Cliveden Mansions 2008

Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Taplow and Burnham. The main house sits above the banks of the River Thames, and its grounds slope down to the river. There have been three houses on this site. The first was built in 1666 and burned down in 1795, while the second house was constructed around 1824 and was also destroyed by fire, in 1849. The present Grade I listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland.

Cliveden has been the home to a Prince of Wales, two dukes, an earl, and finally the Viscounts Astor. As the home of Nancy Astor, wife of the 2nd Viscount Astor, Cliveden was the meeting place during the 1920s and 1930s of the Cliveden Set, a group of political intellectuals. Later, during the early 1960s, when it was the home of the 3rd Viscount Astor, it became the setting for key events of the notorious Profumo affair. After the Astor family stopped living there, by the 1970s, it was leased to Stanford University, which used it as an overseas campus. Today, the house is leased to a company that runs it as a luxury hotel.

The gardens and woodlands are open to the public, together with parts of the house on certain days. Cliveden has been one of the National Trust's most popular pay-for-entry visitor attractions, hosting 524,807 visitors in 2019.

Etymology

Cliveden means "valley among cliffs" and refers to the ''dene'' (valley) which cuts through part of the estate, east of the house. Cliveden has been spelled differently over the centuries, some of the variations being ''Cliffden'', ''Clifden'', ''Cliefden'', and ''Clyveden''.^:10

Present house

Designed by Charles Barry in 1851 to replace a house previously destroyed by fire, the present house is a blend of the English Palladian style and the Roman Cinquecento.^:29 The Victorian three-storey mansion sits on a long, high brick terrace or viewing platform (visible only from the south side) which dates from the mid-17th century. The exterior of the house is rendered in Roman cement, with terracotta additions such as balusters, capitals, keystones, and finials. The roof of the mansion is meant for walking on, and there is a circular view, above the tree-line, of parts of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire including Windsor Castle to the south.^:206

Below the balustraded roofline is a Latin inscription which continues around the four sides of the house and recalls its history; it was composed by the then prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. On the west front, it reads: ''POSITA INGENIO OPERA CONSILIO CAROLI BARRY ARCHIT A MDCCCLI'', which translated reads: "The work accomplished by the brilliant plan of architect Charles Barry in 1851." The main contractor for the work was Lucas Brothers.

In 1984–86, the exterior of the mansion was overhauled and a new lead roof was installed by the National Trust, while interior repairs were carried out by Cliveden Hotel. In 2013, further exterior work was carried out including the restoration of 300 sash windows and 20 timber doors.

Interior

The interior of the house today is very different from its original appearance in 1851–52. This is mainly due to the 1st Viscount Astor, who radically altered the interior layout and decoration c.1894–95. Whereas Barry's original interior for the Sutherlands had included a square entrance-hall, a morning room, and a separate stairwell, Lord Astor wanted a more impressive entrance to Cliveden, so he had all three rooms amalgamated to create the Great Hall.^:134

Lord Astor's aim was for the interior to resemble an Italian ''palazzo'', thus complementing the exterior. The ceiling and walls were panelled in English oak, with Corinthian columns and swags of carved flowers for decoration, all by architect Frank Pearson. The staircase newel posts are ornamented with carved figures representing previous owners (e.g. Buckingham and Orkney) by W.S. Frith.

Lord Astor installed a large 16th-century fireplace that was purchased from the Frederick Spitzer sale (lot 1273) in June 1893. To the left of the fireplace is a portrait of Nancy, Lady Astor, by the American portraitist John Singer Sargent. The room was and still is furnished with 18th-century tapestries and suits of armour.

Originally, the floor was covered with Minton encaustic tiles (given to the Sutherlands by the factory), but Nancy Astor had them removed in 1906 and the present flagstones laid. Above the staircase is a painted ceiling by French artist Auguste Hervieu, which depicts the Sutherlands' children painted as the four seasons, and it is the only surviving element of Barry's 1851–52 interior.

The French Dining Room is so-called because the 18th-century Rococo panelling (or ''boiseries'') came from Château d'Asnières near Paris, a château which was leased to Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour as a hunting lodge. The panelling was sold in 1897 by Jules Allard to the 1st Viscount Astor, who had it installed at Cliveden. The gilded panelling on a turquoise ground contains carvings of hares, pheasants, hunting dogs and rifles. The console tables and buffet were made in 1900 to match the room.

