The Churchills instead spent their weekends at Ditchley House, in Oxfordshire, until security improvements were completed at the Prime Minister's official country residence, Chequers, in Buckinghamshire. At dinner at Chequers, in December 1940, John Colville, Churchill's assistant private secretary recorded his master's post-war plans, "He would retire to Chartwell and write a book on the war, which he had already mapped out in his mind chapter by chapter".
thumb|left|German Panzers at Tobruk, June 1941. Closed up during the war, Chartwell remained Churchill's bolthole at times of crisis
Chartwell remained a haven in times of acute stress—Churchill spent the night there before the fall of France in 1940. Summoned to London by an urgent plea from Lord Gort for permission to retreat to Dunkirk, Churchill broadcast the first of his wartime speeches to the nation; "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour...for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation..." He returned again on 20 June 1941, after the failure of Operation Battleaxe to relieve Tobruk, and determined to sack the Middle East commander, General Wavell. John Colville recorded Churchill's deliberations in his diary; "spent the afternoon at Chartwell. After a long sleep the P.M. in a purple dressing gown and grey felt hat took me to see his goldfish. He was ruminating deeply about the fate of Tobruk and contemplating means of resuming the offensive". Churchill continued to pay occasional, short, visits to the house; on one such, on 24 June 1944, just after the Normandy landings, his secretary recorded that the house was "shut up and rather desolate".
Following VE Day, the Churchills first returned to Chartwell on 18 May 1945, to be greeted by what the horticulturalist and garden historian Stefan Buczacki describes as, "the biggest crowd Westerham had ever seen". But military victory was rapidly followed by political defeat as Churchill lost the July 1945 general election. He almost immediately went abroad, while Clementine went back to Chartwell to begin the long process of opening up the house for his return—"it will be lovely when the lake camouflage is gone". Later that year, Churchill again gave thought to selling Chartwell, concerned by the expense of running the estate. A group of friends, organised by Lord Camrose, raised the sum of £55,000 which was passed to the National Trust allowing it to buy the house from Churchill for £43,800. The excess provided an endowment. The sale was completed on 29 November. For payment of a rent of £350 per annum, plus rates, the Churchills committed to a 50-year lease, allowing them to live at Chartwell until their deaths, at which point the property would revert to the National Trust. Churchill recorded his gratitude in a letter to Camrose in December 1945, "I feel how inadequate my thanks have been, my dear Bill, who (...) never wavered in your friendship during all these long and tumultuous years".
thumb|right|Plaque at Chartwell recording the names of those who raised the funds for the purchase of the house by the National Trust in 1945
In 1953, Chartwell became Churchill's refuge once more when, again in office as prime minister, he suffered a debilitating stroke. At the end of a dinner held on 23 June at 10 Downing Street, for the Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, Churchill collapsed and was barely able either to stand or to speak. On the 25th, he was driven to Chartwell, where his condition deteriorated further. Churchill's doctor Lord Moran stated that "he did not think the Prime Minister could possibly live over the weekend". That evening Colville summoned Churchill's closest friends in the press, Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Camrose and Brendan Bracken who, walking the lawns at Chartwell, agreed to try to ensure a press blackout to prevent any reporting of Churchill's condition. Colville described the outcome, "They achieved the all but incredible success of gagging Fleet Street, something they would have done for nobody but Churchill. Not a word of the Prime Minister's stroke was published until he casually mentioned it in the House of Commons a year later". Secluded and protected at Chartwell, Churchill made a remarkable recovery and thoughts of his retirement quickly receded. During his recuperation, Churchill took the opportunity to complete work on Triumph and Tragedy, the sixth and final volume of his war memoirs, which he had been forced to set aside when he returned to Downing Street in 1951.
