Cliveden

Listen for a moment. Gravel crunches underfoot on the long approach. Somewhere behind the trees, the ground falls away sharply toward the River Thames. You cannot see the water yet, but you can feel the drop in the air. It is cooler, and it smells of damp leaves. Cliveden sits on a chalk cliff above the river, and nearly everything here was built to make the most of that edge.

The first thing most visitors meet is water and marble. The great fountain on the main avenue is known as the Fountain of Love. It was carved in Italy in the late nineteenth century by the American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story. Look closely and you will see a group of women in a giant shell, surrounded by cherubs. The figures are the size of real people, and the effect is theatrical. That is fitting. Theatre runs through the whole story of this house.

The story begins in the 1660s with George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham. He was a courtier, a poet and a famous rake under King Charles the Second. He chose this cliff for a hunting lodge and a place to entertain. Legend has it that he brought his mistress, the Countess of Shrewsbury, here after killing her husband in a duel. The duel itself is a matter of record. How much happened at Cliveden is less certain, so treat the romantic details as local legend.

The house you see today is not Buckingham's house. Cliveden burned down more than once. After a serious fire in the mid nineteenth century, the owners hired Sir Charles Barry to rebuild it. Barry was the architect of the Houses of Parliament in London. Here he worked in a calmer style, closer to an Italian palace. The pale walls, the strong horizontal lines and the balustrade along the roof all follow that Italian model.

Now here is something many people miss. Walk round to the garden front and look at the long brick terrace beneath the house. Those arches and that brickwork belong to Buckingham's time. The house above has changed again and again. The terrace below is the oldest surviving part of the grand design. So when you stand on it, you are standing on the seventeenth century, with the nineteenth century rising above your head.

In the eighteenth century, Cliveden had a royal tenant. Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King George the Second, rented the estate. He staged entertainments in the gardens. In 1740, a masque called Alfred was performed here, with music by Thomas Arne. It included a new song. That song was Rule, Britannia. A tune now sung at stadiums and concerts across Britain was first heard on this lawn above the Thames.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the estate passed to one of the richest men in the world. William Waldorf Astor was an American millionaire who settled in England. He brought treasures from across Europe. The most surprising stands at the edge of the terrace. It is a long stone balustrade from the Villa Borghese in Rome. Astor bought it and shipped it here. Run your eye along it and you will see the weathering of Italian centuries, now under an English sky.

Astor gave Cliveden to his son Waldorf and his new daughter-in-law Nancy as a wedding present. Nancy Astor was born in Virginia, quick-witted and outspoken. In 1919, she became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. Under her, Cliveden became a meeting place for politicians, writers and royalty. Guests arrived from London for long weekends of conversation, tennis and argument. Many famous names signed the visitors' books.

That fame had a darker side. In the 1930s, a journalist used the phrase the Cliveden Set. He meant a circle of powerful people who gathered here and, he claimed, supported a policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. Historians still debate how much real influence this group had. But the label stuck, and it shaped how the public saw the house for years. It is a reminder that fine rooms can also carry heavy questions.

Then came the scandal that made Cliveden a household name. In the summer of 1961, at the outdoor swimming pool, the government minister John Profumo met a young woman named Christine Keeler. Their affair, and her links to a Soviet naval officer, became the Profumo affair. It shook the government of the day. The pool is still here, and many visitors come looking for it. It is a quiet, ordinary-looking place for such a loud chapter.

Cliveden also has a gentler, sadder story, and it is easy to overlook. During both world wars, the Astors made the estate available to the Canadian Red Cross as a hospital. Down in the woods there is a war cemetery. Soldiers and nurses who died here are buried among the trees, under a calm sculpture. If you walk down there, go slowly. The noise of the house falls away, and you hear mostly birds and leaves.

Today the estate belongs to the National Trust, which looks after the gardens and grounds. The house itself is a hotel, so most of the interior is for guests. Outside, there is a great deal to explore. There is the formal parterre below the terrace, with its clipped hedges and geometric beds. There is a yew maze, a long garden of topiary, and woodland paths down to the river. Each part feels like a different room.

If you have time, look for the Octagon Temple on the cliff edge. It was built in the eighteenth century as a garden ornament with a view. Later it became a chapel, and members of the Astor family rest there. From the paths nearby, the Thames appears through the trees far below, slow and green. Boats move past without a sound. From up here, it is easy to see why Buckingham chose this spot.

So pause now, wherever you are standing. Notice the line of the river, the pale front of Barry's house, the old brick under your feet. Kings, poets, politicians and wounded soldiers all looked at this same view. As you walk on, listen to the gravel again. It is the same sound that greeted every guest who ever arrived here, famous or forgotten.