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Watford (/ ˈ w ɒ t f ər d / ⓘ) is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 mi (24 km) northwest of Central London, on the banks of the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, and breweries.
- Harry Potter Warner Bros. Studio Tour
- Cassiobury Park
- Cheslyn Gardens
- Watford Palace Theatre
- Bushey Rose Garden
- Bentley Priory Museum
- Watford Museum
- St Mary’s Church
- Oxhey Park
- Rickmansworth Aquadrome
The Warner Bros. Film Studios at Leavesden are inside Watford Borough, and every one of the Harry Potter movie productions was based here in the 2000s. So after the final Harry Potter film came out, the studio set about creating a tour using authentic props, animatronics, special effects, costumes and sets from the movies, or recreations built by t...
Watford’s town park is in the grounds of Cassiobury House, the estate of the Earls of Essex, which was pulled down in 1927. Most of the space is decked with well-tended lawns, clustered with exotic trees like an American pin oaks, scarlet oak, a swamp cypress and a cedar of Lebanon, some of which date back hundreds of years. There’s an abundance of...
The history of this 3.5-acre garden is surprisingly recent. The land belonged to the Earl of Essex until 1888, and in the 1940s was sold to the architect Henry Colbeck and his wife Daisy. The couple built a house and laid out an enchanting garden over two decades before selling it to Watford Council in 1965. The gardens are a treat, decorated with ...
Even if you don’t plan to watch a show, the Edwardian Watford Palace Theatre (1908) will stop you in your tracks. The powerful facade has alternating bands of brickwork and white limestone topped by a pair of copper-clad domes. In its early days the Palace Theatre staged music hall shows (similar to American vaudeville), and hosted big pre-cinema s...
A recommended detour a couple of miles from the centre of Watford, is this charming garden in the grounds of the long-defunct Herkomer’s Art School, founded in 1883. Hubert von Herkomer was a successful Victorian social-realist painter. After closing and demolishing his school he commissioned T. H. Mawson, the most distinguished landscape architect...
In the Second World War this 18th and 19th-century stately home and deer park in Stanmore was the home of RAF Fighter Command, which coordinated the defence of the country during the Battle Of Britain. The RAF was based at Bentley Priory until 2008 and although there were plans to construct housing here, the historic house was turned into a museum ...
On the Lower High Street the Watford Museum collects pieces relating to local industry, archaeology and the Cassiobury Estate. The venue is worth mentioning as it’s a pedimented Georgian townhouse, built in 1775 and then housing a brewery for 90 years from 1867. The most valuable objects on show are artworks from Cassiobury, with family portraits a...
Off the High Street in an atmospheric churchyard, St Mary’s Church has stood since the 12th century. It’s a fine building to behold, with flint walls and limestone window dressings. Most of the older architecture dates to the 15th century, although the church did go through a big restoration in the 1870s. The leading Victorian restorer George Gilbe...
The Green Flag is the highest award a local public park can earn in the UK, and Oxhey Park on the River Colne wins every year. This is recognition for its safety, level of maintenance and how much it involves the local community. Oxhey Park has gentle hills, which are a hit with sledders on snow days in winter, while there’s quirky public art, a fi...
Within the M25 a little way west of Watford tow centre is a 41-hectare nature reserve on the site of a former gravel quarry. The Rickmansworth Aquadrome is at the north end of the Colne Valley Regional Park and decades of gravel extraction up to the 1920s left behind two large lakes that filled naturally with water after the quarry was abandoned. A...
Jul 20, 1998 · Watford, town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Hertfordshire, England. It is situated on the northwest periphery of London and on the Rivers Colne and Gade and the Grand Union Canal.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
An ever-popular destination, Watford - at just eight miles squared - is a town which punches above its weight. From a thriving town centre with fantastic shopping, nightclubs and restaurants to a Premiership football team, theatres, award-winning parks – including Cassiobury, one of the nation’s top 10 parks – there is something for ...
Jul 24, 2020 · Watford is a town and borough located in Hertfordshire just 15 miles (24 km) northwest of central London. While not technically part of London, Watford is still part of London’s Oyster Zone which is why it is a popular town for commuters who work in London.
Watford is a large town in Hertfordshire, a few miles from the Greater London boundary. It is around 20 minutes from central London using National Rail trains, and slightly longer on the London Underground and Overground networks.
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