The Cassiobury Estate is a suburban

residential area A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single-family housing, multi-family residen ...

Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, a ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is bounded to the south by Cassiobury Park, the main public park in the town, to the west by playing fields next to the

River Gade The River Gade is a river running almost entirely through Hertfordshire. It rises from a spring in the chalk of the Chiltern Hills at Dagnall, Buckinghamshire and flows through Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley, then along the west side of Watfo ...

, and to the northeast by Hempstead Road. It is mostly characterised by 1930s

Mock Tudor Tudor Revival architecture (also known as mock Tudor in the UK) first manifested itself in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture ...

houses. To the northwest of Cassiobury, outside the Borough of Watford in the

Three Rivers District Three Rivers is a local government district in southwest Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Rickmansworth. The district was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, by the merger of Rickmansworth Urban District ...

, is The Grove, the former estate and house of the Earls of Clarendon. This has been converted into a luxury hotel and with extensive grounds.

History

The suburban streets of Cassiobury were laid out in the early 1930s on land that was formerly part of the estate of

Cassiobury House Cassiobury House was a country house in Cassiobury Park, Watford, England. It was the ancestral seat of the Earls of Essex. Originally a Tudor building, dating from 1546 for Sir Richard Morrison, it was substantially remodelled in the 17th and ...

, the

ancestral seat A family seat or sometimes just called seat is the principal residence of the landed gentry and aristocracy. The residence usually denotes the social, economic, political, or historic connection of the family within a given area. Some families to ...

of the

Earls of Essex Earl of Essex is a title in the Peerage of England which was first created in the 12th century by King Stephen of England. The title has been recreated eight times from its original inception, beginning with a new first Earl upon each new cre ...

. The house, which originally dated from the reign of

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

, contained lavishly decorated interiors and a substantial art collection and was surrounded by landscaped park land. Parts of the Cassiobury estate were sold for development land in 1908, and following the death of the 7th Earl of Essex in 1916, the family put the rest of estate up for sale in order to pay for

death duties An inheritance tax is a tax paid by a person who inherits money or property of a person who has died, whereas an estate tax is a levy on the estate (money and property) of a person who has died. International tax law distinguishes between an es ...

. Unable to find a buyer for the house, they had Cassiobury House demolished in 1927 and the estate was partly sold to

Watford Borough Council Watford Borough Council is the local authority for the Watford non-metropolitan district of England, the United Kingdom. Watford is located in the south-west of Hertfordshire, in the East of England region. The council is based in the Town Hall o ...

to be used as a public park, with the remaining land sold to developers such as William King & Co and Charles Brightman for housing development. With the extension of the

Metropolitan Railway The Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex su ...

to Watford in 1926, residential development around the new

Watford tube station Watford tube station is the terminus of a Metropolitan line branch line in the north-western part of the London Underground in Zone 7. The station opened in 1925. Location and description The station is in the Cassiobury area, on Cassiob ...

grew rapidly as the homes of

Metro-land Metro-land (or Metroland) is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the 20th century that were served by the Metropolita ...

were constructed over the site of the former Essex mansion, and

Humphry Repton Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown; he also sowed the seeds of the more intricate and eclectic styles of ...

's landscaped vistas gave way to suburban lawns. The area of land once occupied by Cassiobury House is now where Temple Close sits, close to the Cassiobury Tennis Club. Although the Essex mansion house no longer exists, traces of the area's noble past remain; the Cassiobury House

stable A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...

block (built c. 1805–1815) still stands on Richmond Drive; now called Cassiobury Court, the buildings have been

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

and are now used as a

drug rehabilitation Drug rehabilitation is the process of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, heroin or amphetamines. The general inte ...

centre. Several residential street names recall former Earls of Essex; Coningesby Drive, Devereux Drive, De Vere Walk and Capelvere Walk all bear names of former Lords of Cassiobury House.

Geography

Transport

The area is currently served by a

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent ceremonial counties of England, counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and He ...

station,

, on Cassiobury Park Avenue, which is the terminus of the

Metropolitan line The Metropolitan line, colloquially known as the Met, is a London Underground line between in the City of London and and in Buckinghamshire, with branches to in Hertfordshire and in Hillingdon. Printed in magenta on the tube map, the line i ...

's Watford branch. This station is planned to close in the future when the line is diverted to terminate at as part of the

Croxley Rail Link The Croxley Rail Link, or the Metropolitan Line Extension, is a proposed railway engineering project in the Watford and Three Rivers districts of Hertfordshire, England, that would have connected the London Overground and the London Undergrou ...

project; after this, Cassiobury will be served by a new

Cassiobridge tube station Cassiobridge was a proposed London Underground station in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. The station would have been part of the Croxley Rail Link project, a scheme to extend the Metropolitan line to Watford Junction railway station. It w ...

instead, approximately south of the current station.

References

{{Watford, state=collapsed Watford Suburbs in the United Kingdom