The Conservative Party
At one time they owned some of the best hotels in Britain. The portfolio of the two Andrews – Messrs Davis and Onraet embraced 30 odd mostly historic hotels included Ston Easton Park in Bath, Sharrow Bay in Cumbria, and most famously of all Cliveden in Berkshire. They knew how to throw a good party – we didn’t need an excuse to jive away an evening at their stuccoed Belgravia mansion. The Sunday Times restaurant critic Michael Winner was a close friend; Raine Countess Spencer was too. You never knew who you’d share a bottle of Moët with by the indoor basement swimming pool.
So when they suggested we visit Cliveden, there was only one response: when can we go? It was the heady summer of 2010 when we went south to Berkshire’s best. Our review for Luxury Travel Magazine at the time contained the prescient line, “Notoriety and Cliveden go hand in hand.” Sadly, little did we know that two years after our visit Von Essen would go out of business. A certain Meghan Markle and her mother would later spend the night before her wedding to Prince Harry at Cliveden. The National Trust continues to own the grounds while the hotel has changed hands several times since.
Another forte of the two Andrews was PR. Von Essen sponsored The Sunday Times’ Rich List and regularly appeared in the glossies. An article predating their tenure was written by Jo Newson and Dorothy Bosomworth in Traditional Interior Decoration, February / March 1988. They state, “Country house hotels are a relatively recent phenomenon. They have sprung up with a demand for something more than comfort: a wider appreciation of style without streamlining, and a recognition of the value of old buildings in our brave new world. Cliveden is one of the most recent – and important – examples.”
Here goes. At a bend in the Thames a house has twice risen from the ashes: welcome to Cliveden. Have you ever stayed at an historic hotel and yearned to learn more about its past? Von Essen Hotels have the answer. Throughout 2010 they are rolling out Heritage Concierges at all their properties. Guests can discover the history of the hotel they are staying at through a dedicated member of staff. Tours are free but must be booked upon arrival. First to offer this innovative concept is Cliveden (drop your E’s to pronounce “Cliv’d’n”) in Berkshire.
And what a task. Cliveden has been the scene of riotous living by the rich and infamous for almost three and a half centuries. Spies, call girls, billionaires, dukes and queens have all partied hard here. The name is so synonymous with presidential league entertaining that even the Sugar King Julio Lobo referred to his bolthole for holding court in Havana as the “Cliveden of Cuba”. But Michael Chaloner, Cliveden’s Heritage Concierge, is well up to the job. He jokes that he’s been at the hotel forever. Michael explains, “Surprisingly the house has never been the principal seat of any of its owners. It’s always been a holiday home if somewhat on a grand scale. When it was converted to a hotel in 1985 barely any changes needed to be made.” Some things really haven’t changed. Sue Crawley, Hotel Manager – actually the staff never refer to “hotel” but rather “house” – comments, “All the food still comes up on trays from the cellar kitchen. This involves navigating four twists of the narrow staircase!”
The present house is an impossibly palatial affair erected in 1852 to the design of Sir Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland. This starchitect practised his penchant for all things Italianate a decade earlier at the Reform Club on Pall Mall, London, before being let loose at Cliveden. It’s hard not to feel important, sitting on plumped up cushions in the Great Hall under the disdainful eye of Lady Astor in a Sargent portrait, while on the other side of the tall sash windows a gaggle of National Trust tourists gawk and traipse past (Von Essen lease the building from The National Trust).
Each of the 39 bedrooms is individually decorated and named after someone connected to the house, from the Tudorbethan panelling of the Mountbatten Room to the sloping ceilings of the Prince Albert Room. In the Asquith Room you can lie back in the bath and watch the limos pulling up in the forecourt three storeys below. Thankfully there’s not a modern extension in sight. Fancy a fourposter bed? No problem, try the Chinese Room. A coronet bed? That will be the Sutherland Suite. A polonaise bed? Not sure, but there’s probably one somewhere. Cliveden doesn’t do second class. No wonder Queen Victoria stayed here for six weeks.
Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt and George Bernard Shaw have also enjoyed stints at Cliveden. In 1893 the hideously wealthy American tycoon William Astor, who’d bought the house 13 years earlier for a staggering $1.25 million, presented it to his son as a wedding gift. Halcyon days beckoned as Astor junior and his glamorous wife Nancy hosted society. The government of the day was broke (sounds familiar?) and so ministers were only too glad to meet visiting dignitaries at Cliveden. But it is the fall of a later government that keeps Michael’s tour especially lively. Almost half a century ago, on a balmy Saturday evening in midsummer the Secretary of State for War Jack Profumo clapped eyes on Christine Keeler, a 19 year old demimondaine, larking round the outdoor swimming pool. The rest is history as immortalised in the 1989 film Scandal starring John Hurt, Ian McKellen and Joanne Whalley.
“Lord Astor had persistent backache,” says Michael, “so he allowed his osteopath Stephen Ward use of Spring Cottage on the estate as payment in kind. That fateful evening the party staying at Spring Cottage included Ward’s acquaintance Christine Keeler and Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet assistant attaché who was also a spy. Meanwhile Profumo and his wife, the beautiful Northern Irish actress Valerie Hobson, were guests of the Astors. After dinner they strolled out of the house to the pool area. Profumo in a dinner jacket; Keeler emerging from the pool in a dripping towel. Their clandestine affair began the following day. When Keeler sold her story to a tabloid it was revealed she’d been sleeping with both Profumo and Ivanov at the same time.” A case of Reds in the beds.
Jack Profumo baldly denied any impropriety in his relationship with Christine Keeler in a statement to the House of Commons. “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” tartly snapped Mandy Rice-Davies, Christine’s best buddy and co accused of prostitution, later at the subsequent court case. He finally confessed although not before suing Paris Match and Italian magazine Il Tempo for libel. Stephen Ward was tried on trumped up charges relating to immoral earnings and committed suicide before the case concluded. Jack’s career lay in tatters and the furore brought down the then Conservative government in 1964. The swimming pool is now Grade I Listed in its own right.
Notoriety and Cliveden go hand in hand. Its first owner, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London. It was said of the Duke that “a young lady could not resist his charms … all his trouble in wooing was, he came, saw and conquered”. He challenged his mistress’s husband to a duel in 1696. And lost. A cross sword emblem set into the East Lawn commemorates his gory death. Even the luscious interiors, manicured to within a square centimetre of their lives, aren’t quite all they seem. Look closely and you’ll find the unexpected, from blood spattered soldiers lurking in the Great Hall tapestries to rabbits mercilessly trapped behind balusters in the gruesome plasterwork of the French Dining Room.
Once a full day’s coach ride from London, Cliveden is now just an hour by train from Paddington. A chauffeur can pick you up from the station at nearby Burnham. Natch. Culinary delights to satisfy the most demanding of gourmands await. The Terrace Dining Room greedily devours six windows of the nine bay garden front. Menu highlights include John Dory slowly cooked to perfection and Heston Blumenthalesque chocolate fondant (The Fat Duck restaurant is a mere 6.5 kilometres downstream).
Business Development Manager Amanda Irby confirms that these days you are more likely to find television chef Jamie Oliver celebrating his 10th anniversary at an informal dinner on the terrace than any political mischief unfolding. “Or you may well pass Sir Paul McCartney engaged in conversation with his daughter Stella next to the Great Hall fireplace,” she remarks. Indeed the President of Afghanistan held meetings in the Macmillan Room lately. History is rumbling along. The Heritage Concierge at Cliveden will never be short of tales to update his tours.
