Short History
The Club originated from technical talks on weekday afternoons in the mid 1990’s, run by the Herts Area Committee of the IEE (now the IET). The popularity of these talks prompted a speculative lunch on 16th April 1997 at the Gosling Sports Park in Welwyn Garden City, followed by a talk by the Herts County Archivist. This lunch was advertised to engineers of all disciplines in Hertfordshire. The lunch was well attended by forty engineers so a further lunch was arranged for June, which had increased attendance. Further monthly lunches were planned, and a Committee formed to organise lunches and talks, and to draft a Constitution, was approved at the April 1998 lunch.
The Constitution established that membership of the “Hertfordshire Engineers’ Luncheon Club” would be open to present and past professional engineers, from recognised institutions, who are resident in Hertfordshire and surrounding areas, and that members would be welcome to bring guests to lunches, on payment of the standard luncheon fee; a decision which was key to the future success of the Club.
Lunches continued to be held at Gosling Sports Centre until 2006 when this was changed to the present venue at the Homestead Court Hotel, also in Welwyn Garden City, which provided a similar 3-course lunch and facilities. Numbers attending lunches have now been constant for many years ranging from around 80 to 120 at each lunch, including some 20 to 30 guests.
These monthly lunches, together with talks on subjects of general interest to engineers, are the core activity of the Club but, also, there are a number of other well supported activities, of which the earliest was for day visits by car or coach. A programme of these visits was a popular feature of Club activities, unbroken from the first visit in October 1998 up to the start of the current COVID pandemic. Three night hotel breaks by car, and coach tours in the UK and on the Continent, were added later. Since 2011 short stays of 4 and 5 days at walking centres have been arranged for our more active members. Also the Club organises a programme of monthly rambles covering a few miles in the Hertfordshire countryside.
By 1999 activities of the Club were being notified to members by a 3 page quarterly HELC Newsletter. This has gradually expanded to the present 12 or more pages in colour, issued bimonthly. Interestingly, development of the Club has closely followed the growth of home PC’s and the Internet, so that communication with members is now principally by email, which is now used to send Newsletter and notices to the majority of our members.
The HELC website (this site, www.helc.org.uk) was set up by 2010 for posting recent Newsletters and other Club notices to members. As this is widely accessible, it is also valuable in spreading information about the Club to the general public, but care is taken to ensure that confidential information about the Club and members does not appear in the public domain.
Hedley Barker had been a driving force in the growth of HELC since its formation. He was the first Chairman, and in 2003 was given the honorary title of President, in which role he continued to play an active part in club affairs until his death on 19 August 2010. HELC honoured him by arranging the Hedley Barker Memorial Lecture in May 2013.
Major-General Eric Younson was President from 2010 till his death on 14 August 2013, aged 94. He was a most remarkable man, alert and active in club affairs till the end. He received fulsome obituaries in both
The Telegraph and The Times as he had played a crucial role in Britain’s nuclear weapons programme during the early years of the Cold War.
The Club activities from March 2020 were dramatically curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic: all lunches, visits and walks were cancelled and in the interim a series of online talks were arranged, which are held on a regular lunch day. Lunch meetings resumed in September, with adequate precautions.
