First recorded as Edintone in the Domesday Book of 1086, its name means Eadda's Estate.

The former manor house was used twice during the English Civil War as the national headquarters of the Parliamentarian forces.

During the Second World War from 1940 to 1945 Addington House was the residence or safe-house of the Moravec, Strankmüller and Tauer families of the Czechoslovak Military Intelligence staff, who had their headquarters in London.

It was Colonel František Moravec who planned the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (although this was masterminded in London not at Addington).

The President of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš, lived at The Abbey in nearby Aston Abbotts.