Ralph de Tony held this site, in the manor of
Flamstead, as recorded in the
Domesday Book of 1086. As King of England, William the Conqueror would have expected this new Lord of the Manor to protect
St Albans Abbey and its pilgrims. Ralph de Tony's grandson Roger IV de Toesny then founded a Benedictine nunnery, St Giles in the Wood Priory, Flamstead, in the middle of the 12th century. The
Dissolution of the Monasteries resulted in the destruction of the nunnery of St Giles in 1537. The property subsequently passed first to
George Ferrers, and then in 1628 to
Thomas Saunders of
Long Marston. In 1698 his great granddaughter Anne Saunders married Sir Edward Sebright, who belonged to a wealthy
Worcestershire family, establishing a family connection for the next two and a half centuries. One of six children, only Anne herself survived childhood. A monument in St Leonard's Church,
Flamstead, is a memorial attributed to
William Stanton (c.1690) to the early death of her brothers and sisters. Edward Sebright moved from Worcestershire to his bride's home in Hertfordshire, and set about transforming the Tudor building that he found there. In 1908 he was the tenant of
Haynes Park, Bedfordshire. The Sebrights fell on hard times after
World War I, and eventually relinquished the estate. The
Second World War brought changes to Beechwood. Firstly the
Sebright family, with the requisitioning of the house by the government, moved into a smaller house that they owned, nearby. The main house became the headquarters for
Spillers Foods, which had evacuated from London. An airfield was built in the grounds to land damaged or obsolete planes. Specially constructed hangars were used to house these planes and care was taken to camouflage the strip and the hangars. At the end of the war the house first became a girls' school, which eventually closed in 1961 due to lack of funds. A new preparatory school was opened in 1964 which continues to this day. ==Beechwood Park School==