Luton Hoo

Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf and Spa
South west elevation
General information
Location	Luton, United Kingdom
Opening	1 October 2007
Owner	Elite Hotels
Management	Elite Hotels
Design and construction
Architect	Robert Adam
Other information
Number of rooms	228
Website
http://www.lutonhoo.co.uk/
Listed Building – Grade I
Designated	29 April 1952
Reference no.	1321301

Luton Hoo is an English country house and estate between the towns of Luton, Bedfordshire and Harpenden, Hertfordshire. Most of the estate lies within the civil parish of Hyde, Bedfordshire. The unusual name "Hoo" is a Saxon word meaning the spur of a hill, and is more commonly associated with East Anglia.

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 Lord Thomas Hoo in 1455. The manor passed through many notable Someries' families through the centuries, from the family de Hoo, to the family Rotherham, to the family Napier. Successive houses on the site seem to have changed hands several times until in 1762 the then owner, Francis Hearne (MP for Bedford), sold the estate for £94,700 to John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. Following an unhappy period as Prime Minister from 1762 to 1763, Bute decided to concentrate his energies on his Bedfordshire estate at Luton Hoo.

The present house was built for the 3rd Earl of Bute by the neoclassical architect Robert Adam. Work commenced in 1767. The original plan had been for a grand and magnificent new house. However, this 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 visiting the house in 1781 is quoted as saying, "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".