Hertfordshire

St Albans Clock Tower

April 26, 2024 by Penny Leave a Comment

Whilst St Albans Abbey dominates much of the skyline of the Hertfordshire medieval city the nearby Clock Tower is also very worth a visit. Said to be the oldest medieval town belfry in England, it is located at the end of Market Place in St Albans and can be visited at certain times in the year.

A view from the ground looking up at St Albans Clock Tower

The History of St Albans Clock Tower

Completed in 1405 and paid for by the people of St Albans, the Clock Tower was seen as a protest by the local people against the Abbey’s ability to regulate time-keeping in the town (as St Albans was at the time as it was not made a city until 1877).

The location of the clock tower is close to the site of the Eleanor Cross which stood in the town. In total there were twelve crosses erected between 1291 and 1294 to mark the nightly resting places of Eleanor or Castile’s (wife of King Edward I) funeral procession. The cross at St Albans cost £113 to build and was constructed in 1291, however the top section of the St Albans Eleanor Cross was destroyed during the English Civil War, and the rest of the monument was later demolished.

The Clock Tower’s Structure

The Clock Tower has a total of five stories, each being slightly smaller than the one below. The ground floor was originally a shop, with the shopkeeper living on the first floor.

The second floor of the tower was the living quarters of the clock keepers with the third floor housing the clock and related mechanism. The fourth floor houses the bells. There are two bells in the tower. A large one, and a smaller market bell which was rung to signify the opening of St Albans market to people who were not freemen of the city.

The St Albans Clock Tower as a Shutter Telegraph Station

During the Napoleonic Wars the Clock Tower’s height and location meant that it was used as a shutter telegraph station allowing semaphore messages to be sent between a total of 15 stations between London and Great Yarmouth in less than five minutes. A wooden hut was built on the roof of the tower, with the semaphore shutter equipment above it. This hut was removed in 1852.

An example of a shutter telegraph. A wooden from with six large white squares on it that are pivoted in their middles horizontally so they can be flipped. The squares are arranged two across and three down. On each white square is a large red circle.

The Clock Tower Today

St Albans Clock Tower is a well known local landmark in the city and features prominently in many pictures. At Christmas it is usually lit up beautifully with festive lights. The Clock Tower is under the care of St Albans City and District Council and is open to visitors at specific times.

Refurbishment of the clock means that this is now run electrically.

Commit No Nuisance

One other frequently photographed part of the clock tower is a door round the back with the words “Commit No Nuisance” carefully written at the top in white.

This polite instruction was apparently written in 1915 and from a report of the St Albans Council’s Highways and Plans and Nuisances Sub-Committee (what a brilliant name!), dated 19 July 1915, it is recorded, ‘Attention has been called to the fact that nuisances are frequently committed by persons near the door on the west side of the Clock Tower, and urine finds its way under the doorway, and your Sub-Committee have given instructions for the step down to the door to be filled in with concrete and flaunced off to stop any liquid getting into the building and have directed that a warning notice should be put up on the door against committing nuisances.’

What an utterly bonkers but brilliant bit of history!

Visiting the St Albans Clock Tower

The Clock Tower is open to visitors every weekend and Bank Holiday from Good Friday through until late September. Visitors can arrive between 10.30am and 5pm. There is a charge of £2 for adult. Accompanies children are free of charge.

A small open doorway into a flint building. On teh railings are a large copy of the St Albans shield and a sign saying that you can climb the 93 steps to the top and what it costs.

In the shopkeeper’s quarters on the first floor of the tower is an example of a Shutter Telegraph system.

A view of a small stone turret on teh top of teh clock tower which is where you emerge from the stairs onto the roof. — Where you emerge from onto the roof of St Albans Clock Tower

There are a total of 93 steps to climb to reach the top and it should be noted that this is a steep stone spiral staircase. Once you are at the top there is a magnificent 360 degree view of the surrounding city.

A view form the roof of teh clock tower towards St Albans Abbey — A view towards St Albans Abbey

A view from the top of St Albans Clock Tower towards the market — A view towards St Albans’ Market Place

More details about the clock tower, and a video tour, can be found on the St Albans Museums website here.

Looking for more things to do and places to visit in Hertfordshire?

