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| Elm Trees in the Park |
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| Willow trees |
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| Gibbon's Carvings |
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| Cassiobury Gates (demolished in 1974) |
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| Cassiobury Staircase (seen now in Museum of Art, New York) |
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| beautiful wood carvings on staircase |
On my third trip to U.K. we saw one of the most beautiful
parks in U.K. London is very well-known
for many royal gardens, parks, palaces, cathedrals and monuments. This park
adds vast greenery to the locality and also affords the luxury of going for a
walk through shady trees, bushes and canals enjoying the fresh breeze and
listening to sweet sounds of birds and watching children at play. In brief it
is a walkers’ paradise and a shady haven for the men and women of all ages.
Once this spacious area was given by King Offa to St.Albans
Abbey in 793 A.D. After dissolution of
monasteries by King Henry VIII in 1539, this place was given to Sir Richard
Morrison. He built Cassiobury Mansion.
His son Charles Morrison completed the Tudor manor house comprising nearly 56
rooms, a big gallery, stables and brewery. In 1623 the estate passed onto the
Capel family through marriage. The members of Essex family stayed in this
palatial mansion nearly for 250 years.
Arthur Capell, the first Earl of Essex, re-built the mansion with parks,
gardens extending up to the adjoining Whippendel woods. He employed Hugh May,
the wood carver, Grinling Gibbons, the painter Antonio Verrio and the gardiner
Moses Cook to re-build and refurbish the manor house. During the time of
William Capell, the fourth Earl of Essex, the Grand Union Canal was widened. Between 1799 and 1805, the fifth Earl of Essex,
commissioned James Wyatt to re-model the house in Gothic style and Humphrey Repton
to beautify the park. A number of lodges and other buildings had been built by
Wyatt’s nephew, Jeffrey Wyattville.
Of these constructions only the Cassiobury Lodge survives in
Gade Avenue.During the time of George Capell, the seventh Earl of Essex, nearly
184 acres of land was sold to the Watford Bourough Council in 1909 to set up a
public park. After the death of the
seventh Earl of Essex, this estate with all constructions spreading over 870
acres was sold away in 1922 by the eighth Earl of Essex .In 1930 more land was
acquired by the council. The unsold Cassiobury mansion was demolished in 1927.
Only the stable block converted to Cassiobury Court, an old people’s home,
remains now near the Richmond Drive. The grand staircase was removed to the
metropolitan for museum of Art in New York. Other materials were used for
restoration of Monmouth House in Watford High Street. The remaining building
materials such as 300 tons of old oak and 100 very fine oak beams and 10,000
Tudor period bricks were sold out. Another curious fact is that the re-building
of Cassiobury in 1670’s was designed by Elizabeth Lady Wibraham, (1632-1785)
the first woman architect in the world. She engaged Hugh May to supervise
construction and Edward Pearce to execute the wood carving work. The famous
seventeenth century diarist John Evelyn visited this park on 16th
April, 1680 and described it in his diary.
“The house is new, a
plain fabric, built by my friend mr. Hugh May. There are diverse fair and good
rooms and excellent carvings by Gibbons, especially the chimney-piece of the
library. There is in the porch or entrance a painting by Verrio of Apollo and
the Liberal Arts. Some of the chimney mantels are of Irish marble --- and not
much inferior to Italian. The tympanum or gable at the front is a bass relief
of Diana hunting cut in Portland stone, handsomely enough.. The library is
large and very nobly furnished.”
This park extends over a stretch of 190 acres from
Rickmansworth road in the east to the Grand Union Canal in the west. Just at
the junction where the Shepherds Road meets with Rickmansworth Road, there used
to be a beautiful archway with gates built in 1800 by Humphrey Repton and James
Wyatt as part of expansion on the estate during the time of the Earl of Essex.
But they were dismantled in 1974 as part of the widening of the Rickmansworth
Road by the Watford Borough Council. Later this park was developed by the
Borough Council in many ways. It was converted into a green hub for many
activities and entertainment shows besides providing space for people to enjoy
walking with kids and pet dogs. It is also a haven for many kinds of plants,
birds, fish and animals. The local nature reserve is managed by Herts and
Middlesex Wild Life Trust. At present it is decided to spend an amount of 6.6
million pounds for restoration and regeneration works to make this park more
attractive with more eco-friendly facilities and comforts. If you happen to
visit U.K. do surely take some time off to visit this beautiful idyllic place
of natural beauty with lush greenery, lakes and interesting flora and fauna.
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26th June, 2017 Somaseshu Gutala
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Awesome..never knew it had so much history and detail behind this :)
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