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How Wood was once simply part of Park Street's farmland. Housing arrived, a station followed, and a genuinely distinct village grew up out of what used to be agricultural fields.
How Wood sits south of Park Street, in the stretch of Hertfordshire countryside between Watford and St Albans, within the civil parish of St Stephen. It's a relatively young community as English villages go: much of the area was, not so long ago, simply agricultural fields belonging to Park Street, before residential development gradually filled in the land around Park Street Lane.
As the housing grew, so did How Wood's sense of being a distinct place rather than merely an extension of its older neighbour. By the time of the 2001 census, its population stood at 3,542, a genuine, self-sufficient residential community that had earned its own name and identity, even though the land it sits on was, within living memory, still growing crops rather than housing families.
Most villages take centuries to form an identity. How Wood managed it within a couple of generations, simply by growing steadily and quietly until the name stuck.
How Wood railway station, the fourth stop on the Abbey Line, sits 4.5 miles from Watford Junction and gave the growing village a direct rail connection when British Rail opened it in October 1988, timed to coincide with the line's overhead electrification. Fittingly, the station occupies the original site of the old Park Street and Frogmore railway station, which had opened back in 1858 before relocating sometime before the 1890s. It's a small but genuine thread tying How Wood's very modern station back to a piece of Victorian railway history.
The Abbey Line itself, connecting Watford Junction to St Albans Abbey, is one of Hertfordshire's quieter rail routes, the kind of line locals rely on daily and visitors rarely think to explore. How Wood's stop on it makes the village an easy, unhurried way to see this stretch of the county without needing a car.
How Wood won't offer you a medieval church or an ancient earthwork, and that's precisely what makes it worth including here: not every place worth knowing has to be centuries old. Come and see how a residential community can grow out of farmland within a couple of generations and still develop a genuine sense of its own identity, station and all.
The Social Martini is proud to connect the people and stories that make How Wood special. 🍸