The village name 'Horwood' is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'dirty or muddy wood'. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 792 the village was recorded as Horwudu.
The manor in Little Horwood anciently belonged to the abbot and convent of St Albans, though was seized by the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1547. It was later sold to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham who remodelled the house into the grand mansion that it is today. The mansion and its extensive lands are now a five star hotel.