Alistair Hardaker | Image: Rendering of Trent Park House, Photo Berkeley Homes
North London house combining restored 1930s Sassoon state rooms with basement wartime listening stations opens to public with National Lottery-funded education programme.
Trent Park House in Enfield will open to the public as a museum in Summer 2026, presenting contrasting interpretations of the building’s use as an interwar country house and Second World War intelligence centre.
The ground floor state rooms have been restored to their 1930s appearance when the house was the residence of Sir Philip Sassoon, whilst basement areas will show the listening stations and working rooms used during wartime intelligence operations between 1939 and 1945.
During the Second World War, German officers including 59 generals were held at Trent Park. Their conversations were recorded using microphones concealed in walls, light fittings, furniture and outdoor benches. Teams working in basement rooms, many of whom were German-speaking Jewish refugees serving in the British army’s Pioneer Corps, transcribed the recordings.
The museum states that around 100 refugees were recruited as Secret Listeners and approximately 3,000 conversations were recorded, with devices able to capture up to seven minutes of conversation at a time.
Before the war, Sassoon had remodelled the Victorian structure and hosted weekend gatherings attended by political figures, members of the Royal Family, and visitors including Rex Whistler, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, T. E. Lawrence, Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire. Following Sassoon’s death in 1939, the government requisitioned the property for intelligence use.
For the first time since 1939, furnishings and artworks that belonged to Sassoon will return to the house and be displayed in their original rooms.
The museum has developed a learning and engagement programme funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, linking to the Second World War strand of the national curriculum. The programme uses original transcripts of recorded conversations.
Dr Giuseppe Albano MBE, director of Trent Park House of Secrets, said: “We are opening the house with many secrets to share, and there will be more to discover in the years ahead as the story of Trent Park continues to unfold.”
Helen Lederer, Trent Park Trustee and writer and comedian whose grandfather was a Secret Listener, said: “It means so much that this chapter of little-known history can be told through the museum. To imagine what the Secret Listeners may have felt as they listened to the captive generals upstairs is as important as it is humbling.”
