At a time when Queen Victoria was in her youth and the railways were in their infancy, The Penny Magazine was widely read for its cultural, historic and geographic content.
On August 27 and September 3, 1842, the magazine published a two-part article headed Railway Rambles, Cassiobury. Accompanied by etchings "from original sketches", the anonymous writer endeavoured to encourage the new-age rail traveller to venture out of London and "enjoy the breezes of the country which, sweeping occasionally across the metropolis, invite us so willingly forth".
Whilst describing the steam engine pulling the carriages as a "contrivance", the writer expressed the traveller's thrill as "the pace rapidly increases and we are presently flying along, some 25 miles an hour". His pride was evident: "Dull must be the soul that in ordinary circumstances can feel none of the exhilarating influences of the speed and the consciousness that all the means by which it is produced are the product not merely of the skill and enterprise of our own age, but of our own day."
In those days, Watford Station was in St Albans Road. The rail traveller ascended the bridge from which, in 1842, just six properties could be seen – five were newly-built public houses – before crossing the railway line and walking into Watford "along a delightful road which, but for its breadth, might be called a green lane, so embosomed is it in trees and so luxuriant the foliage, flowers and fruit of its hedges".
Like so many other local streets, St Albans Road has suffered the indignity of progress!
After a walk of a mile, the rail traveller arrived at the early 19th century "lodge" - Cassiobury Park lodge gates - on "a corner in the road ... an interesting and antique-looking edifice with mullioned windows, half overgrown with ivy and terminating on one side in a little steeple like that of some very rustic church, and on the other with a square battlemented tower pierced by narrow slit-holes. Roses are clustering over the latter and it is pleasant to reflect that the times have passed away when there might be any danger of disturbing them."
An emotive comment. I well remember the anguished outcry when the lodge gates were ruthlessly demolished in 1970 for the benefit of road traffic; entirely against local people's wishes.
The Penny Magazine commented on the view through the lodge gates: "clump upon clump, wood upon wood stretching far away into the distance where the eye rests upon gleaming waters". The traveller was advised to avoid the circuitous carriage road and take the footpath to the right, passing "many noble trees, masses of graceful fern and thick shrubbery "before the entire Gothic "edifice" appeared; a mix of "ecclesiastical and castellated styles", much of which had been built some 42 years before.
Whilst admiring its exterior, the author took a distaste to the nearest wing in view, which appeared from its architecture to be a chapel, commenting that it was "hardly fair or perhaps even, closely considered, in good taste". The reason? "One feels inclined to resent its very existence on finding there is nothing within of what we had a right to expect". Instead, the wing was "being appropriated to uses of a domestic nature".
There had been a chapel on the site when, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a manor was granted by King Henry VIII to Sir Richard Morrison. The mansion he commenced building was completed by his grandson, Sir Charles Morrison, 1st Baronet, but was demolished by Geoffrey Wyatt c1800, following the orders of the fifth Earl of Essex, George Capel-Coningsby. However, the author was somewhat placated to discover in the porch, beneath the window of the "apparent chapel", an oak door covered with "rich carving, including a row of portraits from the Cathedral at Beauvais in France".
The entrance vestibule was described as "airy, light and beautiful, yet at the same time not without an antique expression". The windows extended upward, almost from floor level; the opposite side giving access to a small formal garden.
Nearby, a notice fixed to a wall indicated that the public were allowed free admittance to the house, gardens and park on Mondays and Thursdays. In addition, permission could be gained from the earl or his housekeeper to bring refreshments and spend an entire day at Cassiobury. At that point, the author reminded the reader of the Earl's generosity in "a place that has cost its owners an immense expenditure of time and money to produce and still requires a great annual expenditure to preserve".
From the right-hand side of the vestibule, the dining room beckoned to the visitor. Lined with still life paintings and portraits set in carved wooden frames, one in particular stood out. It portrayed the widow and children of Lord Arthur Capel, 1st Baron Capel, who was beheaded by Parliament. He was a direct ancestor of "the present family and him from whom they derive their elevation to the peerage".
In 1640 Arthur Capel was elected as Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire. Initially opposed to King Charles I’s government, he took up the Royalist cause in 1641, receiving a patent of nobility from the King, conferring his rights as a nobleman. During the Civil War, he raised mounted troops at his own cost and served at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. By 1648, he became associated with conspiracies that led to the Second Civil War. Heading a Royalist uprising in East Anglia, his cavalry was attacked by Parliamentarians, triggering an 11-week siege in Colchester. Anticipating traitors' deaths, he and his troops held out but were ultimately overcome. Lord Capel, resigned to his fate, was committed to "close prison" at the time of King Charles’ execution. Whilst incarcerated, he wrote the following lines which were first published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1757 and quoted in The Penny Magazine's Cassiobury article:
"That which the world miscals (sic) a jail,
A private closet is to me;
Whilst a good conscience is my bail,
And innocence my liberty,
Locks, bars and solitude, together met,
Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret."
Lord Arthur Capel was beheaded on March 9, 1649 on a scaffold in New Palace Yard, Westminster. It was noted in The Penny Magazine that he was the only one of those arrested who attracted public sympathy.
Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the Evening Post-Echo in 1982-83 which have since been published in Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on Two Lives, Two World Wars, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.
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