Moor Park, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

An 18th-century country house with formal gardens of around 1830, surrounded by an 18th-century landscape park and pleasure grounds laid out by Lancelot Brown in about 1753. Charles Bridgeman produced a plan for the pleasure grounds (around 1720s); it is not known how much of this was executed.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Moor Park lies between Rickmansworth to the north-west, from which it is separated by the River Colne and the Grand Union Canal, and to the south-east the London suburb of Northwood. The centre of Watford lies about 4 kilometres north-east of the estate. The roughly triangular estate of about 115 hectares is bounded largely by a belt of early 20th-century houses, built along the 19th-century park boundary which was marked by Moor Lane to the north, Batchworth Heath Hill to the south-west and Pembroke and Astons Roads to the east. The house is built on high ground which rises further to the south and west, falling away to the park boundaries. The setting is rural to the south-west and immediately to the north, and suburban beyond the river to the north and north-west, and to the south-east and east. Long views extend north towards Cassiobury Park (see the description of this site elsewhere in the Register) and north-east towards Watford from the high ground running from the north-west to the south-east corners of the park.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Victoria History of the County of Hertfordshire 2, (1908), pp 375-8

Country Life, 31 (6 January 1912), pp 18-26; (13 January 1912), pp 56-62

C Holme, Gardens of the Southern and Western Counties (1907), plates 92, 93

B Cherry and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire (1977), pp 251-3

P Hunt and J Willis (editors), The Genius of the Place (1975), pp 97-8

D Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), pp 69-70

G Beard, Thomas H Mawson (1976), p 39

P Willis, Charles Bridgeman (1977), pp 62, 181

J Harris, The Artist and the Country House (1979), p 273

R Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (1979), pp 141-7

Maps

Dury and Andrews, A topographical Map of Hartford-shire, 1766

A Plan of Moor Park, ... the property of Robert Williams, esqr, 1814, (Hertfordshire Record Office)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1878; 2nd edition published 1899; 3rd edition published 1934

OS 25" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1899 

Description written: March 1999

Edited: October 2000