Beechwood Park, Flamstead

Flamstead has an excellent Free School, endowed by the late Sir John S. Sebright, with £57 per annum; there are other Charities to the amount of £90 per annum, and twenty Almshouses for poor widows, founded in 1669 by Thomas Saunders, Esq., of Beechwood. ...

About one mile from the Village is BEECHWOOD PARK, celebrated for its fine beech trees. The Park is extensive and well-wooded, and the Mansion, which is the residence of Sir J. G. Saunders Sebright, Bart., contains some handsome apartments, in which are a number of fine old family pictures. There was originally here a Benedictine monastery, called St. Giles-in-the-Wood, which at the Dissolution was granted to Sir Richard Page, from whom it descended to the Skipworth and Saunders families, and then, by marriage, to an ancestor of the present proprietor. Chauncy has preserved a tradition that Edward VI. was sent to the house of Sir Richard Page when an infant, for the preservation of his health.

Guide to Hertfordshire 1880