Hereford Town Centre

Summary

A cathedral city on the Wye — High Town with its medieval and Georgian commercial streets, the Cathedral (with the Mappa Mundi), the old bridge over the Wye, and the Herefordshire agricultural market character.

About this location

Hereford is the county town of Herefordshire and a cathedral city on the River Wye at the edge of the Welsh Marches. High Town — the city’s principal commercial area — has a narrow medieval street pattern with the 16th-century Old House (a timber-framed building, now a museum) as its centrepiece. The Cathedral Quarter (around the Cathedral and Cathedral Close) gives a scale and character more typical of a medieval settlement than a Victorian commercial town.

The Cathedral — a Norman and Gothic building housing the Mappa Mundi (the largest surviving medieval map) and the Chained Library — fronts onto the Cathedral Close, a quiet precinct of Georgian canonical houses. The River Wye to the south of the centre gives a riverside walk below the cathedral west front.

For productions, Hereford gives a cathedral city environment that is distinct from the larger cathedral cities — Exeter, York, Winchester — in being smaller, more rural in character, and more immediately connected to the agricultural Marches landscape. Herefordshire Council handles filming permits.