Robert How built the first property within the park, called Bramingham Shott, which is the current home to the museum.

[1] In the early 1870s the estate was taken over by local solicitor, Frank Chapman-Scargill, he rebuilt much of the earlier house in 1879 for a total cost of £10,000.

Scargill left Luton in 1893 and the house and property was acquired by lime burner Benjamin John Harfield Forder, who renamed the estate Wardown, after the hill (War Down) behind his family home at Buriton, Hampshire.

It was nearly sold to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for £750,000[9] but was export-stopped in October 2005 by culture minister, David Lammy, based on a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, run by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

Instead it was bought by Luton Museums Service for 300 times its normal annual acquisitions budget to equal the offer of the Metropolitan.