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 manor of Hughenden is first recorded in 1086, as part of Queen Edith's lands, and held by William, son of Odo the Bishop of Bayeux, and was assessed for tax at 10 hides. After his forfeiture, the lands were held by the Crown, until Henry I of England gave the lands to his chamberlain and treasurer, Geoffrey de Clinton. Clinton, whose main home was in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, had the lands tenanted by Geoffrey de Sancto Roerio, who resultantly changed his surname to the Anglicised Hughenden.

In 1947, the Abbey family and the Disraelian Society made Hughenden over to the National Trust. In 1955, it was designated a Grade I listed building. The gardens are also listed as Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is decorated as it might have been at the time it was occupied by Disraeli. It contains a collection of memorabilia including family portraits, Disraeli's own furnishings, a library including a collection of Disraeli's novels and one written and signed by Queen Victoria along with many of the books he inherited from his father, Isaac D'Israeli.

The park and woodlands total almost . 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.

In May 2024 the house was the featured in an episode the BBC documentary series Hidden Treasures of the National Trust.

Architecture and description

thumb|left|200px|Disraeli's first-floor study

thumb|[[Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (Grant)|Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli by Francis Grant, 1852]]

The present house was built towards the end of the 18th century and was of a stuccoed and unassuming design. However, in 1862 the Disraelis had the house remodelled by the architect Edward Buckton Lamb. Lamb has been described as "one of the most perverse and original of mid-Victorian architects". Architecturally, he had a strong interest in the eclectic; this interest is very apparent in his work at Hughenden. Under Lamb's hand, classical Georgian features were swept away as he "dramatised" the house. Lamb worked in a hybrid baronial form of Gothic architecture, with exposed and angular juxtaposing brickwork surmounted by stepped battlements with diagonal pinnacles. The uppermost windows of the thirteen-bayed garden façade were given unusual pediments – appearing almost as machicolations. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, in his highly critical appraisal of Lamb's work at Hughenden, labels these "window-heads" as "indescribable" and Lamb's overall Hughenden work as "excruciating".

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". 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.

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.

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.

Notes

Sources

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