Domesday
The landholding defined as the Manor of Tring is first mentioned in the Domesday Book, where it is referred to as ‘Treunge’. In 1066 it was seized from Engelric, a priest, and handed over to Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, an ally of William the Conqueror. It passed down to the Count's granddaughter Maud, or Matilda. She married Stephen of Blois, a grandson of the Conqueror, who later became King Stephen of England.
In 1148 King Stephen and Queen Matilda founded the Abbey of St Saviour at Faversham in Kent and the Manor of Tring was presented to the abbot. It was later exchanged for other properties with the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1530s, the manor was confiscated and became Crown property, let to private individuals up to the reign of Charles I. By 1645 the manor had been transferred to his Queen, Henrietta Maria, only for it to be confiscated by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War.
It is not known whether there was a manor house up to that time. The present house might perhaps occupy the site of an earlier one.
Henry Guy
After the monarchy was re-established in 1660, Charles II gave the Manor of Tring to his Groom of the Bedchamber, Henry Guy, in 1680. Guy became Secretary to the Treasury and it was widely believed that he used this position to subsidise the construction of a manor house to the design of Sir Christopher Wren. Built in 1682, the design of the house is thought to reflect Guy’s aspirations that the practice of Royal progress around the country would be resumed. Subsequently, Guy was sent to the Tower of London on account of his misappropriation of Treasury funds. William and Mary acceded to the throne in 1688 and it is known that the King visited Tring Park in 1690.
It was long maintained that the house was somehow connected with King Charles’s mistress, the actress Nell Gwyn, but nothing has ever been found that might substantiate that. Nevertheless, the avenue of lime trees north of the Mansion is still known as the Nell Gwyn Avenue. It is said that Guy created gardens of ‘unusual form and beauty’.
Sir William Gore
Tring Park was sold in 1705 to Sir William Gore, Lord Mayor of London during the reign of Queen Anne. After only two years at Tring Sir William died (see his monument in the Parish Church) and his son William inherited the estate. He was responsible for diverting the Aylesbury to Berkhamsted road from its existing course through the park – which took it straight past the front door of the Mansion – to follow a route further north, joining the course of what is now Tring High Street.
William Gore also had much landscaping work carried out in the park by Charles Bridgeman, creating a ‘forest garden’ with carriage drives through the woods set out on a patte de l’oie (goose foot) pattern and an obelisk and summer house designed by James Gibbs. Formal parterres, a canal and fountains are known to have existed but were swept away long ago. The property passed through two further generations of the Gore family.
At some point the interior of the house was extensively remodelled along the south range of reception rooms with the exception of the library, which retained its seventeenth century ceiling. The drawing room and sitting rooms were given moulded and carved plaster ceilings in the rococo style, complete with cherubs and garlands. This may have been carried out in the Gores’ time, or that of Sir Drummond Smith, a London banker, who purchased the estate in 1786. He lived there for thirty years, and died in 1816 without an heir.
William Kay
In 1820 the estate was sold to William Kay, a textile magnate from Cumberland, for the sum of £90,000. Four years later, Kay built a silk-throwing mill in Brook Street, providing employment for over six hundred people, many of them orphan children. William Kay died in 1838 and his younger son was set to inherit, but being under age, he was made a ward of the Court of Chancery, and died in 1865.
The Kays never lived in the Mansion and throughout that period it was let to others, including Drummond Smith’s niece Augusta and her artistic daughters Fanny and Charlotte, a banker named Thomson Hankey and a silk manufacturer, Joseph Grout.
The Rothschilds
When the Court decided to sell in 1872, Baron Lionel de Rothschild bought Tring Park and its 3,643 acres, which also included the manors of Miswell, Hastoe, Dunsley and Wilstone, for £230,000 – about £8,000,000 today. Lionel was the first-ever Jewish Member of Parliament, first elected in 1847 but unable to take his seat in the Commons until legislation which discriminated against Jews was finally removed, eleven years later.
Lionel intended the property for his son, Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild. The location was very convenient since he had been Member of Parliament for Aylesbury since 1865 and the family had acquired a number of other estates in the area. In 1873 architect George Devey and builder George Myers were commissioned to carry out alterations.
In 1874 Nathaniel and Emma Rothschild moved to Tring with their son Walter, aged six; their daughter Evelina and second son Charles were both born at Tring. The family divided their time between Tring Park and their London home at 148 Piccadilly.
Sir Nathaniel was made Lord Rothschild of Tring in 1885, surpassing his father’s achievement by becoming the first Jewish individual raised to the House of Lords. Originally a Liberal, he gravitated to the Unionist cause.
From the late 1880s Lord Rothschild began making significant structural alterations to the house under architect William Rogers, a partner in the building company William Cubitt and Co. The roof was lifted and a full-height top floor inserted with a slate Mansard roof complete with French-style finials and a ten-foot gilded weathervane. The house was refaced in red brick with white ashlar dressing.
