Convene at Moggerhanger
Leadership gatherings, residential retreats, lectures and partnership events, in the house where a banking family and their friends planned the end of the slave trade. Private, discreet, and an hour or so from London.
Why here
Plenty of houses can seat a board. Very few can say that the people who ate at this table went on to change the law of the land, and then spent the rest of their lives building the schools, missions and societies that followed. The Thorntons were cousins of Wilberforce and members of the Clapham Sect. That is the inheritance we hand to every group that gathers here.
The park is public; the house is not. Members and guests have their own spaces, their own entrance and a security arrangement that stays out of sight. Press and guest lists are handled with discretion.
Two miles from the A1 at Sandy, whose station is an hour or so from King's Cross. Cambridge and Oxford sit either side; East West Rail will bring both closer still. Luton and Stansted are within easy reach.
The principal rooms, bedrooms upstairs, a chapel, the walled garden, a lawn for a marquee and more than seventy acres to walk. Residential groups can take the house entire.
Formats
Choose a shape and we will build the rest around it. Capacities, rates and sample programmes on request.
A closed conversation among people who hold real responsibility: founders, church leaders, public servants, trustees. Chatham House by default. We provide a chair, a cook, a walk at lunchtime and no slides.
Exclusive use of Park House and its bedrooms for a leadership team, a fellowship or a family foundation. Morning prayer in the chapel if you want it, long evenings at the table, and the park to yourselves after the gates close.
An evening lecture or a day-long symposium: biblical truth in the context of current affairs, history read for the present, economics with a conscience. Recorded for the academy if you wish, or kept in the room if you don't.
Faith-based networks, leadership communities and mission agencies that gather once or twice a year and want somewhere that feels like theirs. We co-host rather than hire out: the programme is built together and the house learns your rhythm.
Sometimes a team simply needs a day away from the office. A principal room for the day, the tearoom for lunch, a guided tour of the house in the afternoon if you like, and the woods for the walking meeting.
Rooms & spaces
The house was built to entertain, persuade and house a large family and their guests. Two centuries on, it does the same for yours.
The heart of the house and of its story. A long table for the conversation that matters, with the park beyond the windows.
The largest of the principal rooms, for lectures, larger circles and receptions before supper.
Smaller, lighter and quieter: a working room for a team, a writer or a handful of trustees.
Once Mrs Thornton's boudoir, dedicated as a chapel in 2004 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Morning prayer, a quiet hour, a service to close a retreat.
En-suite rooms across the upper floors, from the master suite to the rooms under the roof. Residential groups take them all.
The cantilevered stone stair with its iron balustrade: the arrival, the drinks, the photograph.
Room for a marquee and a summer symposium, with Repton's long view south over the fields.
Sessions among the iris in June; supper in the orchard at the end of a long day.
Eco-lodges in the park and container studios in the stable yard, for residential cohorts and for recording what is said. See the plan.
How we host
What made the Thorntons' circle extraordinary was not only what it achieved but how. Four habits run through everything we host.
Between 1756 and 1840 British philanthropy grew from small committees into a global enterprise. The network at its heart passed through this house.
Interlocking circles, mercantile, political, creative, intellectual and kingdom-minded, meeting in the same rooms.
Commercial acumen pointed at kingdom purpose. Faith and excellence reinforcing each other rather than competing.
Four generations shaped by daily practice and shared life. Character built, not declared.
From a Bedfordshire park, organisations that reached across the Commonwealth. The same from here, again.
Programmes & partners
Alongside hosting your gatherings, Moggerhanger is building its own: a lecture series on biblical truth in the context of current affairs, formation programmes for emerging leaders, and an academy and publishing arm that will carry what is said here to people who could not be in the room.
We are looking for like-minded partners to convene, host, collaborate and lead with us. If your network needs a home, start the conversation below.
Evening lectures in the Drawing Room. From 2027, the Moggerhanger Lectures: an open invitation to future reformers. Register interest.
Faith-based networks and leadership communities hosted through the year.
Residential cohorts for emerging leaders in enterprise, church and public life.
A digital academy and imprint, with reach across the Commonwealth by year three.
Practicalities
On the A603, two miles from the A1 at Sandy; follow the brown Historic House signs. Sandy station on the East Coast line. Free parking by the walled garden.
Lunches and suppers by arrangement, from the house kitchen and, as the estate grows, from the farm. The Orchard Tearoom for coffee and cake.
En-suite bedrooms in the house for residential groups; lodges and lakeside huts to follow across the park.
The ground floor and grounds are largely step-free; upper floors are reached by the historic stair. Tell us what you need and we will plan around it.
Enquire
A few lines is enough. We will come back with dates, a sense of cost and, if it helps, an invitation to walk the house before you decide.