Horwood House

About a mile outside the village sits Horwood House, now a hotel and conference centre. Originally the site of a medieval rectory that J.J Sheahan referred to as ‘Rectory House’ in his 1861 book A History of Buckinghamshire. At that time, the estate was around 400 acres and was owned by Philip Dauncey, having, according to Sheahan, previously been owned by the Pigott, Styles, Carter, Adams and Langston families.

Rectory House was demolished in 1911 and Horwood House was built in its place by Frederick Denny. Denny was an Irish entrepreneur who’d made his fortune in the meat trade (predominantly sausages). Legend has it that Maud Denny, his aristocratic wife, saw an Arts and Crafts style house in the west country and wanted one in a similar style. Lucky for her that her husband had the wealth to build one, although it was a crying shame he knocked down the medieval building to do it. When Denny bought the estate, it came with several farms, a plethora of cottages, the Shoulder of Mutton pub and hundreds of acres of park and farm land in and around the village. It also made him lay rector or patron of St Nicholas church. According to locals, the Dennys very much adopted the traditional role of village squire and lord of the manor.

The Dennys owned several houses in London so only visited Horwood House at the weekends, but despite this there was a staff of 50 including a butler, footman, housekeeper, parlour maids, cooks, chauffeur and gardeners. The head gardener was Harry Thrower, father to the famous gardener and TV personality Percy, who was born there in 1913 and went to school in the village. Harry is buried in St Nicholas’ graveyard.

The Dennys were not to remain at Horwood House for long and the whole estate was auctioned off in 1936. Why their sojourn in Little Horwood only lasted a generation is lost to history, although Frederick Denny died not long after in 1941. During the war Horwood House was home to a girls school that was evacuated from the Isle of Wight. The actor and comedian Arthur Askey’s daughter, Anthea, attended the school and he kindly opened many village events during that time to raise money for the war fund.

It then became a boys prep school called The Old Ride where Benjamin Britten’s brother, Robert taught.  In 1962 it was bought by British Rail and was in 1966 sold to the GPO – that became British Telecom who turned it into a training centre.