Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf & Spa

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www.lutonhoo.co.uk/

Luton Hoo straddles the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire borders between the towns of Harpenden and Luton. The unusual name "Hoo" is a Saxon word meaning the spur of a hill, and is more commonly associated with East Anglia.

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".

Luton Hoo was one of the largest houses for which Adam was wholly responsible. While Adam was working on the mansion the landscape gardener Capability Brown was enlarging and redesigning the park; formerly approximately 300 acres (1.2 km²) it was now enlarged to 1,200 acres (4.9 km²). Brown dammed the River Lea to form two lakes, one of which is 60 acres (240,000 m²) in size. In the early 20th century, part of the park overlooked by the south-west facade mansion was transformed into formal gardens.

Part of the Luton Hoo Estate--notably the mansion house--has been converted into a luxury hotel called Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf, and Spa, which opened its doors on 1 October 2007. It has 144 bedrooms and suites. Part of the restoration project involved rebuilding the second floor of the mansion, which was included in the plans drawn up by the original architects. The owners, Elite Hotels, claim that furnishings have been selected to restore the house to its former glory.

Luton Hoo has appeared in many films including Never Say Never Again, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Secret Garden, The World Is Not Enough, Quills and in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. It was used as the interior for Victor Ziegler's (Sydney Pollack) New York City mansion, where it was ornately decorated using hundreds of Christmas lights.