Hughenden Manor

Hughenden Manor
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
Listed Building – Grade I
Official name	Hughenden Manor
Designated	21 June 1955
Reference no.	1125785
Listed Building – Grade II
Official name	Stable Block and Attached Garden Walls at Hughenden Manor
Designated	4 July 1985
Reference no.	1332071
National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens
Official name	Hughenden Manor Park and Garden
Designated	30 July 1987
Reference no.	1000318
Location of Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire

Hughenden Manor, Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, England, is a Victorian mansion, with earlier origins, that served as the country house of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. It is now owned by the National Trust and open to the public. It sits on the brow of the hill to the west of the main A4128 road that links Hughenden to High Wycombe.

History

The

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 (0.76 km²), in the Disraelian Society.^[4]

During the

The park and woodlands total almost 1,500 acres (6.1 km²). 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

The present house was built towards the end of the 18th century and was of a stuccoed and unassuming design.

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]}

Notes

Sources

• Porter, Darwin; Prince, Danforth (2006). Frommer's England. Frommer's.
  ISBN 0-7645-9540-7
  .
• OCLC 1138916232
  .
• OCLC 1204460755
  .

• Garnett, Oliver (2009) [1997]. Hughenden Manor. The National Trust.
  ISBN 978-1-84359-173-3
  .

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hughenden Manor.

• Hughenden Manor information at the National Trust
• Hughenden Parish, History of the county of Buckinghamshire