Cliveden House
Cliveden is an Italianate mansion set on the banks of the River Thames as it flows through Buckinghamshire. It has been residence to royalty, aristocracy, luminaries and eccentric billionaires. The estate is owned by the National Trust, with woodlands, gardens and a Grade 1 listed house leased as a hotel.
The Cliveden motto reveals much: ‘Nothing ordinary ever happened here, nor could it.’ The present house, commissioned in 1851 by the Duke of Sutherland, was built in Italianate design by Charles Barry who had designed the Houses of Parliament. In 1893 the estate was purchased by American billionaire William Waldorf Astor who later gave it to his son and daughter-in-law. They threw high-profile parties with guests such as Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Amy Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia.
In 1942, it was given to the National Trust, but its greatest fame came in 1963 when it was exposed as a key setting for the Profumo scandal which effectively brought down the government and ushered in the ‘Swinging 60s’. The 375-acre landscape contains woodlands famed for lime trees, beechwoods and imported Californian redwoods, and a garden featuring clipped topiaries, a maze, and a collection of classical follies and Italian renaissance sculpture.