Pinner Hill History

A Brief History of Pinner Hill

The bowl of Middlesex, overlooked by Pinner Hill, was originally mentioned in the Domesday Book as “a park of wild beasts of the forest”. Although there are few wild beasts left today, in 1820, the owner of the mansion (Pinner Hill House) which is now the Club House of Pinner Hill Golf Club, recorded that he “lived on the borders of the great wood … with no neighbours within a mile save of doubtful character". So the family blunderbuss was fired at night about once a fortnight to announce that the household was armed.

Even by 1925, Miss Lejeune, who purchased one of the first plots of land at the foot of the Hill, reported that she felt she was living “in the heart of the country” and how the new community began making gardens out of the rough, open meadow land around them, with support and advice from the groundskeeper of the mansion on Pinner Hill.

It was the Griggs brothers who were originally responsible for developing the Hill, acquiring Pinner Hill House and the surrounding land in 1919. The country house they purchased was a mishmash of architectural styles. The house as it stands today was built in 1780s, added to at the beginning of 19^th Century and in 1860s was reconstructed in the fashionable Gothic style of the day, with the old colonnaded Georgian windows altered and hidden by the Victorian Wing.

The Griggs were keen golfers, so they turned Pinner Hill House and the surrounding land into a golf course and decided to sell plots for housing development further down the Hill. These plots were sold as half or single acres, with potential buyers visiting Griggs’ office, selecting their preferred architectural design, purchasing the plot and, in the main, contracting Griggs building company to construct the house.

The Estate developed and, whilst there are many stories to be told, there are a number of houses with a particularly interesting history, and a couple which were built outside of the Griggs’ model. Mr Shadbolt, a prominent architect of his day, specialised in building houses in a Tudor or Arts and Crafts style and was, in a sense, a man ahead of his time, as his houses were made from recycled materials from Tudor houses or barns. In 1926, he built Pond Cottage for the wealthy songwriter D’Auvergne Barnard and Monks Rest, with materials salvaged from an old Friar House. Monks’ Rest was actually exhibited at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1924 where over 100,000 people passed through its oak doors including King George V.

But the house on the Hill with perhaps the most controversial history is Sans Souci. Built for Von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador at the outbreak of the Second World War, Ribbentrop used his own architect from Berlin and German building materials. The house was named after the palace at Potsdam in southwest Berlin and has always been shrouded in rumour; with theories about it being a Nazi observation centre due to its proximity to Northolt, a party house for German officers and that the staircase was engraved with swastikas. However, it is known that Goering’s sister occupied the house for a time when Ribbentrop returned to Germany.



As for the Second World War, whilst Pinner Hill was far enough outside of London to miss the full horror of bombing, one night a bomb did leave a crater, which now exists as a bunker near the eighth green. At this time, the Hill was important in homing WAAF (Women’s Airforce personnel) in Nissan huts, plus RAF used the Club House for recreation and several of the golf holes were cultivated to produce corn and other crops to combat food shortages. 

But, moving on to today, from the top of the Hill, there is a stunning view of the London skyline, all the way to Canary Wharf and the famous City skyscrapers, the Millennium Wheel at Westminster and closer to Pinner, the Wembley Stadium arch and the church spire atop Harrow on the Hill. 

The bowl of Middlesex is more densely illuminated than ever before, but Pinner Hill remains something of an oasis of calm on the fringe of a more fraught urban environment below.