The second-largest room on the ground floor, after the Great Hall, was the original drawing room, which is used as the hotel's main dining room. Also on the ground floor is the library, panelled in cedar wood, which the Astors used to call the "cigar box".^:181 Next door was Nancy Astor's boudoir, which is now used by the hotel as a meeting room.

Upstairs, there are a total of 10-bedroom suites divided equally over two floors. The East wing was and still is guest accommodation, whereas the West wing was domestic offices that were converted into more bedrooms in 1994.

Clock Tower

The nearby 100-foot (30 m) clock tower was added in 1861 and is the work of the architect Henry Clutton. As a functioning water tower, it still provides water for the house today. It is rendered in Roman cement like the rest of the house, and it features four clock faces framed by gilded surrounds and a half-open staircase on its north side. It was described by the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the epitome of Victorian flamboyance and assertiveness."

The tower is topped with a modern reproduction of Augustin Dumont's 19th-century winged male figure ''Le Génie de la Liberté'' (the Spirit of Liberty). The original is atop the July Column in the Place de la Bastille, Paris. This replaces two earlier versions, the first having fallen from the tower during a storm in the 1950s. The new statue is made of bronze and was created using Dumont's original mould from the 1860s found in a museum in Semur-en-Auxois, France. It measures 2.2 metres (7'3") in height, is covered in two layers of 23.5 carat gold leaf and cost a total of £68,000. It is an allegorical sculpture which holds the torch of civilization in its right hand and the broken chain of slavery in its left. It was affixed to the tower in the spring of 2012.

History

Duke of Buckingham and early history

Cliveden stands on the site of a house built in 1666 designed by architect William Winde as the home of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. But before Buckingham's purchase the land was owned by the Mansfield family and before that to the de Clyveden family.^:10

The details are recorded in a document compiled by William Waldorf Astor in 1894 called ''The Historical Descent of Cliveden''. Derived from several historical sources including George Lipscombe's ''History of the County of Buckingham,'' the Lysons brothers ''Magna Britannia,'' and James Joseph Sheahan's ''History of Buckinghamshire,'' it shows that in 1237 the land was owned by Geoffrey de Clyveden and by 1300 it had passed to his son, William, who owned fisheries and mills along the Cliveden Reach stretch of the Thames and at nearby Hedsor.

In 1569 a lodge existed on the site along with of land and was owned by Sir Henry Manfield; it was later owned by his son, Sir Edward. In 1573, there were two lodges on of treeless chalk escarpment above the Thames. It was on this impressively high but exposed site that Buckingham chose to build the first Cliveden house.^:2

Buckingham pulled down the earlier buildings and chose William Winde as his architect. Winde designed a four-storey house above an arcaded terrace. Today the terrace is the only feature of Buckingham's house to survive the 1795 fire. Although the Duke's intention was to use Cliveden as a "hunting box", it later housed Anna Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury. In 1668 a duel between the Duke and his mistress's husband Lord Shrewsbury took place at Barn Elms near London and resulted in Shrewsbury dying of his wounds.NT Guide 2012, p. 3 A contemporary account of Buckingham's affair with Anna was written about by Samuel Pepys, in his diary of the period.

John Evelyn, another contemporary diarist, visited the Duke at Cliveden on 22 July 1679 and recorded the following impression in his Diary:

18th century

1st Earl of Orkney

After Buckingham died in 1687, the house remained empty until the estate was purchased in 1696 by George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, a soldier and colonial official.^:2–3 The Earl employed the architect Thomas Archer to add two new "wings" to the house, connected by curved corridors. Although an almost identical arrangement exists today, these are later reconstructions, the originals having been destroyed in the fire of 1795. All that remains of Archer's work inside the house today is a staircase in the West wing.

