Cliveden — The Spy Who Loved Me - Beyond Downton Abbey: A Guide to 25 Great Houses - page 97

Records dating back to the early 1200s indicate the site was owned by Geoffrey de
Clyveden whose family owned mills and fisheries along the Thames nearby. The high
ground of Cliveden was owned by the Manfield family in the 1500s and there were several
lodges on the site. These were demolished by George Villiers, 2 nd Duke of Buckingham
who brought in architect William Winde to build the first Cliveden house in 1666.
Buckingham died in 1687 and the property was purchased by George Hamilton, 1 st Earl of
Orkney in 1696. The earl employed English architect Thomas Archer to expand the house
and Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni to design the Octagon Temple and Blenheim Pavil-
ion; prominent features that remain in Cliveden's gardens today. The landscape designer
Charles Bridgeman was also commissioned to devise woodland walks and carve a rustic
turf amphitheatre out of the cliff-side.
After Hamilton died, the estate was leased by Frederick, Prince of Wales. Frederick died in
1751 after a cricket accident on the grounds of Cliveden. The house burned down in 1795
and was a ruin until purchased and rebuilt by Sir George Warrender. Cliveden was sold to
the Sutherland family after Warrender's death, but the house's bad luck with fires contin-
ued — it burned down again.
The Second Duke of Sutherland brought in architect Charles Barry, designer of the Houses
of Parliament. The current edition of Cliveden House was completed in 1851. In 1868, the
house was purchased by a Sutherland in-law, Hugh Lupus, who later became the 1 st Duke
of Westminster. Befitting his huge wealth, Lupus expanded the house and gardens.
American billionaire William Waldorf Astor bought the estate in 1893. Astor gave
Cliveden to his son Waldorf as a wedding present when Waldorf married American Nancy
Langhorne in 1906. In 1919, Nancy Astor became the first elected woman to serve in the
House of Commons.
Cliveden became a magnet for movie stars, politicos, artists, and various hangers-on. The
famous guests included Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Joseph P. Kennedy, George
Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Rudy-
ard Kipling…an eclectic who's who mix of the 1920s and 1930s.
During World War II a Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital was built at Cliveden and
in 1942 the Astors donated the estate to the National Trust, but the family continued to live
in the house until 1968.
Style notes