 points for every man on 25
20 points DEDUCTED for every man still on the stars at the top of the board.
Other men score according to the number they occupy at the end of the game.
The object of the game is to move the men from the stars at the top of the board on to the 25 at the bottom. The finish of the game is when one of the players has moved his four men on to the 25 or alternately when the last player has played his last card and moved accordingly.
NOTE CAREFULLY - NO FURTHER MOVE CAN BE MADE after one player has moved his fourth man on to 25.

The game comes with Rules, 4 playing boards, 4 sets of 4 playing tokens, deck of cards.

Hollywood In Hertfordshire

Local film historian Paul Welsh has written his next book!  50 years since the sudden closure of MGM British Studios, Paul shares stories and photos from the wonder years when the Elstree Way site was world-famous and played host to some of Hollywood's biggest names. As well as the stars, there are stories from behind the scenes, sharing the experiences of the local men and women from Elstree and Borehamwood's film families. You can find out more and order the book by clicking here.

Object Of The Week : F : Furzehill Middle School Jumper

Whilst the Museum is closed and our collections unable to be seen by visitors, we have created a weekly virtual museum with an Object of the Week feature  from our collections.

F – Furzehill Middle School Jumper

The Museum has many items of school uniform and Furzehill is no exception. 

Furzehill School opened on 14 October 1912 and was called Boreham Wood County Council School.  It was the first County Council School to be built in the parish.  It began life as a Junior Mixed Infant School and then became a Middle School in 1974.  A pupil who attended in 1947 described the school as: “from the Victorian era with tiny windows high in the wall, outside toilets, and the ever present smell of fresh paint on hot radiators.”

In 1949, the school was destroyed by fire.  Luckily there were no pupils present at the time as it happened around ‘teatime’, so no one was hurt.  One pupil described how his father rushed home and sat the boy on the child seat of his bicycle to see Furzehill School “ablaze from end to end.”

Other locations had to be utilised so that schooling could be continued, including Shenley Village Hall and Hill House in Elstree.  Furzehill was rebuilt but closed in 2001.  It was demolished in 2006.  Housing and a children’s centre now stand in its place.

 With thanks to Eve Glover and John Gates.

Do you have any Lockdown Photos?

Here are a few of our Lockdown Photos from around Borehamwood.  If you have any unusual ones, please add them to our Facebook page!