Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust continues its delve into WGC's past. This week it's the story of Cresta Silks founder Tom Heron.
Many talented people were needed to build up Welwyn Garden City and one of the most creative was Tom Heron.
In our previous article we described Cresta Silks, the company he founded. This time we are going to look at the man himself.
Tom was born in 1890 into a middle class family in Bradford where his father ran a business wholesaling fabrics.
One of his teachers had tried to persuade his parents to let him try for a scholarship to Oxford University but they wanted him to go into the family firm, which he did at age 16, as an office boy.
As a young man he came under the influence of many talented individuals in the Leeds Art Club.
There he met artists such as Paul Nash, who many years later designed patterns for him, and Stanley Spencer.
He was a patron of avant-garde art and active in progressive causes, supporting suffragettes and becoming a lifelong pacifist.
At that time one had to be at least 21 to run a business. On his 21st birthday, in February 1911, he went into business in Leeds on his own account, making blouses.
This prospered despite the outbreak of war in 1914, eventually employing 200 people.
He registered as a Conscientious Objector, and – unusually for a company owner – embraced socialism, joining the Fabian Society.
He met Eulalie Davies, daughter of a congregational Minister, who shared his beliefs; they were married in a Quaker Meeting House in September 1918.
Their marriage lasted until Tom’s death at age 93 in 1983. She died in 1986. They had four children: Patrick, famous artist; Michael, Benedictine monk; Joanna, who cared for them both in their final years in her home in Cumbria; and Giles, an organic farmer.
After a spell in Cryséde Silks in Cornwall, Tom looked for somewhere to start a new business.
He had “watched the Garden City movement with interest since its inception and had always thought the idea a good one".
Also “having as a young man had to catch a train at 7.30am a mile away from my home in order to reach my father's business thirty miles away, I decided that as soon as I could manage it I would live near my work".
So he brought his family to Welwyn Garden City where he founded Cresta Silks in 1929.
Tom and Eulalie were both committed Christians, eventually settling down as active Anglicans in St Francis Church. His religious and political beliefs were put into practice in Cresta.
Following in the footsteps of William Morris, he sought to create a company which generated profits but where profit was not the main goal.
Staff were valued as individuals – many stayed for decades; quality was overarching, and creative artists were at the centre.
An article in the Welwyn Times in 1933 recognised that Cresta had a wider purpose than most manufacturing concerns: “It believes not only that clothes express personality but that they actually affect the future of civilisation.”
Initially the Herons lived in a large house at 76 Brockswood Lane. In 1961, they moved to number 38 (“half the number and half the size”) and in 1978 retired to Cumbria.
Space does not allow a full account of this exceptional man, who was also a poet and a writer.
His son Giles with author John S Peart-Binns wrote a biography 'Rebel & Sage' in 2001 which is highly recommended.
Giles has kindly given us permission to reprint some of the photographs from that book here.
Next time – the remarkable lady who was Welwyn Garden’s first GP.
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