Park of the week

90. Cassiobury Park

This is the principal park in Watford. It’s twice the size of Hyde Park and was voted one of the top twenty parks in the UK in 2021. Part of it is a local nature reserve, with ancient trees including oak and cedar. There are also wildflower meadows, and wildlife includes dragonflies and butterflies, bats and muntjac deer, mandarin ducks, little egrets and herons. About half of the park is wooded and there are walking trails through the woods. The River Gade runs through the park, which also borders the Grand Union Canal.

Cassiobury was once the lands of the Abbey of St Albans, then later the estate of the Earl of Essex who commissioned gardens, tree planting and a deer park. The park was created in 1909 from the purchase by the local authority of part of the estate. I wondered about the name, given that Cassio was a brand of calculators and similar available in the nineties (and perhaps still is). It goes back earlier, though- the name ‘Caegesho’ refers to an area of land granted by Offa, King of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, to the Abbey of St Albans in 793. ‘Caeg’ might have been a man’s name, while ‘ho’ means ‘a spur of land’ in Old English. The spelling gradually evolved into Cassio and the ‘bury’ part comes from the word for a fortified place.

The park has won the Green Flag Award eleven times, most recently in 2022. It has play areas and facilities for children of all ages, quiet areas with picnic tablets, riverside and canalside walks and open spaces for sports. There’s a paddling pool (open from April to September) and a miniature railway (open every day in the summer, otherwise only at weekends), outdoor gym, several cafés, and toilets. There are tennis courts, sports pitches and lots of open space to walk in or to play sports. The park also has a bandstand where live music is performed in the summer months.

There are entrances on Rickmansworth Road, Langley Way, Gade Avenue, Cassiobury Park Avenue and Parkside Drive (all in Watford). There’s a car park at the Gade Avenue entrance. You have to pay if you park there for more than two hours, which you may find you need to do as there’s a lot going on in the park.

Judith Field

Cassiobury park, Gade Avenue, Watford WD18 7LG