Restored Trent Park ("House of Secrets") opening 21st July

Opening 21 July 2026, Trent Park House of Secrets in London is a new museum which will reveal the incredible story of the WWII ‘Secret Listeners’ - a story which has remained hidden for over 70 years.

The story of Trent Park began in 1779 when George III presented the royal doctor Sir Richard Jebb with a 99-year lease on 250 acres of the royal estate at Enfield. The gift was in recognition of his life-saving treatment of his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, in Trento, Italy. Jebb named his property Trent to memorialise the event.

After Jebb's death it passed through several hands before being purchased in 1833 by David Bevan, a local Quaker who was a successful banker. (Nearby is Grovelands, now the Priory clinic, built by Quaker Walker Gray, the brother of Edward Gray, he of Harringay House fame,)

Trent Park passed to Bevan's son and his grandson, Francis, who extended and rebuilt the house in the 1890s in the Victorian style. Eventually, in 1909 the lease was sold to Sir Edward Sassoon. Sir Edward was the head of a Jewish merchant dynasty who had moved to London in the 1870s. He only enjoyed the property for a few years, dying in 1912 and leaving Trent Park, several other houses and a large fortune to his son Philip.

Through the 1930, Trent Park was the backdrop to Sir Philip’s socialite, political and arts world. As one of the last great English country houses, it captured the zeitgeist of the 1920s and 1930s. Sassoon transformed Trent Park into the quintessential country home and the perfect venue for entertaining; regular guests included notable figures such as King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, Charlie Chaplin, Rex Whistler, TE Lawrence (of Arabia), Sir Winston Churchill, the Queen Mother, King George VI and the young Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.

Following Sassoon’s death in 1939, th house began a new chapter as a wartime surveillance centre. It was home to the ‘Secret Listeners’ – intelligence operators hidden in the basement – whose eavesdropping of senior German prisoners led to some of the most important intelligence breakthroughs of WWII.

Trent Park House, Enfield is today seen as being of national and international significance on a level with Bletchley Park.

You can access Trent Park on the Piccadilly Line to Oakwood Station where ticket holders can use a free shuttle to the house or take a 20 minute walk. 

Learn more at: trentparkhouse.org.uk