Batchwood Hall is a manor house in St Albans, Hertfordshire
The house was designed in the Queen Anne style and built for Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe in 1874. [1] It contains the prototype of the Great Clock in the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster. [2] The site was acquired by St Albans Council in 1935 when John Henry Taylor was commissioned to design and establish an 18-hole golf course in the grounds. [3] The house became an event venue in the 1970s. [4] An arson attack resulted in the complete destruction of the Batchwood Tennis and Golf Centre in August 2011. [5] It operated as a vaccination centre, organised by a consortium of local GPs, during the COVID-19 pandemic. [6]