Why not see where else Penny has travelled to in Hertfordshire or the neighbouring counties of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

5 places to visit near Harry Potter Studios

September 16, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

First thing’s first – the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, The Making of Harry Potter, AKA Harry Potter Studios isn’t in London. Many people think it is, but it’s actually in a place called Leavesden on the outskirts of Watford. A short drive from the M1 and M25 motorways.

A top down photograph showing a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a pair of Harry's iconic glasses and a Chocolate Frog box.

If you’re staying in London then the easiest way to get there is to get a train from London Euston to Watford Junction station and from there you can hop aboard a shuttle bus that goes from outside the station. If you’re looking to book a hotel nearby then look for one in Watford itself, or maybe slightly further afield in Hemel Hempstead or St Albans.

Just because the studios aren’t in London itself that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to do in the surrounding area to make your visit into a weekend or a few days away from home. Here are some ideas of local places that you could visit that kids of all ages will love

Watford Town Centre

Whilst Watford town centre might not sound the perfect tourist destination there’s actually loads going on there to keep children entertained, especially on a rainy day. Centred around the atria shopping centre (which has multiple car parks) as well as a mix of shops (including a fab Lego store) you can also find various restaurants, a large Cineworld cinema, indoor rock climbing, Escape Rooms, bowling and even high tech crazy golf.

Lost Jungle London

If the indoor crazy golf in Watford town centre isn’t enough then just off the A41 is Lost Jungle London, Europe’s largest adventure golf course. The site actually has two 18 hole courses – the Amazon and the Congo. You can simply decide which course you want to do when you arrive and both are pay and play meaning that you don’t need to book.

The lack of bookings is advantageous if you’re looking for something to do on the spur of the moment, but it can lead to some queues, although in our experience these are fast moving. There’s a discount for if you want to do both courses, but with young kids one may well be sufficient. The site also has a 9 hole foot golf course next to the golf courses.

There isn’t much available at the site in way of refreshments – just basics like bottles of drink, crisps and chocolate bars and some ice creams in a freezer – so maybe plan your visit around a meal somewhere in Watford.

Whipsnade Zoo

A bit further north than Watford is Whipsnade Zoo, on the outskirts of Dunstable. This huge award winning zoo is actually part of the Zoological Society of London who also run the famous London Zoo.

The zoo’s site is vast and you can pay to take your car into the zoo’s site itself to help you get around. An alternative is the large car park outside the zoo’s main entrance and there is a free bus inside the zoo to help with some of the distances.

As well as the expected array of animals, there is also a huge children’s outdoor playground, as well as an indoor soft play centre (time slot booking necessary). A daily programme of talks by keepers is run and upon arrival you normally get told the timetable for the day ahead.

St Albans

Neighbouring St Albans can provide a cultural excursion not far from Watford. The city’s Roman history is laid out in the Verulamium Museum which sits on the edge of Verulamium Park. The park includes a lovely cafe, Childrens play area, splash park and a nice lake to walk around.

Up the hill from Verulamium Park sits the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban (known better as St Albans Abbey) and with a modern visitor’s centre and cafe you can find out more about St Alban himself and the impressive Abbey. In the City centre is the modern St Albans Museum and Gallery which covers more of the city’s non-Roman history, along with a variety of art exhibitions. The Museum and Gallery are located on the main market area of the city with numbers cafes and restaurants nearby for refreshments. Nearby is also the Clock Tower which when open gives 360 degree views across the city’s skyline.

London

It may seem obvious, but the other place easy to visit from the Warner Brothers Studio Tour is London itself. If you’re staying in Watford you can easily get the train from Watford Junction down to Euston or even head to Watford tube station and get the Metropolitan Line (but beware, this far out it doesn’t really feel like the tube!)

Once in London there really is so much to do with museums, galleries and other tourist attractions, but the one place many Harry Potter fans want to visit is Platform 9 3/4 at London’s Kings Cross Railway Station. If you’re coming into London on the train it’s really not too far to walk down the Euston Road and past the impressive British Library and St Pancras stations. There’s also a handily placed Harry Potter souvenir shop (just in case you didn’t spend everything at the Studios) and both Kings Cross and St Pancras stations have a range of family friendly places to grab food and drinks too.

More ideas

If you’re still looking or more things to do then why not see where else we have visited in Hertfordshire and the neighbouring counties of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire as well as London.

Pitstone Windmill

July 10, 2022 by Penny Leave a Comment

Believed to be the oldest surviving windmill in the British Isles, Pitstone Windmill is somewhere that I have driven past for years, yet until last week I’d embarrassingly not got round to visiting.

