Museum at One Garden City

17/02/2025

Last chance to vote for us in the Hertfordshire Association of Museums Object of the Year Award 2025

Find the link below and please vote for Aman’s grandfather’s Tawa

🗳️

10/01/2025

Vote now 🗳️
Delighted to share that voting is open in the Hertfordshire Museums Object of the Year Awards 2025…

We have a wonderful cooking pan which we acquired as part of our The National Lottery Heritage Fund project ‘Uncovering Letchworth’

The cooking pan called a tawa (or tava) was used to make chapattis, a type of flatbread.

It was hand made by Gurdev Singh Shergill, who moved from Punjab, India, to Hertfordshire in 1962, part of a new community of people who came to the UK after World War II to work in factories.

Gurdev worked at Kryn and Lahy (K&L) in Letchworth, helping to make cranes. His earnings supported his family back home in India, including his father, wife, seven sisters, and two sons.
Gurdev lived in crowded, cold houses with other Indian workers, rotating shifts so that some worked while others slept. They cooked meals like daal and chapattis, that brought the comforts of home to their unfamiliar new surroundings.

In Letchworth in the 1960s, tawas weren’t available to buy in any shops, so Gurdev used steel from the K&L factory to make this pan himself.

So it isn’t just a (rather functional) cooking pan - it represents the journey of hardworking immigrants who helped shape their new community, just as Gurdev shaped this pan from K&L steel.

Today tawas are easy to find and purchase, but this one is a rare, handmade piece of history.

Vote for Garden City Collection
Vote now! 🗳️

We are delighted to launch Herts Museums Object of the Year 2025. This year 22 museums are competing for the trophy. Check out all the entries and vote for your favourite object here: https://hertfordshiremuseums.org.uk/object-of-the-year-2025.aspx
Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Archives And Local Studies

10/10/2024

We were thrilled to have been involved in this wonderful National The National Lottery Heritage Fund project with BEEE Creative

🙏 😊

30/07/2024

Lots of free and low-cost family activities happening in Letchworth Garden City over the Summer hols... half-price farm tickets, kids club screenings at the cinema, the Museum at One Garden City (free), and look out for the Play Discover Share exhibition at Broadway Gallery too... all captured on a downloadable calendar :)

25/05/2024

Lots of good stuff coming up as part of Letchworth Festival - we are doing walking tours and illustrated talks... and a brand new exhibition at Broadway Gallery celebrating Letchworth's amazing Khalsa Football Academy (opens 14th June)

10/05/2024

Visit Museum at One Garden City to discover Letchworth through the eyes of Perform Transform participants at 👇👇👇

Thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund

23/02/2024

23/02/2024