Pendley Manor is a hotel, conference and function center near Tring, Hertfordshire, UK. It is an historic country house and is grade 2 listed as an important example of Victorian architecture.
A village of Pendley is recorded from the 4th century AD.[1] The Manor also pre dates the Norman conquest of 1066, at which it was confiscated by William the Conqueror and passed to his brother in law, Robert, Earl of Moretain. A later owner was John de Angle, an early Member of Parliament. It then passed to the Verney family who occupied it for 150 years when Sir Robert Whittingham's daughter married John Verney. Around 1440 Sir Robert Whittingam, sheriff of the county, enclosed 200 acres of the land and tore down all other buildings within, which at the time amounted to a small town, returning them to pasture.[1] He rebuilt the manor as a double cloistered courtyard similar to those found at Herstmonceux Castle and Eton College.[2] [3] The Verney family lived at the Manor for the next 150 years. The Anderson family then occupied the Manor for four generations after which it was inherited by the Harcourt family. Sir William Harcourt abandoned the Manor after the construction of the nearby London and Birmingham Railway and the ancient buildings burnt down in 1835. [4] [5]
A Local landowner and mill owner, Joseph Grout Williams commissioned architect John Lion to build a new Tudor style Manor in 1872. He and his descendants then occupied the rebuilt Manor from 1875 until 1983. The last private owner was BBC show jumping commentator Dorian Williams, who developed it as a center for adult education and the arts. He inaugurated the Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival in 1949 in the hotel grounds which continues to run to the present.[4][5]
The house was sold to a property company in 1983 and then in 1989 to a hotel company which invested in the building and re-opened it as a country house hotel in 1991. There have since been several extensions built to house additional rooms, a spa and gymnasium and a banqueting / conference suite.[4][5]