Langtons Park
Langtons Registary Office The House is set in beautiful grounds overlooking a lake and makes an ideal setting for weddings. Langtons has three marriage rooms including the great hall which can double up as your reception venue, it has been decorated throughout to be sympathetic to the Georgian period. Langtons House is now a licensed premise for weddings and civil partnership ceremonies, and can accommodate up to 100 guests for ceremonies in the Hall. This site contains all the details needed to book your wedding or Civil Partnership at Langtons including wedding services, contact details, price lists and directions.
Langtons History The house, built on the foundations of an older house in the early 18th century, stands in a picturesque landscaped garden with a lake, orangery, bath house and a gazebo, all dating from the end of the 18th century, when Hornchurch was a rural settlement. The house was purchased in 1797 by John Massu, whose family, originally Huguenot refugees, had become wealthy silk merchants in the City of London. He set about modernizing Langtons, to which he added the two-storey wings that project on the south front.
The grounds were and landscaped according to plans of Humphrey Repton. He created the serpentine pond with the bathhouse and gazebo and planted horse chestnuts to mask or frame the mid-18th century stables, to which he added an octagonal cupola. A shrubbery walk with serpentining paths was planted east of the house and a balancing shrubbery belt to the west are probably part of Repton's plan; the Cedar of Lebanon was planted as a central feature of the lawn. By 1805 the gardens were sufficiently advanced to be illustrated in Peacock's Repository.
Delicate Langtons was given to Hornchurch Urban District Council by Varco Williams and his daughter in 1929, under the condition that the building must be kept as it was and used for council purposes and that the six acres (24,000 m²) of grounds remain open to the public. The gardens, one of the surviving historic landscapes serve as one of the parks and open spaces in Havering. Fielders Sports Ground, north of the site, was once also part of the gardens. The building housed the council offices until the council was abolished in 1965 and Havering London Borough Council, based in Romford, was created.
Langtons Park - 2013 Editorial By Laurence Calvert