Pre-1762 The
manor of Luton Hoo is not mentioned in the
Domesday Book, but a family called de Hoo occupied a
manor house on the site for four centuries, until the death of
Thomas Hoo, 1st Baron Hoo and Hastings in 1455. The manor passed into the marital family of his daughter,
Anne, married to
Geoffrey Boleyn, great-grandfather of
Anne Boleyn, Queen of England. Anne's father,
Thomas Boleyn, eventually sold the property to
Richard Fermour, a wealthy London Merchant. It then passed to the Rotherham family and then the Napier family. Successive houses were built on the site. In 1751,
Francis Herne, a
member of parliament MP for
Bedford, inherited the house from his kinswoman Miss Napier.
Crichton-Stuart In 1763, Francis Herne sold the
estate for £94,700 to
the 3rd Earl of Bute. Following an unhappy period as Prime Minister from 1762 to 1763, Lord Bute decided to concentrate his energies on his estate at Luton Hoo. . Two major sets of alterations were made after the image was published. The present house was built by the 3rd Earl of Bute to the designs of the
neoclassical architect
Robert Adam. Work commenced in 1767. The original plan had been for a grand and magnificent new house, but the plan was never fully executed and much of the work was a remodelling of the older house. Building work was interrupted by a fire in 1771 but by 1774 the house, though incomplete, was inhabited. Dr.
Samuel Johnson, who visited the house in 1781, remarked: "This is one of the places I do not regret coming to see... in the house magnificence is not sacrificed to convenience, nor convenience to magnificence". Luton Hoo was one of the largest houses for which Adam was wholly responsible. While Adam was working on the mansion, the landscape gardener
Capability Brown was enlarging and redesigning the park, which was enlarged from about to . Brown dammed the
River Lea to form two lakes, one of which is in size. In the early 20th century, part of the park overlooked by the south-west facade of the house was transformed into formal gardens. In about 1830,
the 2nd Marquess of Bute, grandson of the 3rd Earl, transformed the house, to the designs of the architect
Robert Smirke (later Sir Robert, 1781–1867), a leading architect of the era. Smirke redesigned the house (with the exception of the south front) to resemble its present form today, complete with a massive
portico, similar to that designed by Adam but never built. His early work and domestic designs, such as that at
Eastnor Castle, were often in a
medieval style; he seems to have reserved his
Greek Revival style for public buildings such as the
British Museum. Luton Hoo, neither Gothic nor strictly Greek Revival, is an unusual example of him using a classical style for domestic use, which perhaps he felt would be sympathetic to Adam's original conception. Another addition was the neo-Gothic lodge with Tudor-style windows, and a Norman-style door, imported from an older building. Known as 'Lady Bute's Lodge' it is a Grade II listed building. In 1843, a devastating fire destroyed much of the house and its contents. The house remained a burnt-out shell until after 1848, when the estate was sold to John Shaw Leigh.
