Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, well-connected, municipal-focused, mixed heritage, excellent retail opportunities, refreshment-adjacent, no hilly bits, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a recently-curated heritage walk down Watford High Street, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
Either download the leaflet before you go or check the excellent information boards by the Pond and St Mary's Church.
At least one of the 17 stops made me go "hang on, what?!", and I used to live here.
Watford's Heritage Trail
1) Watford Town Hall
A fine Art Deco town hall built for the new municipal borough in the late 1930s. The architect was Charles Cowles-Vosey (who also designed the very similar Friern Barnet Town Hall). The long brick façade includes a convex curve that faced the town's focal roundabout, then rather smaller, and on top is a lantern clock tower. The building is still closed for lengthy upgrade works which plan to open up surplus office space to community use. One day the Museum of Watford will reopen inside, and on it drags.
EastEnders used to use the Town Hall to double up as courtrooms and as a register office.
2) The Colosseum
Originally the Assembly Rooms, this has long been Watford's premier music venue. Recently reopened after a lengthy refit and is looking rather splendid. Coming soon, Jason Donovan, Suzi Quatro and Justin from The Darkness. Its acoustics are nationally renowned, hence it was used to record the soundtracks to the Sound of Music, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
Of all the performances I've seen here, Captain Pugwash probably beats The Spinners.
3) Watford Central Library
Of 1928 vintage and feels it inside, although there's now a cafe in a side room which has yanked it into the 21st century a bit. Street art combo MurWalls have painted a whopping head and shoulders of Sir Elton John on the side.
They don't have Watford's Heritage Trail leaflets, alas, but they do have activity sheets for children to follow along.
4) The Peace Memorial
Comprises three copper statues - 'To The Fallen', 'Victory' and 'To The Wounded'. The plinthed trio is splendidly evocative despite being designed by a sculptor from Oxhey, this because Mary Bromet had been a student of Auguste Rodin. They used to stand outside the Peace Memorial Hospital but were shifted round the back of the town hall after road widening in 1971.
The Peace Memorial Hospital oversaw the town's health from 1925 to 1985 and whipped off my toenail in 1973. It's now the Peace Hospice.
5) The Pond
The one feature generations of Watfordians would recognise. Once a natural pond at the top of the High Street where horses and market animals would drink. More recently a stepped ornamentalpool shallow enough to revel in should Watford FC ever win anything. Very much a pigeon magnet.
Behind is the vacated Pryzm nightclub, formerly Top Rank, Bailey's, Paradise Lost, Kudos, Destiny and Oceana.
6) Monmouth Place
This fine multi-chimneyed building was built in 1928 and these days houses restaurants and bars. It's obviously Mock Tudor, but what's not obvious is that the herringbone brickwork is Genuine Tudor, the materials having been rescued from Cassiobury House (built 1546, demolished 1927).
The grounds of Cassiobury House, once the seat of the Earl of Essex, now form glorious Cassiobury Park.
7) Monmouth House
I'd always thought this was just another Tudorbethan row of shops but no, it's a 400 year-old Grade II listed building! It was commissioned in the 1620s by Sir Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, while he was living nearby at Moor Park. Carey was a courtier when Elizabeth I was on her deathbed and it was he who rode to Scotland to tell James VI he was also now James I. His widow moved here in 1639, and her downstairs rooms now host an Italian restaurant, slime parties and stainless steel cookware demonstrations.
Look out for the fire insurance mark above Fratelli's awning.
There's then a quarter-mile jump from the Pond cluster to the St Mary's cluster. Personally I would have included the late medieval timber-framed shop that houses Jackson's jewellers, also the late Georgian bank that's now Five Guys restaurant, also Gibson Butchers (home of the famous Gibsons sausages as seen on Celebrity Ready Steady Cook), but for some reason the trail skips all those.
