History
The earliest reference to the property is
found in the Tithe Land Registry of 1609. It was known as
Pennyhill field and thought to have been common land used as a
beacon-warning site aiding a national system, warning the arrival
of the Spanish Armada in 1588
James Hodges, a civil engineer, who had been
born in Queensborough in Kent in 1814, began to build the first
house on the site in 1849 and was completed in 1851, the year of
the Great Exhibition.
James Hodges died in 1879 and the next
occupant of Pennyhill was Louis Schott, a banker born in Frankfurt
but with British Nationalisation. He added the Orangery in 1981 –
the site of the current 45,000 sqft Spa. Louis died in 1901 and the
house was then occupied until 1922 by his nephew, Louis Floershim,
also born in Frankfurt and a naturalised British subject. He
extended the house in 1903 in neo-Tudor style using Bath stone. For
a period during the 1st World War the house reputedly served
as a ‘rest house’ for officers.
From 1922 until his death in 1933 Sir Lyndsey
Byron Peters KBE was living in the house after which the estate was
purchased by Mr Colin Goldsworthy Heywood in 1935, owner of British
Abrasives Ltd (still trading in North London today) and credit goes
to him for the terracing of the formal gardens, the inspiration of
which was derived from Chateau de Villandry in Tours. After he
died, it was sold to Mr Peter Garbut and his son Michael when it
was first opened as a hotel in 1972 and changed hands just once
more until the present company, Exclusive Hotels bought it and over
the years transformed it into a world class five red-star
hotel.