Batchwood Hall is a manor house in St Albans, Hertfordshire

History

The house was designed in the Queen Anne style and built for

Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe, KC (12 May 1816 – 29 April 1905), known previously as Sir Edmund Beckett, 5th Baronet and Edmund Beckett Denison, was a "lawyer, mechanician and controversialist" as well as a noted horologist and archit ...

in 1874. It contains the prototype of the Great Clock in the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster. The site was acquired by St Albans Council in 1935 when

John Henry Taylor John Henry "J.H." Taylor (19 March 1871 – 10 February 1963) was an English professional golfer and one of the pioneers of the modern game of golf. Taylor is considered to be one of the best golfers of all time. He was a significant golf ...

was commissioned to design and establish an 18-hole

golf course A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played. It consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a tee box, a fairway, the rough and other hazards, and a green with a cylindrical hole in the ground, known as a "cup". ...

in the grounds. The house became an event venue in the 1970s. An arson attack resulted in the complete destruction of the Batchwood Tennis and Golf Centre in August 2011. It has been operating as a vaccination centre, organised by a consortium of local GPs, during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

References

{{Authority control Country houses in Hertfordshire City of St Albans