Cliveden Will Be Back In The News During The Coming Months

Cliveden, the beautiful Italianate mansion and estate that has panoramic views over the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, will undoubtedly be drawn to the public’s attention in the next few months, as we come to the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo Affair, one of the best known political scandals of the twentieth century. It is sensationalism of this type that is very much the forte of Cliveden, which in Lady Astor’s days was the meeting place of the “Cliveden Set”, a right wing upper class group of people who held much influence in Britain in the pre-Second World War days, although were generally in favour of German appeasement.

Cliveden House now operates as a luxury hotel

There was originally a house on the site as far back as 1666, having been first occupied by the 2nd Duke of Buckinghamshire. Other notables occupied the house during its early days including the first Earl of Orkney and also Frederick, who was the Prince of Wales in the eighteenth century. Other Orkneys, so to speak, also occupied the house, which was destroyed by fire in 1795, supposedly by a servant knocking over a candle.

A replacement of sorts was commissioned in 1824 by Sir George Warrender, but a further fire befell the property in 1849. The result of this set back was that the building that we see today was designed in by Sir Charles Barry, designer of the Houses of Parliament, for the second Duke of Sutherland, who bought the property from the Warrenders after the 1849 fire.  The property was completed in 1852, and remains very much the same today, although there have been additions and substantial internal re-arrangements.

Lady Astor, was born Nancy Langhorne in Danville, Virginia in the United States in 1879, and became the first woman to take her seat as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons. She became chatelaine of Cliveden by her marriage to Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor, whose father had purchased the property from the Duke of Westminster in 1893.  Cliveden served as a hospital under the auspices of the Canadian Red Cross during both World Wars, and indeed there are graves from that period in the Cliveden War Cemetery in the grounds.

During Viscount and Lady Astor’s time at Cliveden, it was visited by many famous people including Edith Wharton, Rudyard Kipling, A.J.Balfour, Henry James,  T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), F.D. Roosevelt, H.H. Asquith, Amy Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi,  George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Sir Winston Churchill and Joseph Kennedy (father of John and Robert Kennedy).

In 1942, the Astors gave the property to the National Trust on the understanding that they could continue to live there as long as they required. They also provided an endowment, worth about £8.5 million in today’s money.  They ceased occupation in 1968. Since 1984, it has operated as a hotel, ensuring that the great and the good of today continue to visit just as their predecessors did while the Astors were owners.

The grounds run to some 375 acres, with about 180 acres being gardens, the remainder set out as woodland and paddocks. There is also a famous maze that opened to the public in 2011. The house has appeared in films and television on many occasions, including the film, Scandal, about the Profumo Affair. And so the fifty years have come full circle.