The coronavirus pandemic has caused challenging times for anyone involved in publishing. The Watford Treasury is no different, but instead of ceasing publication the team behind it adapted and issue six of Home Tied is set to be launched this weekend.

Published in collaboration with Watford Museum and with the support of the Hornets and the Watford Observer, the Treasury was launched to present a visual history of the club through photos, memories, possessions and five volumes have now been produced.

However, the production costs and the inability to sell it outside Vicarage Road on matchdays meant it was not economically viable to produce it while Premier League football was suspended.

Editor Colin Payne and the Treasury team were still keen to deliver a product for Hornets fans to enjoy during lockdown though, and the outcome was Home Tied, an A5 magazine available through subscription also published free online.

Colin explained: “Initially it was almost a best of the Watford Treasury and stuff we’d written for other publications. The idea was we were going to put it online every two weeks, just maybe 20, 30 pages to keep things ticking over and it was a good chance for us to carry on writing.

“From that it developed quite rapidly into people writing original material for it, rather than delving back into our archives, and we got to a point where we were looking at it and as an online publication it wasn’t really doing it justice because most people were looking at it through a tiny little phone screen and not being able to read it properly, not been able to see the photos properly, so quite quickly we almost changed the emphasis into doing a printed version and that’s taken off really well.”

Previous editions of Home Tied have included former players Nigel Gibbs and Steve Palmer taking part in a ‘home tied’ Q&A, explaining what they’ve doing in lockdown, and Richard Lee is the next to feature in issue six.

“It’s not selling thousands of copies, it’s not selling on the same level as the treasury but that’s actually quite nice,” Colin said. “The people that do buy it, we’ve had really good feedback, they enjoy it and we’re getting people now who are starting to submit stuff to get published, so it’s a bit interactive and people can get involved too.”

You can read or subscribe to Home Tied by clicking here