Looking at the rear of Pitstone Windmill. You can see teh ends of teh sails on teh front of teh windmill and the stairs leading up into the windmill and the wooden arm with the turning wheel on the end of it. Also in picture is teh National Trust welcome table outside the windmill. Text has been added to the photographs saying "Visiting Pitstone Windmill".

History of Pitstone Windmill

Part of the National Trust’s Ashridge Estate, the windmill is clearly visible from the nearby road and is a beautiful example of an early post mill. A post mill is one which was turned on top of a huge wooden post to face the wind. Once you’re up close to the mill the tail pole and accompanying rotation wheel make it obvious as to how this was done. Today the mill no longer turns, but it has been restored, inside and out, to show visitors how it would have operated at the time.

The stairs leading up into the windmill and a wooden arm with a red wheel, looking a bit like a cart wheel on the end of it.

The earliest date carved into the mill is 1627, although it is believed that the mill is even older than that. At one point it was owned by the nearby Ashridge Estate before being sold to a local farmer, Mr Hawkins of Pitstone Green Farm (now home to a fantastic independent museum). Hawkins happened to be the windmill’s tenant at the time. Whilst Mr Hawkins had had great success running the mill, and oversaw repairs there in 1895, a great storm in 1902 damaged the mill. So much so that it was no longer operational. It confuses me therefore as to why Mr Hawkins decided to buy the mill in 1924, but maybe at the time it was thought to be rescuable. By 1937 it was clear that saving it would be out of their abilities, so the mill was donated to its current owners the National Trust.

It wasn’t until the 1960s though when a group of local volunteers came together that work started to restore the mill. By this time much of the original machinery inside the mill had been lost or destroyed so a huge amount of work went into rebuilding, restoring and finding replacement parts.

Pitstone Windmill Today

Pitstone Windmill is now locked into place and the milling machinery inside no longer works, but everything is there that would have been needed to make it operational. Some of it having originally come from other mills across the country.

One of teh milling stones inside the windmill with a wooden surround.

Inside the windmill visitors are able to visit three different levels to understand how the whole milling process worked at the site. It is fascinating to see the early engineering that was used inside and also to realise just how much work would be done on the site by just one person. National Trust volunteers take visitors around the Windmill explaining the mill’s history and workings.

Visiting Pitstone Windmill

Pitstone Windmill stands in the middle of a farmer’s fields and there is a path leading to it from a small parking area on the B488 just outside Ivinghoe. The National Trust opens the windmill on Sunday afternoons in summer months, with exact dates and times published on their website.

A view across fields looking towards Pitstone Windmill. The windmill is in the distance and there is a grass path leading to it. In the foreground is a National Trust sign welcoming visitors to the windmill.

There are no facilities at the windmill itself. National Trust members can visit for free, but there is a charge for non-members. Payments have to be in cash as the welcome desk is literally a table just outside the windmill! For the upper two levels of the windmill there are steep ladder like steps to climb which may be difficult for some, including young children.

A front on view f Pitstone Windmill showing the sails. There are no sailcloths on the sails.

If you’ve an interest in local history, or in seeing how windmills worked then it’s an excellent place to visit. The nearby National Trust estate at Ashridge has proper visitor facilities and also a large number of walks advertised. It’s also possible to visit the windmill as part of a local walk centred around Ivinghoe or Pitstone. There is also a great local campsite that I can recommend at Town Farm.

More adventures in Hertfordshire

For us Hertfordshire is literally just down the road and all three kids go to school in the county. Just because somewhere is local though doesn’t mean you can’t have an adventure there. You can share more of our Hertfordshire adventures with us here.

British Dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum at Tring

April 8, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

I think it fair to say that most people know about the Natural History Museum in London. It’s world famous. The dinosaurs there, especially “Dippy” the diplodocus who was there for over one hundred years, have been the reason for so many children (and adults) wanting to visit. There are about 80 million items in the museum’s collection and there’s something there to entertain and fascinate anyone with an interest in natural history.

What isn’t so well known, is that the Natural History Museum has a smaller second museum in the Hertfordshire market town of Tring. The Natural History Museum at Tring was originally the private museum of Lionel Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild and it is located in the grounds of the former Rothschild family home of Tring Park. If you’re at all local to Tring, you probably know of the Rothschild family from one of their other current houses, Waddesdon Manor, which is currently open to the public, under the care of the National Trust.

