The site is designated as Metropolitan Green Belt, lies within a conservation area, and is also included at Grade II within the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

[3] Trent Park dates back to the fourteenth century when it was a part of Enfield Chase, one of Henry IV's hunting grounds.

In 1777 George III leased the site to Sir Richard Jebb, his favourite doctor, as a reward for saving the life of the King's younger brother, the then Duke of Gloucester.

Sir Philip Sassoon inherited the estate in 1912 upon his father's death[7] and went on to entertain many notable guests at Trent Park, including Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill.

[9] It became one of the houses of the age, "a dream of another world – the white-coated footmen serving endless courses of rich but delicious food, the Duke of York coming in from golf... Winston Churchill arguing over the teacups with George Bernard Shaw, Lord Balfour dozing in an armchair, Rex Whistler absorbed in his painting... while Philip himself flitted from group to group, an alert, watchful, influential but unobtrusive stage director – all set against a background of mingled luxury, simplicity and informality, brilliantly contrived..."[10] The atmosphere, as Clive Aslet has suggested, represented a complete about-face from Sassoon's earlier extravagance at Port Lympne to what Aslet called "an appreciation of English reserve.

[15] An example of the intelligence gained from Trent Park is the existence and location of the German rocket development at Peenemünde Army Research Center, when General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma discussed what he had seen there.

Intelligence was also gained on war crimes, political views, and the resistance in Germany that led to the 20 July plot against Hitler.

More than 1,300 protocols were written by the time the war ended; a selection of these was published in English in 2007 under the title Tapping Hitler's Generals.

)[18]The transcripts from Trent Park are also included in the 2011 book Soldaten – On Fighting, Killing, and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs by historian Sönke Neitzel and social psychologist Harald Welzer.

In its review of the book, Der Spiegel reports: Many Wehrmacht soldiers became witnesses to the Holocaust because they happened to be present or were invited to take part in a mass shooting.

The fact that the people involved did not try to keep their activities a secret demonstrates how much the perpetrators took for granted the "mass shootings of Jews", as one of the POWs in Trent Park called it.

During the period as a college, famous alumni included Mike Figgis ( film director), David Hepworth (writer and broadcaster) and Christopher Rogers (master brewer).

In 1997–8 SSLT built a clubhouse and two artificial grass pitches on the site, which was opened in March 1998 as Southgate Hockey Centre.

Some of the heritage buildings were to be re-purposed into luxury apartments; the plan included a museum on the two lower floors of the mansion, expected to open in 2020.

Landscape restoration on the North Lawn and on the south side of the lake was under way in 2019; a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) was being installed in Trent Park.

Woburn Cottage was to be demolished, with the new building to house a gym; an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts were to be added.

[29] For some years, country park included publicly accessible countryside, farmland, a golf course and an equestrian centre.

Features of the original landscaping that can still be seen include an impressive avenue of lime trees, an obelisk, ornamental lakes and a water garden.

A survey of the area conducted between 1956 and 1958 attributes the site as the seat of habitation of Geoffrey de Mandeville during the reign of William the Conqueror.

[35] Sir Philip Sassoon conducted excavations in the 1920s and was reported to have found oak beams which formed the basis of a drawbridge, Roman shoes and daggers as well as mosaic tiles depicting a knight.