The manor of Hughenden is first recorded in 1086, as part of Queen Edith's lands, and held by William, son of Oger the Bishop of Bayeux, and was assessed for tax at 10 hides. After his forfeiture, the lands were held by the Crown, until King Henry I of England gave the lands to his chamberlain and treasurer, Geoffrey de Clinton.[1] Clinton, whose main home was in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, had the lands tenanted by Geoffrey de Sancto Roerio, who resultantly changed his surname to the Anglicised Hughenden.[1] After passing through that family, with successive Kings having to confirm the gift of the lands, the manor returned to the Crown in the 14th century.[1] In 1539, the Crown granted the manor and lands to Sir Robert Dormer, and it passed through his family until 1737 when it was sold by the 4th Earl of Chesterfield to Charles Savage.[1]
After passing through his extended family following a series of deaths and resultant will bequests, by 1816 the manor and lands were owned by John Norris, a distinguished antiquary and scholar.[1]Isaac D'Israeli, the father of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1868 and 1874–1880, and Earl of Beaconsfield 1876), had for some time rented the nearby Bradenham Manor and, following Norris's death in 1845, bought the manor and lands from his executors in 1847.[1] The purchase was supported with the help of a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to almost £1,500,000 today) from Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield. This was because at the time, as Disraeli was the leader of the Conservative Party, "it was essential to represent a county," and county members had to be landowners.[2] Taking ownership of the manor on the death of his father in 1848, Disraeli and his wife Mary Anne, alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London.[3]
Hughenden Manor, the entrance façade
Lady Beaconsfield died in 1872, and Disraeli in 1881; both were buried in a vault adjacent in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels Church which is situated downhill from the main house to the east. The church contains a memorial to the Earl erected by Queen Victoria: the only instance of a reigning British monarch ever erecting a memorial to a subject.[citation needed]
Disraeli had no children; he left Hughenden to his nephew, Coningsby Disraeli. However, as Coningsby was only 14 at the time, his trustees rented out the property until he came into his inheritance in 1888. When Coningsby died in 1936, his widow left Hughenden, and the following year Disraeli's niece sold the house to W H Abbey, who vested it, with the remaining contents and 189 acres (0.76km2), in the Disraelian Society.[4]
During the Second World War, the basement at Hughenden Manor was used as a secret intelligence base code named "Hillside". The UK Air Ministry staff at the manor analysed aerial photography of Germany and created maps for bombing missions, including the "Dambusters" raid.[5]
In 1947, the Abbey family and the Disraelian Society made Hughenden over to the National Trust.[4] In 1955, it was designated a Grade I listed building.[6] The gardens are also listed as Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.[7] It is decorated as it might have been at the time it was occupied by Disraeli. It contains a collection of memorabilia including family portraits, Disraeli's own furnishings, a library including a collection of Disraeli's novels and one written and signed by Queen Victoria along with many of the books he inherited from his father, Isaac D'Israeli.[citation needed]
The park and woodlands total almost 1,500 acres (6.1km2). The formal garden which was designed by Lady Beaconsfield (Queen Victoria created Mary Anne a Viscountess in her own right in 1868), has been restored to a similar condition to when occupied by the Disraelis. The long terrace at the rear of the house is decorated with Florentine vases. A monument on a nearby hill, visible from the house, was erected by Mary Anne in 1862 in memory of her father-in-law.[citation needed]
Architecture and description
Disraeli's first-floor study
The present house was built towards the end of the 18th century and was of a stuccoed and unassuming design.[8] However, in 1862 the Disraelis had the house remodelled by the architect Edward Buckton Lamb. Lamb has been described as "one of the most perverse and original of mid-Victorian architects".[9] Architecturally, he had a strong interest in the eclectic; this interest is very apparent in his work at Hughenden. Under Lamb's hand, classical Georgian features were swept away as he "dramatised" the house.[8] Lamb worked in a hybrid baronial form of Gothic architecture, with exposed and angular juxtaposing brickwork surmounted by stepped battlements with diagonal pinnacles. The uppermost windows of the thirteen-bayed garden facade were given unusual pediments – appearing almost as machicolations. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, in his highly critical appraisal of Lamb's work at Hughenden, labels these "window-heads" as "indescribable" and Lamb's overall Hughenden work as "excruciating".[8]
Pevsner clearly failed to appreciate what the delighted Disraeli described as the "romance he had been many years realising" while going to say that he imagined it was now "restored to what it was before the civil war".[9] As the house was not originally constructed until the middle of the 18th century, almost a century after the Civil War, that scenario would have been difficult.[original research?]
The house is of three floors. The reception rooms are all on the ground floor, most with large plate glass windows (a Victorian innovation) giving onto the south-facing terrace overlooking a grassy parterre with views over the Hughenden Valley.[citation needed]
The west wing was built in 1910, long after Disraeli's death, when the house was in the ownership of his nephew, the politician Coningsby Disraeli.[citation needed]
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.