Natural History Museum at Tring

The Natural History Museum at Tring houses one of the country’s finest collections of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and insects and there’s no wonder that so many local children simply know it as the “animal museum”. The history of how it came to be is fascinating, and the museum has a room dedicated to Rothschild and the life that he dedicated to the study of animals. At the age of seven he declared to his parents that he was going to “make a museum” and he did just that. There’s a short version of what he did over on the museum’s website, but the detail provided at the museum itself is well worth a read.

The museum has five other galleries with permanent exhibitions in which range from a zebroid foal (a hybrid between a horse and a zebra) to a whole selection of domestic dogs. If you have young children it is particularly lovely for them to visit and be able to get up close to so many animals, especially as many of the display cases are right down to the floor, meaning that children can see many exhibits for themselves without having to be lifted up. Gallery 1 has a beautiful vintage feel to it and walking around you can easily feel like you’re back in a different era.

British Dinosaurs

The reason for my most recent visit (and the second visit for four month old Tube Stop Baby – which shows how much we like the place!) was to see their most recent temporary exhibition in Gallery 2 – British Dinosaurs.

Photograph kindly provided by Natural History Museum, Tring and copyright The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

The museum in London may be world famous for their dinosaur collection, but this exhibition focusses on British Dinosaurs, and the ones that still live among us in our gardens and parks. As you enter the gallery the first thing that hits you is the large map on the floor, showing where dinosaurs are known to have lived. My kids knew all about the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, thanks to a recent holiday with their Dad, but they were surprised to find out that dinosaurs were known to have been in so many other parts of the country.

In Tring children can measure themselves against the femur and tibia of an Iguanodon (one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered). They can see the massive Baryonyx walkeri skull and think about how huge this dinosaur could be by looking at backbone specimens that were found in Surrey. Their teeth can be compared to Megalosaurus bucklandii teeth found in Oxfordshire.

There are also a couple of interactive exhibits that my kids learnt loads from. Any excuse to touch a touch screen and they’ll take it!

What we thought

At 6 and 8, Little Miss C and Master C really enjoyed the British Dinosaurs exhibition, as well as wondering around the rest of the museum again. They also seemed to learn plenty too, especially LMC who spent quite a while reading about all the dinosaur exhibits.

I’m not going to lie, if your children are expecting to see huge dinosaur skeletons towering over them, then you should head for London instead, but as part of a bigger visit to the museum it’s a brilliant opportunity to learn about the dinosaurs that used to live here. The kids enjoyed the opportunity to touch a dinosaur tooth and to think about just how old it was in comparison to their ages. They also made a point of finding the reptile skin I’m gallery 6 so that they could get a feel for what a dinosaur would have felt like.

The kids have been going to the museum since they were very young, but they still enjoy going back. Little Miss C even did a “Roars and Snores” event recently with Brownies where they spent an evening in the museum learning about the exhibits, dissecting owl pellets and under standing how taxidermy is done. They then all slept on the floor next to some of the exhibits. She did say it was a tad scary to wake in the night with a deer peering down at her!

Visiting the Natural History Museum at Tring

The British Dinosaurs exhibition is running at Tring from 5 April to 11 October 2019. The Natural History Museum is located at The Walter Rothschild building, Akeman Street, Tring, Hertfordshire, HP23 6AP and is a short walk from the centre of Tring. There is a car park on site, but it can get very busy, so you are sometimes better off parking else where and walking. Entry to the museum, including the British Dinosaurs exhibition, is free. For full detail of the museum’s opening hours, please look at their website.

The whole museum is accessible with a pushchair, you just need to go in via the entrance off the car park, rather than the main entrance which has steps leading up to it. There is a cafe on site that has recently had a revamp. I’m told it is very good, but every time I have tried to visit the queue has been out of the door! I’m taking that as a sign that it is as good as I’ve been told.

A final word

My final word would be to say that when you go, please go and look at the Emperor Penguins and work out why the one on the left looks so strange. A member of staff explained it to me when we were there last week and it’s a fascinating story. Make sure you ask them if you can’t work it out for yourself.

Disclaimer: We were guests at a preview opening of the British Dinosaurs exhibition at Tring and the kids were given a vast quantity of bread sticks and crisps to much whilst there. All opinions remain my own.