Leigh In 1848, the estate with the burnt-out house was purchased by John Shaw Leigh (d.1871), a
Liverpool solicitor and property speculator,
Mayor of Liverpool in 1841, whose family originated in Lipton, in Lancashire. He married Hannah Blundell-Hollinshead, a daughter of Henry Blundell (1755–1832), Mayor of Liverpool in 1791–1794 and in 1807, owner of Orrell, Blackrod and Pemberton collieries near Liverpool. His father, John Leigh, senior, was a solicitor and land agent to the
Earl of Derby, the major landowner in the Liverpool area, but he also purchased much land in the area for himself on credit. John Leigh was the local agent of the Tory politician
Bamber Gascoyne (1758–1824) and secretary of the "True Blue Club", a Tory political club formed in 1818, to support his election organisation. With the coming of the railways to Liverpool in the 1840s, the value of his holdings increased dramatically. It was remarked of John Leigh, Senior: :"That he had a keen foresight beyond most of his contemporaries into the coming greatness of Liverpool there can be no doubt, but the actuality far exceeded his most sanguine expectations. The railway demands formed an element altogether outside of his calculations however shrewd...The Leighs carried a flair for the timely and well sited purchases of property to a remarkably high degree. And although no doubt their dealings with the railway companies on behalf of the great landowners they represented gave them both an unusual measure of inside information and a degree of monopoly control as vendors of land, the skill with which they made capital from these assets in the early railway age is unusual". Leigh rebuilt the derelict shell in the style and manner of Smirke, rather than to Adam's earlier plan. In about 1863 "there was found a hoard of Roman coins near Luton, on the estate of John Shaw Leigh, Esq., of Luton Hoo. The coins, which must have been nearly a thousand in number, had been deposited in an imperfectly burnt urn composed of clay and pounded shell and consisted of
denarii and small brass, ranging from the time of Caracalla to that of Claudius Gothicus". In 1871 the estate was inherited by his son John Gerard Leigh (1821–1875), who in 1872 married Eleanor Louisa Hawkes (d.1899), a daughter of Thomas Hawkes and widow of Hon. Humble Dudley Ward (1821–1870), a son of
William Humble Ward, 10th Baron Ward of Birmingham. She was a close friend of the
Prince of Wales. with the remainder to his nephew Henry Leigh. In 1883 Eleanor remarried to Christian Frederick de Falbe (1828–1896), the
Danish ambassador to the
United Kingdom, thus becoming known as "Madame de Falbe". She entertained lavishly and during her tenure Luton Hoo began an association with the British royal family. It was in December 1891 that
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, grandson of
Queen Victoria, and second in line of the British throne, proposed to his fiancée,
Princess Mary of Teck, at Luton Hoo. Madame de Falbe died in 1899 when the estate reverted to her second husband's nephew, Captain Henry Gerard Leigh (1856–1900), 1st Life Guards, who in 1886 had married Marion Lindsay Antrobus, a daughter of Hugh Lindsay Antrobus. He died one year after having inherited Luton Hoo, leaving an 11-year-old son Lt-Col. John Cecil Gerard Leigh (1889–1963), on whose behalf in 1903 Luton Hoo was sold to Sir
Julius Wernher, the
diamond magnate, who had rented it since 1899. Luton Hoo's estate was used as a tank testing ground for the
Churchill tanks, which were produced at factories in the town of Luton. The Wernhers, by virtue of Lady Zia's sister
Nadejda de Torby, were very close to Prince Philip, who – along with
Elizabeth II – frequently visited Luton Hoo both for public events and private visits. The royal couple spent a number of wedding anniversaries staying at Luton Hoo.
Phillips Following Lady Zia's death in 1977, the estate passed to her grandson Nicholas Harold Phillips, after whose death in 1991 the house and 1,059 acres were sold by his wife. The Phillips family, descendants of Sir Julius and Lady Alice Wernher, still retain ownership of a significant part of the historic estate running it successfully as a diversified business that is home to commercial and residential tenants as well as restoring the walled garden (see below) and one of the busiest non-studio filming locations in the country. Part of the collection, including works by
Peter Paul Rubens,
Titian and
Bartolomé Bermejo, was also sold whilst a portion remains together and is now on permanent display at
Ranger's House in
Greenwich, London. In 1996 and 1997, the grounds were hired out for the
Tribal Gathering dance music festival and again in 2005, but the latter event was cancelled due to the
7 July 2005 London bombings.
Hotel The house was converted into a luxury hotel called the Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf, and Spa, which opened in October 2007. It has 228 bedrooms and suites. Part of the restoration project involved rebuilding the second floor of the house, which was included in the plans drawn up by the original architects. The owners, Elite Hotels, indicated that furnishings were selected with the aim of restoring the house to its former glory. In December 2021 the hotel was sold to The Arora Group, a UK-based hotel and property company. ==Walled garden==