Wrest Park, Luton, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.   

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The de Grey family held an estate in Silsoe from the 13th century. In the 15th century Edmund Grey was created Earl of Kent. Anthony, the 11th Earl, married an heiress, Mary, daughter of Baron Lucas of Crudwell, in 1662. From 1671 to 1702 the Earl and Countess altered the medieval and 16th-century house, laying out a formal landscape around it, largely focused on the axial canal called the Long Water, shown in Britannia Illustrata (1705-1706).

The 11th Earl was succeeded in 1702 by Henry, the 12th Earl, created Duke in 1710, who created the Great Garden around the 17th-century features, incorporating iconography relating to his Whiggish beliefs and regard for William III. He laid out the woodland garden flanking the Long Water, the formal canals enclosing it and the canals at right angles to the Long Water. He also built the Pavilion at the far end of it, as well as introducing a great variety of garden buildings and ornaments, as shown by John Rocque in two plans of 1735 and 1737.

The Duke died in 1740 and was succeeded by his granddaughter Jemima, Marchioness Grey who hardly altered the core of the garden, but employed Lancelot Brown in about 1758 to 1760 to work on the periphery of the Great Garden to soften the contours of the perimeter canals.

When the Earl de Grey, an accomplished amateur architect, inherited Wrest in 1833 he demolished the old house and built a new one in Louis XV style 200 metres to the north, laying out new formal parterres to compliment it. He rebuilt various structures in similar style, including the orangery, kitchen garden, stables and several lodges.

Following the Earl's death in 1859 Wrest ceased to be the principal residence of the family.The de Greys sold the estate at the end of World War I and between the 1920s and 1940s almost all the numerous park and avenue trees were felled. After the Second World War the house, gardens and part of the park were bought by the Ministry of Public Building and Works who now, as English Heritage, lease the site to Silsoe Research Institute, an agricultural research establishment.