Hanstead House

Hanstead House or Hanstead Park is a country house estate in Hertfordshire, England. Hanstead is near Bricket Wood, about three miles from Radlett and five miles from St Albans, within the green belt around London. It forms part of the civil parish of St Stephen, Hertfordshire within St Albans District Council. The park has been a stud, a college, and a corporate training centre, and is now owned by a property development firm. The current building, though in the Georgian style, dates from 1925. The property was mentioned in the Domesday Book.

The house was built for the Yule family. Sir David Yule (1858–1928) was a Scottish entrepreneur who went into the family business, which was trade with India, then the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire. He was involved with many additional businesses. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography judged him "arguably the most important businessman in India" and quoted his obituary in The Times as "one of the wealthiest men, if not the wealthiest man, in the country".

A later owner of the property wrote: "In 1925 Sir David decided to build for himself a mansion on this 1200 acre [4.9 km²] estate, located only five miles [8 km] from the northwest edge of London. Prior to this he had built a 'modest' two-story house of some 14 rooms to live in during construction of the mansion. It was later to become the guest house."

Yule had married his cousin Annie Henrietta, oldest daughter of his uncle Andrew Yule of Calcutta. They had one child, Gladys. He died only three years after the construction of the house, and "lies buried in an admirably designed carved stone tomb, covered overhead by a stone and wood canopy, enclosed by an ornate iron fence inside a small wooded park, the whole being encircled by another iron fence." The Mausolea and Monuments Trust says that the sculpture itself is a draped chair with inscription from Kipling's Jungle Book and a box tomb showing his Indidan jute mills and plantations.

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