detect and constrain the properties of the group-scale gas around 3C452 and to search for evidence both for shock heating and for other work done on the external medium by the radio galaxy.

In the cosmology used in this thesis, the luminosity distance to 3C452 is 369 Mpc, and 1 arcsec corresponds to 1.53 kpc. Errors quoted on the results of X-ray fitting are 90 per cent confidence errors.

Observation & Data Reduction {#observations}
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We observed 3C452 with the EPIC instrument on board [*XMM-Newton*]{}. The exposure time for the MOS1 and MOS2 cameras were 69.587 ks and 69.621 ks respectively. For the PN, the exposure time was 54.024 ks. The observation began on 2008 November 30.

The datasets were processed using the Scientific Analysis Software (SAS) version 9.0 and the standard pipeline tasks [*emchain*]{} and [*epchain*]{}. The data was filtered using PATTERN $<=4$ (MOS) or PATTERN $<=12$ (PN) and we used the bit-mask flags 0x766a0600 for the MOS camera and 0xfa000c for the PN camera. These are equivalent to the standard flagset \#XMMEA\_EM/P, but they also include out of field-of-view events and exclude any bad columns and rows found in the data. We did not need to filter the 