Cliveden House

Halfway between London and Oxford is Cliveden House,  a lovely an Italianate mansion and spectacular estate at Taplow, Buckinghamshire.    

It is set on the high banks above the River Thames with spectacular views of the river and the countryside.

There have been 3 manor houses on the site, the first two burned down, and the house that is there was built in the 1850's by the Astor family.

John and I spent a delightful day there with my cousin and her wonderful family and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the Cliveden grounds and getting reacquainted with the Fearons.  

Cliveden has been home to an Earl, three Countesses, two Dukes, a Prince of Wales and the Viscounts Astor.

In the 1920's and 1930's , the house was the meeting place of the Cliveden set --an upper class group of prominent individuals politically influential in pre- World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. 

Later, during the 1960s, it became the setting for key events of the notorious Profumo Affair  --  political scandal that originated with a brief sexual liaison in 1961 between  John Profumo, the British Secretary of State of War and Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old would-be model who was also having an affair with Captain Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache, thereby creating a possible security risk.

During the 1970s, it was occupied by Stanford University of California, which used it as an overseas campus. I've been told that Stanford paid 1 pound rent for the estate but also had to pay the upkeep.  It turned not to be much of a bargain since the upkeep was so expensive. 

My cousin's husband was a Stanford student at Cliveden when it was used as Stanford's London Campus and he told us all kinds of funny stories about the shenanigans of Stanford students when they lived there. 

 Today it is owned by the National Trust and the house is leased as a five-star hotel.

Tucked away in the Chitern Hills and set up high on a bank of the River Thames, this estate is simply beautiful and well worth a visit.

When one lives in Paradise, how hard it must be to ascend in heart and mind to Heaven.—Lady Frederick Cavendish on Cliveden, June 1863