Buckinghamshire, is a ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the east, Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, and Oxfordshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Milton Keynes, and the county town is Aylesbury.
Isaac D'Israeli was a British writer, scholar and the father of British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. He is best known for his essays and his associations with other men of letters.
Mary Anne Disraeli, 1st Viscountess Beaconsfield was a British peeress and society figure who was the wife of the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli.
Earl of Beaconsfield, of Hughenden in the County of Buckingham, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1876 for Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a favourite of Queen Victoria. Victoria favoured Disraeli's Tory policies over those of his Liberal rival, William Ewart Gladstone. Disraeli had also promoted the Royal Titles Act 1876 that had given Victoria the title of Empress of India. The subsidiary title of the earldom was Viscount Hughenden, of Hughenden in the County of Buckingham, also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
Beaconsfield is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, 23+1⁄2 miles northwest of central London and 16 miles southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within five miles : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe.
Hughenden Valley is an extensive village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, just to the north of High Wycombe. It is almost 8,000 acres (32 km2) in size, divided mainly between arable and wooded land. It is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) north of central Wycombe, 12.5 miles (20.1 km) south of the county town of Aylesbury and some 35 miles (56 km) west-northwest of London.
Bradenham is a village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. It is near Saunderton, off the main A4010 road between Princes Risborough and High Wycombe.
Oxburgh Hall is a moated country house in Oxborough, Norfolk, England. The hall was built for Sir Edmund Bedingfeld who obtained a licence to crenellate in 1482. The Bedingfelds gained the manor of Oxborough through marriage in the early 15th century, and the family has lived at the hall since its construction, although ownership passed to the National Trust in 1952. The house underwent extensive refurbishment in the mid 19th century under John Chessell Buckler and Augustus Pugin.
Chenies Manor House in the parish of Chenies in Buckinghamshire, England, is a Tudor Grade I listed building once known as Chenies Palace, although it was never a royal seat nor the seat of a bishop. It was held by the Cheney family since 1180 and passed by marriage successively to the Semark and Sapcote families and thence in 1526 to the Russell family, Earls of Bedford, later Dukes of Bedford, by whom it was held for several centuries. Although the Russells soon abandoned Chenies as its main seat in favour of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, Chenies parish church remains the site of the private "Bedford Chapel", the mausoleum still in use by that family.
Coningsby Ralph Disraeli, was a British Conservative politician, and MP for Altrincham.
Edward Buckton Lamb (1806–1869) was a British architect who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1824. Lamb was labelled a 'Rogue Gothic Revivalist', and his designs were roundly criticised for breaking with convention, especially by The Ecclesiologist. More recently Nikolaus Pevsner called him "the most original though certainly not the most accomplished architect of his day".
Lothair (1870) was a late novel by Benjamin Disraeli, the first he wrote after his first term as Prime Minister. It deals with the comparative merits of the Catholic and Anglican churches as heirs of Judaism, and with the topical question of Italian unification. Though Lothair was a hugely popular work among 19th century readers, it now to some extent lies in the shadow of the same author's Coningsby and Sybil. Lothair reflects anti-Catholicism of the sort that was popular in Britain, and which fueled support for Italian unification ("Risorgimento").
Primrose Day marked the anniversary of the death of the British statesman and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, on 19 April 1881. The day was marked each year into the 1920s, with arrangements of primroses left at Disraeli's tomb at St Michael and All Angels Church, Hughenden and his statue in Parliament Square, and many supporters wearing primroses as buttonholes, garlands and hat decorations.
St Michael and All Angels' Church is a Grade: II* listed Anglican church in the Hughenden Valley, Buckinghamshire, England, near to High Wycombe. It is closely associated with the nearby Hughenden Manor and the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli who is buried in the churchyard.
Hyde House is a Grade II listed early 18th-century country house near Hyde Heath in Buckinghamshire, England. It had previously belonged to Woburn Abbey and was known as Chesham Woburn Manor.
Giovanni Battista Falcieri (1798–1874) was the personal servant of Lord Byron and was present at his death in Missolonghi in 1824. He later accompanied Benjamin Disraeli on his tour of the Orient, before becoming the valet of Isaac D'Israeli.
Sarah Brydges Willyams, born Sarah Mendez da Costa, was an English supporter and confidante of Benjamin Disraeli.
The Disraeli Monument is a Grade II* listed memorial erected in 1862 to the British writer and scholar Isaac D'Israeli, designed by the architect Edward Buckton Lamb. It is located on Tinker's Hill in the Hughenden Valley near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
St Giles' Church is an active parish church in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England. A Grade I listed building, it stands in the grounds of Stoke Park, a late-Georgian mansion built by John Penn. It is famous as the apparent inspiration for Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Gray is buried in the churchyard.
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