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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.

Sandwich Bay + Sandwich Town Kent

Hot Property

We’ve never made a sandwich but we’ve made it to Sandwich. It’s American tastemaker Charles Plante’s favourite English town. Sandwich is filled with a relishable collection of chocolate box cottages and delicious candy coloured shops. All in very good taste of course. We’ll toast to that! Sandwich is sandwiched between Deal and Ramsgate – give or take the odd golf course (Royal St George’s) and even a country park (Pegwell Bay). But first the bay.

The Rockefeller scaled mansions of Sandwich Bay make regular appearances in Country Life, Tatler and The New York Times. They’re more East Hampton than East Kent. Great Gatsby over Great Britain. When one comes up for sale it’s like selling sunrise. Take Rest Harrow. We would. And its 14 bedrooms. It was built in 1910 for Viscount William Waldorf Astor and his wife, a certain Nancy. The Viscount’s father opened the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Nancy had form too: she was the first lady elected to the British Parliament to take her seat. Her Ladyship was a big believer in seawater: she had it piped straight into her two en suite bathrooms in the madame bedroom. Rest Harrow was recently sold for the first time in its history. Despite being surrounded by a 1.2 hectare garden, the house is gloriously exposed to the prevailing winds and onlooking flâneurs.

Strolling along the coast from Deal, Royal Cinque Ports Golf Clubhouse is the first gargantuan landmark on the landscape. Dating from 1892, an early photograph shows it as a heavily verandah’d Wild West chalet capped by a Tudor style giant gable. Architect unknown. Over the years it has been rendered almost unrecognisable – save for the gable shape – by rendering on a lavish scale and a series of elongating extensions.

Next on our jaunt Sandilands comes into sight, a vision in red brick under a hipped roof. This was bread and butter stuff for the tasteful architect Sir Reginald Blomfield, grandson of the Bishop of London (Right Reverend Charles Blomfield). His turn of last century practice had a specialism in country houses, new and revamped. Among the latter was Chequers in Buckinghamshire. Built in 1930, Sandilands’ spreadeagled plan embraces sea views from an array of angles. No doubt his client Samuel, Lord Vestey, sat on the first floor with binoculars looking at the birds going past. Sandilands is but a taste of things to come.

Rest Harrow is next and then The Dunes. This early 20th century brick house takes the plan of Sandilands and gives it wings. A butterfly blueprint. More obscure than his contemporary Sir Reginald, the well bred architect Charles Biddulph-Pinchard was still versed in country house design. His client was John Lonsdale, 1st Baron Armaghdale. Some of the original multi paned fenestration has been replaced with picture windows and with such views that’s not surprising.

The architectural feast changes with Whitehall. Surprisingly, it’s another Sir Reginald Blomfield special. Built in 1909, Whitehall has a rendered ground floor with stone detailing and a double height slate mansard filled to the rafters with a gluttony of dormers. The effect has more than a whiff of Marie-Antoinette about it, a seaside cottage orné on serious steroids.

Last of the big houses straddling the coast riding high on the waves of success comes Kentlands. We love spilling the beans. All 600 square metres of this house was built for the Heinz family. They might have been American but you don’t get more English that Kentlands. This time Charles Biddulph-Pinchard recycled two 17th century timber framed houses, threw in a barn for the fun of it, and the result is as if a piece of Chester fell from the sky and landed in, well, Kent. These five houses were to be part of a new seaside resort but World War I put paid to that. Instead, a glorious sparseness, an extravagance of hectarage very far from the madding crowd, triumphs.

Sandwich: The Story of a Famous Kentish Port published in 1907 is the 63rd book in the slightly sinister titled series The Homeland Handbooks. Editor Arthur Anderson raves, “Within easy reach of the popular and growing watering places of northeast Kent lies a town which should be visited by everyone with a regard for things ancient and beautiful, with a mind that would be affected by historic associations, and with emotions that can be touched by the story of a brave but chequered existence. Sandwich lies among the marshes left by the sea on its retirement from the bluffs of Richborough and Minster. Placed here among the flats, it is one of the sunniest towns in England. From horizon to horizon there is no single elevation to cast a shadow or to intercept the sunshine. Only when clouds are riding and sea winds sweeping over, are the brightest colours of the town and its gleaming belt of meadow and river obscured. Since the harbour sealed up – and not all the pathetic efforts of the townsmen served to avert the disaster – Sandwich has ceased to play the part to which it was accustomed in earlier days. But its bygone importance and wealth are attested by the remains that give it a picturesqueness such as few places can rival.”

The Pellicane House on High Street is one of the larger houses in Sandwich town centre. It’s a sweet confection of the ages: the 15th century original house was given a makeover 200 years later followed by a Georgian upgrade. The flint faced façade displays a charming symmetry gone somewhat awry and is crowned by a castellated parapet. Marie-Laure Frioux, originally from Nantes, brings French elegance to Market Street with her antiques shop Fleur de France. As for Charles Plante, he’s been an art and antiques dealer in London and America for three decades. He summarises his taste as, “Ruins, urns, neoclassical landscapes and interiors; evocations in paint, pencil and watercolour of the ancient world… neoclassical furniture, porcelain and bronzes – all have been my passion for the past 30 years.”

The Butchery, Cattle Market, Fellowship Walk, Love Lane, Pillory Gate and Moat Sole all beg intrigue and further exploration. Bringing the beach inland, putting the sand in Sandwich, our lunch is at Tan Bueno on New Street which advertises itself as “Costa del Sandwich”. It’s the Canary Islands come to the environs of the Isle of Thanet. There are no sandwiches on the menu. Just tapas, the best thing since sliced bread.

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