Orkney's contributions to the gardens can still be seen today, most notably the Octagon Temple and the Blenheim Pavilion, both designed by the Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni.^:15 The landscape designer Charles Bridgeman was also commissioned to devise woodland walks and carve a rustic turf amphitheatre out of the cliff-side.^:12

Countesses of Orkney

Orkney died in 1737, and Cliveden passed to his daughter Anne O'Brien, 2nd Countess of Orkney in her own right. She immediately leased it to Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II and father of George III. After Frederick fell out with his father, Kew and Cliveden became his refuge from life at the royal court, becoming family homes for his wife Augusta and their children. During the Prince's tenure of the house, on 1 August 1740, ''Rule, Britannia!'' (an aria by the English composer Thomas Arne with lyrics by Scottish poet James Thomson) was first performed in public in the cliff-side amphitheatre at Cliveden. It was played as part of the masque ''Alfred'' to celebrate the third birthday of the Prince's daughter Augusta.

Cliveden was also the location for the final illness of the Prince: it was believed that while playing cricket in the grounds at Cliveden in 1751 the Prince received a blow to the chest from a batted ball and that this had caused an infection which proved fatal;NT Guide 1994, p. 19 however, an alternative interpretation shows he died from a cold, followed by a pulmonary embolism. After his death, Frederick's family retained Kew and their townhouse, Leicester House, but gave up their lease on Cliveden. Anne and her family moved back into the house, passing it to her daughter, Mary O'Brien, 3rd Countess of Orkney and granddaughter, Mary FitzMaurice, 4th Countess of Orkney, who also lived there. On the night of 20 May 1795, the house caught fire and burned down. The cause of the fire was thought to have been a servant knocking over a candle. The 4th Countess moved out after the fire but retained the site, only selling it in 1824.

19th century

Sir George Warrender

After the fire of 1795 the house remained a ruin for the first quarter of the 19th century. In 1824, the estate was purchased by Sir George Warrender, 4th Baronet. To rebuild Cliveden, Warrender selected William Burn, a Scottish architect, and decided on a design for a two-storey mansion with entertaining on a grand scale in mind.^:2

2nd Duke of Sutherland

Warrender died in 1849 and the house was sold to the Sutherland family, headed by the second Duke. Sutherland had been in possession of the estate for only a few months when the house burned down for the second time in its history. The cause this time appears to have been negligence on the part of the decorators.

The Duke was prompt in commissioning the architect Charles Barry to rebuild Cliveden in the style of an Italianate villa.^:3 Barry, whose most famous project is arguably the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, was inspired by the outline of the two earlier houses for his design. The third (and present) house on the site was completed in 1851–52, and its exterior appearance has little changed since then.

The -tall clock tower, which is actually a water tower (still working to this day) was added in 1861 by the architect Henry Clutton.^:20-21 During this period other additions were made to the estate, which included half-timbered cottages, a dairy, and a boathouse. Also around this time another architect, George Devey, was commissioned to build half-timbered cottages on the estate along with a dairy and boathouse.^:28–29

After the Duke's death in 1861 his widow Harriet continued to live at the house for part of the year until her death in 1868, after which it was sold to her son-in-law Hugh Lupus, Earl Grosvenor, later 1st Duke of Westminster.

1st Duke of Westminster

Westminster was one of the wealthiest Englishmen of the period. During his ownership of the estate (1868–93), he contributed significant additions to the house and gardens, including the '' porte cochère'' on the north front of the mansion, a new stable block and the dovecote, all designed by Henry Clutton.

20th and 21st century

Astor era

In 1893 the estate was purchased by an American millionaire, William Waldorf Astor (later 1st Viscount Astor), who made sweeping alterations to the gardens and the interior of the house.^:3 However, after the early death of his wife, he lived a reclusive life at Cliveden. He gave the house to his son Waldorf (later 2nd Viscount Astor) on the occasion of his marriage to Nancy Langhorne in 1906 and moved to Hever Castle.

The young Astors used Cliveden for entertaining on a lavish scale. The combination of the house, its setting, and leisure facilities offered on the estate – boating on the Thames, horse riding, tennis, swimming, croquet and fishing – made Cliveden a destination for film stars, politicians, world leaders, writers and artists. The heyday of entertaining at Cliveden was between the two World Wars when the Astors held regular weekend house parties. Guests at the time included: Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Joseph Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Amy Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, H. H. Asquith, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Arthur Balfour and the writers Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Edith Wharton.^:213

During the inter-war period the entertainer Joyce Grenfell, who was Nancy Astor's niece, lived in a cottage on the estate. In the preface to her memoir, James Roose-Evans stated that during the Second World War, Grenfell ran two wards of the hospital and worked as an informal welfare officer. This work included completing errands for patients, writing letters, shopping, teaching needlework, and organising social events, and informal concerts.

Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital

At the outbreak of World War I, Waldorf Astor offered the use of some of the grounds to the Canadian Red Cross Waldorf Astor again offered the use of the land at a rent of one shilling per year to the Canadian Red Cross and the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital was built to the designs of Robert Atkinson. After the war the hospital's main focus was as a nursing school, a maternity unit and a rheumatology unit.

The hospital closed and was abandoned in 1985. It lay derelict for two decades and was demolished in 2006 to make way for a housing development for people aged 55 and over.

Attached to the military hospital and within the grounds was established Cliveden War Cemetery. There are 42 Commonwealth war graves, 40 from World War I (mostly Canadians) and two from World War II, besides two American service war graves from the first war.

National Trust ownership

In 1942 the Astors gave Cliveden to the National Trust with the proviso that the family could continue to live in the house for as long as they wished. Should they cease to do so, they expressed the wish that the house be used "for promoting friendship and understanding between the peoples of the United States and Canada and the other dominions." With the gift of Cliveden, the National Trust also received from the Astor family one of their largest endowments: £250,000 in 1942, .

After the death of the 2nd Viscount in 1952, his son William (Bill) Astor, the 3rd Viscount Astor took over the house until his death in 1966. Following the death of Bill Astor, the National Trust took over the management of the estate.

Cliveden has become one of the National Trust's most popular pay-for-entry visitor attractions, hosting 524,807 visitors in 2019. National Trust visitors to Cliveden can visit the parkland, and there is occasional limited access to a select area of the house.^:32

Cliveden House Hotel

In 1984 Blakeney Hotels (later Cliveden Hotel Ltd) acquired the lease to the house. Led by chairman John Lewis and managing director John Tham they restored and refurbished the interior.^:202

In 1990 they added the indoor swimming pool and spa treatment rooms in the walled garden, complementing the existing outdoor pool. Also in 1990, a new 100-year lease was granted to run from 1984. In 1994 the conversion of the West wing from domestic offices to provide more bedrooms and two boardrooms (Churchill and Macmillan) was completed. There are 48 bedrooms and suites, all of which are named after previous owners and guests (e.g. Buckingham, Westminster). In addition to the Terrace Dining room, there are a further four private dining rooms. Three rooms are licensed for civil ceremonies and each year many couples are married at Cliveden. The hotel also leases Spring Cottage by the Thames, one of the key places in the Profumo affair, and offer it as self-contained accommodation.

The hotel was listed on the London Stock Exchange for a period of time in the 1990s (as Cliveden Plc).^:202 This company was bought in 1998 by Destination Europe, a consortium including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. In the early years of the 21st century the lease was acquired by von Essen Hotels.
In 2007, Cliveden House Hotel claimed to offer the "world's most expensive sandwich" at £100. The von Essen Platinum Club Sandwich was confirmed by Guinness World Records in 2007 to be the most expensive sandwich commercially available. Cliveden House was the "jewel in the crown" of Von Essen Hotels when the company collapsed in 2011.

The lease to Cliveden Hotel was then purchased in February 2012 by the property developers Richard and Ian Livingstone, owners of London & Regional Properties, (also the new owners of the next-door 220-acre estate called Dropmore Park) who placed it under the management of Andrew Stembridge from Chewton Glen. In 2015 Natalie Livingstone, the wife of Ian Livingstone, published ''The Mistresses of Cliveden'', a history of some of the female occupants of the house. In January 2015 the hotel closed for one month to carry out a refurbishment of the interior and for the National Trust to repair the roof.

The hotel's insignia is that of the Sutherland family and consists of a coronet with interlaced "S"s and acanthus leaves. Three-dimensional versions of this insignia can be found on panels and radiator grills in parts of the house. The hotel's motto is "Nothing ordinary ever happened here, nor could it."

In October 2021 the building was one of 142 sites across England to receive part of a £35-million injection into the government's Culture Recovery Fund.

Gardens and grounds

The estate extends to of which about comprise the gardens, the rest being woodland and paddocks. The gardens are listed as Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens

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