This blog will be a strange one as it's the first that I have done on a hotel. But from looking up the Beaumont Estate online there appears to be a lot of history here before it became a hotel. The estate is on the outskirts of Windsor and not that far away from Staines in London. Just down the road from the estate is Runnymede and Windsor Castle (but more on these later). This trip was a birthday surprise from Jordan, I had no idea where we were going or what to expect. I had only planned for a trip to the Harry Potter Studios on the way. This might be a small little blog, but I wanted to know more about the history of the Estate and thought I would share what I found.
The estate now consists of 40 acres of parkland, a 18th century Chapel, an executive wing, known as The White House, 414 bedrooms and 75 rooms that can be used for conferences, training, weddings and events. There is also a gym, swimming pool, outside patio area, a war memorial, restaurant and bar.
The estate was originally called Remenham and was owned by Hugo de Remenham up until the end of the 14th century. It then fell into the hands of the Tyle family, then to John Morley, Francis Kibblewhite, William Christmas and then to Henry Thynne. Henry called in influential architect James Gibbs to redesign the house in 1705, it was then named Bowman's Lodge. It was handed down to Thomas Tynne in 1714 but by the mid 18th century it was in the hands of Sophia, Duchess of Kent. In 1715, the Duke of Roxburghe brought the estate for his son, the Marquis of Beaumont, who renamed it Beaumont Lodge.
In 1786, Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India acquired the estate at the cost of £12,000. Three years later the estate was sold to Henry Griffith, he pulled down the Beaumont Lodge buildings and had Henry Emlyn rebuild the house as a nine-bay mansion in 1790. Not long after in 1805, the estate was brought for £14,000 by Viscount Ashbrook, who was a friend of George IV. When Ashbrook died in 1847, his widow carried on living in the house till 1854, when it was sold to the Society of Jesus as a training college. For the next seven years it housed Jesuit novices but then in October 1861 it became a Catholic boarding school for boys. It was named St, Stanislaus College, Beaumont, or Catholic Eton.
Queen Victoria is known to have visited the estate three times while it was a school. In 1870 the Chapel was built by Joseph Hansom. It was then painted by William Romaine-Walker in 1902. The school flourished until 1967, when the order moved to Stoneyhurst in Lancashire. In the grounds there is a war memorial that is for the boys that attended the school, but sadly lost their lives during World War I and II. In 1961, Queen Elizabeth II planted a tree nearby to commemorate the centenary of the college.
Once the school closed the estate was purchased by the computer company ICL, who used it as a training centre. Hayley Conference Centres brought the estate in 2003, they developed the site and up scaled the venues. They left the White House and the Chapel untouched, but in 2007 they acquired the house to. June 2008 saw a massive renovation mission to the House and Chapel that would cost £8.1 million and only took 5 months to complete.
This estate seems to be place of a few firsts, it was the first to have an indoor heated swimming pool as well as the place the first motor car was driven to 1885. Other notes are that the nephew of designer Coco Chanel attended the school, its believed that the school blazer he wore was the inspiration for the 1924 Chanel Suit. The stain glass window in the church is also said to be the inspiration for the novel "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh.
This was a lovely place to stay and I feel that I was a bit spoilt. Our room was like an apartment with no kitchen and the views out the window on the main lawn was fantastic. For anyone that wants to stay in that area I would suggest this hotel, although I have no idea what the cost was as I was not allowed to look it up. With it being a short distance from Windsor and Runnymede it's in an ideal place and I hope one day might be about to go back and do a bit more exploring especially now that it holds some significance to me.
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