Pennyhill Park Hotel
| Pennyhill Park Hotel | |
|---|---|
 |
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| General information | |
| Location | London Road, Bagshot, Surrey, GU19 5EU |
| Opening | 1981 |
| Owner | Exclusive Hotels and Venues |
| Design and construction | |
| Developer | James Hodges |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 123 |
| Number of restaurants | 3 |
Pennyhill Park Hotel is a 19th-century country house hotel and spa in Bagshot, Surrey in the south east of England.
The first historical reference to Pennyhill Park's land relates to when the site was used as a warning beacon point in the national defence against the Spanish Armada in 1588. The construction of the country house itself was started in 1849 by James Hodges, an accomplished civil engineer who would later manage the construction of Montreal's Victoria Bridge, the longest bridge in the world at the time. The buildings were improved in the 1880s to add in an Orangery, and again in 1903 with Bath stonework. In 1935, then-owner Colin Goldsworthy Heywood developed the terracing of its formal gardens after being impressed by similar work at the Château de Villandry in France. The British government used Pennyhill Park's grounds and its accommodation buildings as lodging for military personnel in World War I (the land is five miles (8 km) from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst). This was mainly for commissioned officers. The country house opened its doors as a hotel in 1972.
James Hodges (1814-1879) was a civil engineer and built Pennyhill in about 1849. He was born in 1814 in Queenborough, Kent. At an early age he became an apprentice in the building industry and soon turned to railway construction. He participated in ten important projects and became works manager of the South-Eastern Railway Company. After that, as Sir Samuel Morton Peto’s agent, he built suspension bridges at Norwich, Needham, and Somerleyton, accepted a post as engineer, and then undertook the construction of 50 miles of track for the Great Northern Railway.
In 1840 he married Louisa Humphrey (1814-1862) who was the daughter of Thomas Humphrey a coach builder from Ashford, Kent. The couple had no children. James’s brother John Oliver Hodges who was also a civil engineer married Louisa’s sister Harriet Humphrey in 1848 and it seems that these two families had a close association.
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