On 5 April 1955, Churchill chaired his last cabinet, almost fifty years since he had first sat in the Cabinet Room as President of the Board of Trade in 1908. The following day he held a tea party for staff at Downing Street before driving to Chartwell. On being asked by a journalist on arrival how it felt no longer to be prime minister, Churchill replied, "It's always nice to be home". For the next ten years, Churchill spent much time at Chartwell, although both he and Lady Churchill also travelled extensively. His days there were spent writing, painting, playing bezique or sitting "by the fish pond, feeding the golden orfe and meditating". Of his last years at the house, Churchill's daughter, Mary Soames, recalled, "in the two summers that were left to him he would lie in his 'wheelbarrow' chair contemplating the view of the valley he had loved for so long".
Catherine Snelling served Churchill as one his last secretaries. In the oral histories of a number of such secretaries compiled by the Churchill Archive, she recalled the dwindling number of visitors Churchill received at the house in his later years. They included Clementine's cousin, Sylvia Henley, Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of H. H. Asquith and a lifelong friend, Harold Macmillan and Bernard Montgomery. On 13 October 1964, Churchill's last dinner guests at Chartwell were his former principal private secretary Sir Leslie Rowan and his wife. Lady Rowan later recalled, "It was sad to see such a great man become so frail". The following week, increasingly incapacitated, Churchill left the house for the last time. His official biographer Martin Gilbert records Churchill was, "never to see his beloved Chartwell again". After his death in January 1965, Lady Churchill relinquished her rights to the house and presented Chartwell to the National Trust. It was opened to the public in 1966, one year after Churchill's death.
National Trust: 1966 to the present
thumb|right|[[Oscar Nemon's statue of Churchill and Lady Churchill at Chartwell]]
The house has been restored and preserved as it looked in the 1920–30s; at the time of the Trust's purchase, Churchill committed to leaving it, "garnished and furnished so as to be of interest to the public". Rooms are decorated with memorabilia and gifts, the original furniture and books, as well as honours and medals that Churchill received.
The opening of the house required the construction of facilities for visitors and a restaurant was designed by Philip Jebb, and built to the north of the house, along with a shop and ticket office. Alterations have also been made to the gardens, for ease of access and of maintenance. The Great Storm of 1987 caused considerable damage, with twenty-three trees being blown down in the gardens. Greater destruction occurred in the woodland surrounding the house, which lost over seventy per cent of its trees.
Chartwell has become among the National Trust's most popular properties; in 2016, the fiftieth anniversary of its opening, 232,000 people visited the house. In that year the Trust launched the Churchill's Chartwell Appeal, to raise £7.1M for the purchase of hundreds of personal items held at Chartwell on loan from the Churchill family. The items available to the Trust include Churchill's Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to him in 1953. The citation for the award reads, "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". The medal is displayed in the museum room on the first floor of Chartwell, at the opposite end of the house to the study, the room where, in the words used by John F. Kennedy when awarding him honorary citizenship of the United States, Churchill "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle".
Architecture and description
thumb|upright=1.4|Simplified plan of the house; A – Lady Churchill's bedroom; B – Study; C – Churchill's bedroom; D – Drawing Room; E – Library
The highest point of the estate is approximately 650 feet above sea level, and the house commands views across the Weald of Kent. The view from the house was of crucial importance to Churchill; years later, he remarked, "I bought Chartwell for that view."
Exterior
Churchill employed the architect Philip Tilden, who worked from 1922 to 1924 to modernise and extend the house. Tilden was a "Society" architect who had previously worked for Churchill's friend Philip Sassoon at his Kent home, Port Lympne, and had designed Lloyd George's house, Bron-y-de, at Churt. The architectural style is vernacular. The house is constructed of red brick, of two storeys, with a basement and extensive attics.
Entrance hall and inner hall, library and drawing room
Designed by Tilden, replacing a wood-panelled earlier hall, the halls lead onto the library, the drawing room and Lady Churchill's sitting room.
The library contains some major pieces of Churchilliana, including the 1942 siren suit portrait by Frank O. Salisbury