Best Historic Places in Buckinghamshire, England

Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire is one of the most extraordinary country houses in Britain, a French Renaissance château transported wholesale to the rolling English countryside and filled with one of the finest collections of French decorative arts outside France. Built for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild between 1874 and 1889 to designs by the French architect Hippolyte-Alexandre Destailleur, the house represented the Rothschild family's determination to create an English country seat that matched the grandeur of the great French royal residences they admired, and the result is a building of startling ambition and consummate quality. The exterior, modelled on the Loire Valley châteaux of the sixteenth century, rises from a hilltop that was entirely reshaped to receive it, the summit removed and rebuilt on a platform of unprecedented engineering complexity. Full-grown mature trees were transported by horse and steam traction up the reconfigured hillside to provide an instant mature landscape around a brand new building, a feat of horticulture and logistics that speaks clearly to the scale of the resources the Rothschilds were prepared to deploy. The result, when seen across the surrounding parkland, is genuinely impressive: a perfect French château sitting within an English park as if it had always been there. The interior contains one of the greatest collections of eighteenth-century French decorative arts in the world, assembled by successive generations of the Rothschild family with knowledge, access and financial resources that enabled them to acquire pieces of royal provenance and museum quality. Furniture made for the French royal apartments, Sèvres porcelain of the finest quality, Savonnerie carpets woven for the great French palaces and portraits by Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney hang and stand in rooms furnished to a standard that reflects both the quality of the objects and the skill of the interior decorators who arranged them. The parterre gardens below the south front and the rococo-style aviary containing exotic birds are among the most visited features of the gardens, and the wine cellars contain one of the most significant collections of historic vintages in private hands in Britain.

Cliveden is a grand country house and estate set on a dramatic chalk escarpment above the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, now managed by the National Trust. The house itself is a magnificent Italianate palazzo, the third to be built on this site, completed in 1851 to a design by Sir Charles Barry — the same architect responsible for the Houses of Parliament. It is one of the most celebrated stately homes in England, admired both for its architectural grandeur and for the extraordinary sequence of formal gardens and woodland walks that surround it. A portion of the house operates today as a luxury hotel, while the wider estate and gardens are open to the public through the National Trust, making it one of the more unusual properties in their portfolio — a working five-star hotel sitting within a heritage landscape you can walk through for the price of a National Trust entry ticket or membership card. The history of Cliveden is long, layered and at times genuinely scandalous. The first house was built in 1666 for the second Duke of Buckingham, and the site passed through a succession of aristocratic and royal hands over the following centuries. The second house burned down in 1795, and the current building dates from the mid-Victorian era. For much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cliveden was the seat of the Astor family — first William Waldorf Astor and then his son Viscount Waldorf Astor and his wife Nancy, who became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. Under Nancy Astor, Cliveden became one of the great political and intellectual salons of the interwar period, hosting figures including Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, T.E. Lawrence and Henry James. This gathering of wealthy, well-connected guests became known informally as the "Cliveden Set," a phrase that later acquired a darker resonance when some of its members were accused of sympathies toward appeasement of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. The estate's most infamous chapter came in the summer of 1961, when a young model named Christine Keeler was introduced to Secretary of State for War John Profumo at the Cliveden swimming pool — the same pool that still stands on the estate today. Their subsequent affair, conducted against the backdrop of the Cold War and entangled with Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, became the Profumo Affair, one of the defining political scandals of twentieth-century Britain. It ultimately brought down Harold Macmillan's government and became a cultural touchstone for the collision of class, sex and state secrecy. Visiting the pool today, a relatively modest outdoor structure tucked below the main terrace, carries a particular frisson given what unfolded there. In person, Cliveden rewards slow exploration. Approaching the house along its long formal drive, the scale of the building gradually asserts itself — the pale stone façade, the wide balustraded terrace overlooking the Thames valley, the formal parterre garden laid out below. The gardens themselves are extraordinarily varied, moving from the stiff symmetry of the Italianate parterre to a woodland garden, a water garden, a rose garden and a long grass amphitheatre said to have hosted theatrical performances in the early eighteenth century. Statuary and classical ornament appear throughout, including a remarkable marble balustrade relocated from the Villa Borghese in Rome. On a clear day the views from the main terrace down through the beech woodland to the glittering Thames are among the finest in southern England, and in autumn the copper and gold of the beeches against the wide sky is particularly memorable. The surrounding landscape is that of the Thames and Chilterns at their most gentle and composed. The Thames itself is accessible via a walk down through the estate's woodland, and from the riverbank you can look back up at the chalk cliff face and the wooded escarpment — a view that has been painted and described for centuries. The nearby town of Taplow lies immediately to the south, and Maidenhead is just a few minutes by car or taxi. Windsor and its castle are within easy reach to the west, and the Chiltern Hills begin their characteristic rolling ascent just to the north, making Cliveden a natural base or stopping point for wider exploration of this stretch of the Thames Valley. For practical visiting, the National Trust grounds are open most days of the year, though hours vary seasonally and it is always worth checking the National Trust website before travelling. The nearest train station is Taplow, approximately a mile and a half from the main entrance, and a pleasant walk or short taxi ride along country lanes. By car, the estate is well signposted from the B476 and there is a substantial car park. The gardens are extensive and involve some slopes and uneven terrain, so comfortable walking shoes are advisable; the formal parterre and terraces are more accessible to those with limited mobility. Spring brings carpets of bulbs and blossom, summer the full glory of the rose garden and long days on the terrace, autumn the famous beeches at their most dramatic, and even winter visits have a spare, misty quality that suits the melancholy grandeur of the place. Guests staying at the hotel have access to the estate at any hour, but day visitors are limited to National Trust opening times. A few details lodge in the mind long after a visit. The clock tower above the stable block carries an inscription placed there by William Waldorf Astor reflecting on the transience of time and human ambition, which feels appropriate given everything this estate has witnessed. The Cliveden reach of the Thames, visible from the lower woodland walks, is widely considered one of the most beautiful stretches of the entire river. And somewhere beneath the gardens there are said to be cellars and underground passages of considerable age, though these are not open to the public. The combination of architectural splendour, political intrigue, natural beauty and the quiet hum of a working luxury hotel makes Cliveden one of the genuinely irreplaceable places in England — layered, complex, and quite unlike anywhere else.