Other alterations included the remodelling of the entrance (east) front where the portico, which had originally faced onto the road through the park, was demolished and a new porte-cochère was built on the north front. The east front was rebuilt with a shallow bow window rising through all three floors and the former entrance hall enclosed by large glass doors at the first set of columns to form the Morning Room. Originally it had a double-height ceiling but was given a massive barrel-vault in order to reduce the visible height.
Lord Rothschild continued to make alterations to Tring Park, including the controversial rebuilding of London Lodge in 1895 when two pavilions, believed to be part of Wren’s original design and standing on either side of the original main road, were demolished. Despite local protests, the buildings were replaced with a single cottage designed by Tring architect William Huckvale, under whom most of the estate’s properties in and around Tring were rebuilt. The cupola from one of these pavilions was removed and mounted on the stable block designed by James Gibbs. The lodge still stands, visible from London Road.
By the time Walter Rothschild became a young man, it was clear that he had no interest in the family’s banking business. His passion was zoology and it was to this that he devoted his life’s work. A museum was built in the grounds in 1889 as a twenty-first birthday present, to house his massive collection of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and insects. Since 1892 the museum has been open to the public.
Walter's father lost patience with his son's all-consuming interest in zoology and after a particularly serious disagreement in 1908 – principally with regard to Walter’s inability to control his finances – he disinherited him. Whilst the title would pass to Walter by right, the house and estate were all left to his younger brother, Charles.
Although disinherited, Walter had been by no means cut off: his father had given him a capital sum of a million pounds. This enabled him to mount overseas expeditions to locate new and exotic specimens and purchase existing collections wholesale. New wings – the Library, Bird Wings and the Lepidoptera Hall – were added between 1908 and 1913 in order to accommodate the huge numbers of specimens amassed by Walter and collectors employed on his behalf. Displays included two-and-a-half million butterflies set under glass, over three hundred thousand bird skins and copious specimens of mammals and reptiles. These remain to this day supreme examples of Victorian taxidermy.
As a result of Walter’s zoological pursuits, Tring Park housed not only his well-known zebras, which he trained to harness, but also emus, rheas, cassowaries and kangaroos which roamed wild in the parklands. In 1904 he acquired some edible dormice, Glis glis, which escaped and have caused mayhem over a large area of countryside ever since.
On Nathaniel’s death in 1915, Walter assumed the title of 2nd Lord Rothschild. Charles, who had inherited the estate, was a highly competent banker, but is better remembered as a pioneering conservationist who founded the movement which was to evolve into the Wildlife Trusts. Tragically, he took his own life in 1923.
Lady Rothschild sold her dower house, Champneys, two miles away near Wigginton, and Walter lived with his mother for the rest of her life. After more than sixty years in Tring, Lady Rothschild died peacefully on 8 January 1935 aged 91. Under the terms of his brother’s will, Walter was obliged to move out of Tring Park and the house and estate passed to his nephew Victor.
Just two years later, on 27 August 1937, the 2nd Lord Rothschild died in his sleep, and the following year Victor – now the 3rd Lord – handed over the museum and its collections to the British Museum, as Walter had negotiated. His private museum thus became part of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.
In October 1938 the estate was broken up and sold piecemeal at auction. It consisted of eleven farms, numerous smallholdings, allotments, cottages and shops in Tring, Aston Clinton, Buckland, Drayton Beauchamp, Cholesbury, Wigginton, Marsworth and Long Marston. The Mansion, the park and various key properties were retained.
World War II
During World War II the house was used by the bank, N. M. Rothschild & Sons, as a repository for the safe-keeping of documents and valuables away from London. The Tring Home Guard also used the park grounds for exercises and training, along with other military units. Victor Rothschild lived for a time in the lodge now known as Ranger’s Cottage.
Arts Educational School
After the end of the war, the bank had no further use for the house and the new Lord Rothschild had no desire to to live there. It too was offered to the British Museum, but declined. In 1945, through the Prudential Assurance Company, the mansion was leased to and subsequently purchased by the Cone-Ripman School which, in turn, became the Arts Educational School, Tring Park. Later re-named Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, it has many famous actors, dancers and musicians among its alumni.
The family donated the house’s lily pond and immediate area to the townspeople of Tring for the creation of the Memorial Garden, commemorating those who took part in World War II.
Tring Park today
While ‘Tring Park’ remains its formal name, the house has long been known by people in Tring as ‘The Mansion’, whereas the term ‘Tring Park’ is usually taken to refer to the open space.
The Hon. Jacob Rothschild became the owner of the park in 1957 and briefly intended to live there. Footings for a house were dug, but the project went no further. In 1975 the A41 Tring Bypass was opened, splitting the parklands in two. In 1989 Mr Rothschild sold the portion south of the A41 to become a golf course and hotel. This was strenuously resisted; the land was then purchased by Dacorum Borough Council for its ecological and recreational importance and let on a long lease to the Woodland Trust. The land north of the road was retained by Jacob, who became 4th Lord in 1990. He died in 2024.
