Hinxton Hall history

The first recorded owner of the estate in 1506 was the college of Michaelhouse, Cambridge. The grand family home of Hinxton Hall, built by John Bromwell Jones in 1748, was the first substantial building on the estate and now houses part of the Conference Centre.

In 1953 the estate was sold and developed into a small business facility. It wasn’t until 1992 when John Sulston and Wellcome Trust staff were looking for temporary accommodation for a new genome sequencing centre that the Wellcome Trust became the landlord of the Hinxton Hall Estate. The Campus that was formed became home to some of the most important genetic discoveries of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Wellcome Trust meticulously restored the Georgian Hall and transformed the old stable block and kitchen garden into a purpose-built Conference Centre that opened in 1998. The next set of major works was carried out during 2012-2015, creating the Conference Centre that you see today.

Find out more about our history in our online exhibition, Hinxton Hall Estate: Georgians, Jet Engines and Genes