Behind the Scenes
Guest blog post by Alessio Lai of Barclay Academy, Stevenage
I came to North Herts Museum for my year 10 work experience, as a history and fashion enthusiast I found it very interesting. During my time there I was allowed to see their collection of antique clothes and even got to try on replicas of late eighteenth century garments. I also helped arrange the Stagenhoe Estate display at the front of the museum. Stagenhoe was a stately home that was converted into a Sue Ryder care home in the late 60s.
My favourite part of being at the museum was examining the historical dresses they had, helping date them to specific time periods. My interest in fashion history began in 2019 when glamour began releasing videos of how animated characters should have been dressed, according to the period they were said to live in.
I was very surprised to see the amount of early history that even a local history museum had like the tools of a human ancestor from 2.6 million years ago, dug up in Somaliland, along with the bones of a mother with her three children from Baldock, the oldest recorded example of triplets ever found.
Overall I had a very fun experience and would love to come back.
Alessio looking dapper
Women’s football
This Sunday the England Women’s football team take on Spain in the World Cup Final over in Australia. Throughout the history of organised football in Britain, women have struggled for acceptance from certain sectors of society. Our football collection of 1000 objects was assembled between the 1950s and 1970s and once had only one object with a relation to women in football. A cartoon from 1877 titled ‘Football for Ladies’ mocking the very idea of women’s football. Despite such mockery the first high profile women’s match took place in 1895, drawing a crowd of over 10,000.
Football for ladies
For a short time, during and after the First World War, women’s football overtook the men’s game in popularity. As male footballers and football fans from up and down the country were called to war, professional football ground to a screeching halt. Women who had taken up positions in factories and other places of work, in aid of the war effort, stepped in to fill the void on the pitch. Teams such as Dick Kerr Ladies emerged from Dick, Kerr & Co of Preston. This famous team of female wartime munitions workers played matches against other newly formed women’s teams to crowds of tens of thousands.
In one of British football’s most controversial moments the Football Association ended the flourishing women’s game with the stroke of a pen. On 5 December 1921, they declared that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”. In a cruel move, which many believe was made to protect the financial interests of those involved in the men’s game, the FA banned any affiliated team from hosting a women’s match inside its stadium. This meant that teams who had been achieving roaring crowds of tens of thousands suddenly had nowhere to play but parks and fields. The ban stood for fifty years and still persists in the minds of some people who believe that football is ‘just’ ‘a man’s game’.
The recovery of womens football has gained momentum in the last two decades. Last year our museum collected some representitive shirts and trophies from the Hitchin Belles, a team formed in 1999 which has grown into one of the largest women and girl’s teams in the country. A perfect representitive of the growth of the women’s grassroots game on our very doorstep!
Despite the absolutley momumental fifty year set back “football for ladies” has risen from the ashes to a place where tens of thousands will cheer once again.
Hitchin Belles shirt from our collection
Guest blog post by Catherine Maddex and Maya Coetzee of Monk’s Walk School
We came to North Herts Museum for our Year 12 work experience, and as history students we found it so interesting! The team gave us a wide range of tasks to do, such as arranging a display cabinet and shadowing the front of house staff, which helped us to improve our people skills. During our time here we also got the opportunity to attend meetings, which gave us an insight into the inner workings of museums.
Our favourite part of our work experience was looking at the digitised accession records on eHive (the museum’s object database) and being tasked with researching for the object of the week post for an upcoming social media post. It was fascinating to learn about and have access to such historical objects, as well as documenting more recent local history, such as the archival material collected in reaction to the Queen’s death.
Overall, the lovely staff and welcoming atmosphere made it a valuable and memorable experience. We are so grateful to the museum for allowing us this opportunity!
Maya and Catherine with the display they worked on