The Stable Yard at Hatfield House | Street View Trusted Tour
Award-winning Photographers Shoot Street View Trusted Tour at The Stable Yard, Hatfield House
The exciting opportunity to work with Hatfield House in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, began in spring 2015. Google Trusted Photographer Jo Hailey was representing Striking Places at Chariots BNI networking event in St Albans. She had been at a business meeting in the Hatfield House complex the previous day, and had noticed their Google+ pages were incomplete. Just the job for Striking Places!
It was Jo’s first time at a Chariots BNI St Albans event and as she rounded off her talk she said she was keen to get an introduction to Hatfield House. If any of you have ever had to present yourself or your business to a room full of strangers, you will know how nail-biting this can be! First time nerves meant she sat down with enormous relief it was over, legs a-tremble. Immediately a woman across from her leant towards her and she wondered what she had done wrong!
This turned out to be a lovely person from the Willow Foundation. The Willow Foundation are a really wonderful organisation, set up by former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson and his wife Meg, as a memorial to their daughter Anna who died of cancer aged 31. Their objective is to provide “uplifting and unforgettable Special Days” to people between 16 and 40 who are seriously ill.
The Willow Foundation associate handed Jo a card with a contact at Hatfield House and the adventure began.
Striking Places met with a representative of Hatfield House. They realised just how beneficial Street View Trusted Tours could be for the whole place. The Hatfield House complex comprises many unique businesses – venues, shops and cafes to name but a few. The benefits of the whole complex having a Google Street View Trusted Tour were manifold. Through this initial contact Striking Places was able to arrange meetings to shoot many of the attractions.
The Stable Yard is the central hub in which all the shops and businesses sit, around a beautiful carved stone fountain. The Stable Yard was first proposed in 1911, and by 1915 most of the work was completed. It’s creation was necessitated by the fact that the Old Palace, used for some 300 years as the main stables for Hatfield House, was restored as a banqueting hall. The buildings that sit around the Stable Yard were not just built for horses and donkeys, and the requisite workshops and storage rooms for saddles and harnesses. The complex included space for coaches and early motor cars too. The relocating of the original Gift Shop from the house to the Stables in 1986 started a trend. By 2010 the whole area had been transformed into the retail attraction you see today.
After agreeing to shoot Hatfield House itself it became evident to the Hatfield House contact that the Google Street View Trusted tours were such good value for money that the budget would cover the Stable Yard, and it’s shops and cafes too. They had recently installed a new car park, and it was decided it would be extremely helpful to visitors to not only be able to see outside all the shops in the Stable Yard, many of which would have Street View inside too, but also to be able to see the way to and from the Stable Yard to the new car park. Take a look for yourself!
