Tempsford Hall is a country house in

Tempsford Tempsford is a village and civil parish in the Central Bedfordshire district of the county of Bedfordshire, England, about east north-east of the county town of Bedford. The village is split by the A1 Great North Road and is located just befo ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

History

The original hall was built in 1769 for Sir Gillies Payne; it remained in the Payne family until 1824 when it was sold to Colonel William Stuart. Following a fire in November 1898 the house was rebuilt and completed in 1903. In 1933 Millicent the last of the Stuart family died and the hall and estate passed to a second cousin Kathleen Ann Pole Wynne, who had been born a member of the Stuart family. In 1938 the Hall was leased by Dr Henry Ward Hales who used it as a clinic. He later purchased the freehold in 1946. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

it was used by the

Special Operations Executive The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...

as an agent reception and pre-flight preparation centre. In 1964 Hales sold it to the

Kier Group Kier Group plc is a British construction, services and property group active in building and civil engineering, support services, and the Private Finance Initiative. Founded in 1928 in Stoke-on-Trent it initially specialised in concrete enginee ...

construction business. In October 2019, financially troubled Kier announced it was selling its Tempsford Hall headquarters to raise cash from its property assets, and head office functions were transferred to Kier's Manchester office in April 2020.

References

{{coord, 52.1675, -0.2980, region:GB-CBF_type:landmark, display=title Country houses in Bedfordshire