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£21.95 per person based on minimum 35 people |
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Contains a gentle walking element |
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Availability: Weekdays throughout the year |
Hertfordshire Pioneers
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Two new controversial experiments in housing and education are currently exciting divided opinion. In East London, in and around the Olympic Park, Ikea and Tesco are planning mini-towns and throughout the country new “Free Schools” are opening run by people who believe they will be better than existing provision. Join us for a thoughtful and fascinating day in Hertfordshire looking at some earlier experiments in social reform. In the morning we explore the Arts & Crafts and Art Deco architecture of Letchworth the world’s first garden city and in the afternoon in the contrasting mediaeval market town of Hitchin we visit the world’s only remaining Monitorial or Lancastrian School. The day includes morning coffee with biscuits, afternoon tea and all admissions. |
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‘every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England’ George Orwell on Letchworth |
Come and meet the guide in Letchworth at 10-30am for morning coffee with biscuits included in the tour fee at the beautiful Grade II* listed Arts & Crafts Spirella Building. This was once the HQ of the famous Spirella corset company. The ‘factory of beauty’ offered its, mainly female, employees facilities such as baths, showers, gymnastics classes, a library, free eye tests and bicycle repairs way ahead of their time.
The world’s first garden city was based on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and acted as a magnet for all manner of seekers of the new life. His vision of space, sunlight and greenery has created a legacy that is still copied around the world today. During the morning we explore some of this Utopia partly by coach and partly on foot including: “The Cheap Cottages” built as part of a 1905 competition run by the editor of The Spectator to build a house for £150 and The Skittles, the infamous pub with no beer. We may even see some of Letchworth’s famous black squirrels before arriving at the First Garden City Heritage Museum
housed in a beautiful and unique 1907 thatched building, designed by architect Barry Parker. You can visit his office that is filled with hand-made Arts and Crafts furniture and paintings, and learn how he and Raymond Unwin planned the town.
A short drive takes us on to the ancient town of Hitchin for lunch. This is a remarkable place sheltered in a hollow near the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills just 40 miles from London. Hitchin preserves its ancient street plan radiating from a market square still rich in mediaeval and Georgian buildings. There are plenty of choices for lunch and a magnificent parish church to visit - a reminder of the enormous wealth of the wool trade.
Pioneering reformer Joseph Lancaster was a remarkable man who wanted to educate the children of the poor at a time of fearful and sometimes vicious opposition to the very idea. He opened his first school just a few years after the French Revolution when the British establishment was still very nervous about the masses getting uppity. Today the only remaining school in the world built to meet his theories and principles is the British School in Hitchin Hertfordshire. Based in the original Victorian and Edwardian buildings the museum tells the story of elementary education over a period of 150 years from 1810 to living memory – it all gets a tad nostalgic when you reach the 50s classroom. Enjoy a guided tour, a Victorian lesson and time to browse in the Victorian Headmaster’s House. Tea with biscuits, included in the tour fee, is served before heading for home at 4-45pm.
Includes a gentle walking element. Available weekdays throughout the year.
Adults & Seniors: £21.95
Price
valid until 31st March 2013
Coach Mileage: 10
| Please click here to find out what happens if you have fewer than 35 people in your group |