Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace near Woodstock in Oxfordshire is one of the most magnificent country houses in Britain and the only non-royal, non-episcopal house in England to hold the title of palace. It was built between 1705 and 1722 as a gift from the nation to John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his decisive victory over the French and Bavarian forces at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, one of the most significant military victories in British history. The house was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in the English Baroque style on an almost unprecedented scale and represents the most complete expression of the baroque tradition in English architecture.
The building's scale is immediately apparent from the main approach through the great forecourt, where the baroque facades and the massive towers of the north front rise above a composition of courts, colonnades and gate towers of extraordinary grandeur. The state apartments within the palace contain one of the finest collections of tapestries, paintings and furniture in any English country house, assembled by successive generations of the Churchill family and filling rooms of lavish opulence appropriate to a palace built by a grateful nation rather than a private individual. The Long Library, the Saloon with its painted ceiling by Louis Laguerre and the state bedrooms all contribute to an interior of remarkable ambition and quality.
The park surrounding the palace was redesigned by Capability Brown in the 1760s and represents one of the masterpieces of English landscape design. Brown transformed the formal baroque gardens of the original park into a naturalistic landscape of extraordinary beauty, dammed the River Glyme to create the great lake that occupies the centre of the park and planted the woodlands and grassland that frame the palace and its approach in a composition of apparently natural perfection. Winston Churchill was born at the palace in 1874 and is buried in the nearby village of Bladon; the exhibition devoted to his life within the palace is one of the most visited sections of the visitor offering.
Blenheim Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most visited historic houses in Britain.