Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire
| Stoke Park Country Club, Spa and Hotel | |
|---|---|
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| General information | |
| Location | Park Road, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, SL2 4PG |
| Opening | 1908 |
| Owner | International Group (since 1987) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | James Wyatt, 1788 |
| Developer | John Penn ("the American"), Lancelot "Capability" Brown, Humphry Repton and Nick "Pa" Lane Jackson |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 49 bedrooms and suites |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
Stoke Park is a private sporting and leisure estate in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The Mansion building (designed by James Wyatt in 1788) is located in the middle of 300 acres (1.2 km2) of parkland, lakes, gardens and monuments. In 1908, it became the first Country Club and Hotel in the UK. In 2013, it was awarded 5 Red AA Stars, the highest accolade for service and facilities for hotels, by The Automobile Association.
Stoke Park has served as the filming location for several major films, including James Bond's Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies, Bridget Jones's Diary and Layer Cake. It also hosts the annual Boodles Tennis Championships as a warm-up to Wimbledon, a week prior to the Championships.
In June 2014, Stoke Park hosted an outdoor charity concert for SportsAid (patron: the Duchess of Cambridge). Sir Elton John sang to 5,000 people and raised £825,000.
The Stoke Park Estate's history dates back to the time of the Domesday Book. From 1066, the estate was inherited in a direct line of descent for 515 years until it had to be sold to the Crown in 1581 to pay the outstanding debts of Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, whose father Francis, the Commander in Chief of Henry VIII’s army, had rebuilt the Manor House (part of which can still be seen today) in 1555.
John Penn (1760–1834), a soldier, scholar and poet, is responsible for most of what can be seen at the estate today. He used a large proportion of the £130,000 the new United States government paid for his family's 26-million acre (110,000 km²) plot in Pennsylvania.
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Wikipedia