Ashridge Estate is a 5,000 acres area of the Chilterns Hills north of Berkhamsted that has been managed by the National Trust since 1926. The estate has beech and oak woodlands, commons and chalk downlands; right in the centre is Ashridge House.
The House was a former priory founded in 1283. Spared from the Dissolution, Henry VIII bequeathed the estate to his daughter Elizabeth, who lived here as a young girl for eight years. After her death in 1603 Thomas Egerton bought the estate and his son, John Egerton, was created the 1st Earl of Bridgewater in 1617.
In 1808 the family's successful canal-building enterprises led the 7th Earl to commission James Wyatt to rebuild and extend Ashridge in the fashionable Gothic Revival style. Humphry Repton laid out the gardens. In 1853 the estate passed to Lord Brownlow, who extended it. The death of the 3rd Earl Brownlow, a Conservative politician, in 1921 caused its break up and sale. In 1929 it became the Bonar Law College operating as an educational trust. In World War II Ashridge became a wing of the Charing Cross Road Hospital and treated 500 wounded after the evacuation of Dunkirk. In 2014 the House was home to Ashridge Business School, founded in 1959.
Most of the photographs were taken in 2014.