8) Anthony Joshua Gold Letter Box
After the 2012 Olympics sixty postboxes were painted gold to commemorate the achievements of local champions. Anthony grew up on the Meriden Estate in Garston, was educated in Nigeria and Kings Langley Secondary School, and triumphed over other Olympians in the super heavyweight class./
This is one of three postboxes commemorating gold medals in boxing, the others being in Hull and Leeds.
12) St Mary's Parish Church
This flint and stone church is Watford's oldest surviving building, being substantially 15th century. It has a Hertfordshire-type tower with a turret and lead spirelet, also bells that bong every quarter hour. Visitors are welcome to potter inside, with the main interest being two substantial 17th century tombs in the Essex Chapel, all ruffs, marble drapery and pointy beards.
The churchyard is Watford's largest central open space, and the next five are all found there.
15) St Mary’s Square Millennium Feature
A new town centre square opened here on a raised platform in December 1999. At each corner is a pillar topped by two sculpted faces. According to a plaque these represent 'different aspects of Watford and five twin towns and their Festivals', which must have made sense at the time but the intended meaning has swiftly dissipated.
Watford's twin towns are Mainz, Pesaro, Nanterre, Novgorod and Wilmington. I went on German exchange to the first of these.
10) Fig Tree Tomb
St Mary's churchyard has several stonking old tombs, this one the focus of a legend that drew many Victorian sightseers to Watford. It's said an atheist buried here had claimed that if God existed a tree would germinate inside their tomb. A fig tree duly grew up from the tomb dislodging the lid, attracting the aforementioned pilgrims, until the cold winter of 1963 finally killed it off.
The tomb was restored in 2013 so you'd never guess any of this.
11) Gravestone of George Doney George was captured in Gambia in the 1760s, sold into slavery and brought to Cassiobury House where he spent 44 years as a servant. He's believed to have been well thought-of and well treated, but lived only two years as a free man after slavery was abolished in 1807.
It's believed George is the black servant pictured in the unfinished painting Harvest Home by John Constable.
13) Elizabeth Fuller's Free School
Opened in 1704 as a charitable enterprise, Elizabeth's school was “For the teaching of 40 poor boys & 14 poor girls of Watford in good literature & manners”. The school continued after her death thanks to carefully planned endowments and broadened its education, eventually leading to the creation of Watford Grammar School for Girls in 1907 and Watford Grammar School for Boys in 1912. I only went to one of these, so thanks Liz!
The old school building is currently occupied by Office On The Hill who specialise in leasing out deskspace in listed buildings.
14) Bedford Almshouses
Yet more ridiculously old buildings in a town many people believe to be a modern creation. This row of timber and plaster almshouses was built in 1590 for “8 poor women to be chosen from Watford, and from Langley & Chenies in Buckinghamshire”. Following centuries of continuous occupation they were nearly demolished in 1928, but saved when townspeople collected sufficient funds for repairs.
It took until the 1960s for the sculleries to be made into kitchenettes, and until the 21st century before residents got showers and baths.
16) Hornet Sculpture
The trail doesn't go to Vicarage Road but it does include this giant wasp added at the foot of Queens Road in 2001. Watford FC gained the nickname The Hornets after they switched to a yellow and black strip in 1959.
Had the sculpture been added earlier I suspect it would have scared the willies out of me when I went into what was then Woolworths, now McDonalds, for coloured pens and pick'n' mix.
17) Atria Centre
Watford's huge town centre mall opened in 1990 as the Harlequin Centre, a double decker monster than now stretches round to what used to be Charter Place. M&S are still here but John Lewis have long since scarpered, their once prestigious space now occupied by Dunelm, Poundland, Peacocks and B&M. New owners renamed the mall intu Watford in 2013, which everyone hated but thankfully they went bust and it was renamed atria Watford, and people also hated that so last year the council saw sense and renamed it the Harlequin again.
The trail finishes here, and I certainly had my eyes opened in a couple of places. Thanks Watford, thanks for everything.
