The new museum will explore the hidden wartime role of Trent Park House.
London is no stranger to grand historic homes, but few come with a backstory as layered as Trent Park House. This summer, the stately home in Enfield will reopen as Trent Park House of Secrets, a new museum dedicated to the site’s remarkable double life as both a glamorous social address and a key centre of British wartime intelligence. The exact opening date has not yet been confirmed, but the museum is expected to welcome the public in summer 2026.
Set within Trent Country Park, the restored house will tell the story of the WWII Secret Listeners, a team of intelligence operatives who worked in hidden basement rooms beneath the mansion. From there, they monitored conversations between captured German officers who had no idea the house had been fitted with concealed bugging devices. According to the museum, microphones were hidden in everything from light fittings and skirting boards to plant pots, window ledges, and even the billiard table.
The operation was far more than a curious footnote in London history. Trent Park House is a site of national and international importance. Between 1940 and 1945, secret listeners documented thousands of conversations, with the museum noting that around 3,000 prisoner-of-war conversations were bugged there. It also states that 59 German generals were held at Trent Park, while about 100 German refugees serving in the British Army’s Pioneer Corps were recruited as listeners, many of them Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution.
Before its wartime chapter, Trent Park House was the home of Sir Philip Sassoon, the politician, collector and celebrated host who transformed it into an elegant country retreat during the 1920s and 1930s. His guest list included Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, and members of the Royal Family, reinforcing the house’s place in Britain’s social and political history. Visitors to the new museum will be able to walk through restored and furnished rooms that reflect this earlier era, and for the first time since 1939, furnishings and artworks associated with Sassoon are set to return to their original settings.
That dual identity is what makes House of Secrets especially compelling. The museum is due to open at Trent Park House in Enfield, north London, in summer 2026. More information, including ticketing and the official opening date, is expected to be announced via the museum’s official channels.
Where: House of Secrets, Trent Park House, Snakes Lane, Enfield, EN4 0PS
Contact: https://trentparkhouse.org.uk