Advertisement

Accusations of Nazi sympathies, adulterous intrigue and the swimming pool that sparked the Profumo affair: inside Cliveden House, Britain's most scandalous historic hotel

Cliveden probably has the more scandalous history than any hotel in Britain. - The Bridal Photographer
Cliveden probably has the more scandalous history than any hotel in Britain. - The Bridal Photographer

I stare at the vinegary, half-committed smile, the bare shoulders, and the absurd arch of the back. An odd way to paint a woman who was so revolted by sex, she’d bite on an apple to distract herself.

I hear the chink of china and contralto hymn of ladies conversing between mouthfuls of caramelised lemon tart. I block it out and focus again on the woman in the portrait Nancy Astor. I can’t figure out if she’s a nymphish beauty or sallow-faced snoot. I suspect the painter, John Singer Sargent, had the same dilemma. The result is a muddled contradiction. Like the woman herself.

I’m at Cliveden, a country house hotel on a ridge of the Chiltern Hills that seduces guests with its scandalous history and promise of a 'Downton Abbey-like' experience. The painting I’m taken with – as I sit here in the Great Hall between a 15th-century set of armour and a 300-year-old tapestry depicting the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough – is of Nancy Astor, the wife of Cliveden’s owner in the era of Lib-Lab MPs, Charlie Chaplin and the 'afternoon dress'.

Cliveden House, Berkshire
Nancy Astor [third from left] with [left to right] Amy Johnson, Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw.

Nobody has left their mark on Cliveden like this Virginia-born daughter of an alcoholic businessman called Chillie; she transformed it into the most wonderfully incoherent jumble of grandeur with commendable aplomb. Cliveden may bill itself as an Italianate mansion, but it has the giddy self-consciousness of a big house in America’s Deep South.

For starters, there’s the 16th-century fireplace in the Great Hall ripped out of a French chateau, and the balustrade in the gardens swiped from the Villa Borghese in Rome. The French Dining Room – with its semi-nude friezes and gold leaf oozing down the walls – was taken from the hunting lodge of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. My favourite garish wonder at Cliveden is the hideous Gothic Revival mahogany staircase. It’s decorated with mini statues of previous Cliveden residents; time has chipped at the noses.

Cliveden House, Berkshire
The swimming pool helped bring down a government.

The chaotic pomposity of Cliveden is an appropriate legacy for Nancy Astor. The first female MP in history – friend to Irish communists and pals with Emmeline Pankhurst – believed that African-Americans should have been grateful for slavery, and once described Chaim Weizmann as "the only decent Jew I have ever met". She was devoted to her Plymouth constituency, vindictive towards her five children, and such an awful driver she probably inspired Toad of Toad Hall. 

Lady Astor's reputation has suffered accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies over the years, though there is little evidence to unequivocally prove such a claim. She apparently joked that Hitler couldn't be taken seriously because he looked like Charlie Chaplin. In the Thirties, she also supported German rearmament under the Nazis, justifying this with the bewildering claim that Germany was "surrounded by Catholics".

You can enjoy Cliveden and be oblivious to such things, of course: it’s the kind of place where you can stuff yourself with wood pigeon and chou farci after padding around the spa in white slippers, then check out following a smoked salmon-smeared breakfast, feeling you’ve had the most wonderful pampering weekend break. But there’s so much more to this place. Not least the swimming pool that brought down a government.

Cliveden House, Berkshire
Cliveden has the giddy self-consciousness of a big house in America’s Deep South.

One plum-coloured, Mediterranean evening in July 1961, Christine Keeler, a friend of a friend of the owner, Bill Astor, was frolicking in Cliveden’s pool. The aspiring model had grown up malnourished in a house made of two converted railway carriages in Uxbridge and she felt she’d arrived. She was naked, having forgotten her swimming costume. She was 19 years-old. Secretary of State for war, John Profumo, was also a guest. The pool had a new bronze statue of Lord Astor’s son riding a dolphin. He went down to take a look. So began the most scandalous affair in British political history. It ended in a suicide and the downfall of the Macmillan government. That sculpture of the little boy on the dolphin still stands over the pool.

Allow yourself a whole day to appreciate the grounds. In summer, the show-stealing parterre on the lawn blazes with lemon-pink pansies and flowers so yellow you can’t see the bumblebees. There’s also an ancient yew maze as big as the one at Hampton Ccourt. During the First World War, Cliveden became a hospital for wounded soldiers. All that remains is a sunken memorial garden enveloped by cypress trees. It’s a still, emotional place, lined with graves of the deceased, where the ravens kraa deeply and the sun streams in.

Cliveden House, Berkshire
Tea has been a tradition at Cliveden since the 19th century.

My other favourite spot when I visited was a fallen oak tree that Prime Minister George Canning loved sitting under to enjoy views of the Thames. It was all still there – the silver tongue of river between two bush-thickened rushes of greenery. The flushed, rural smell of freedom and damp leaves. When I touched a groove in the bark, smoothed by hundreds of years of human affection, I wondered if it was the weight of all its history – all that it had witnessed – that had finally felled the tree, and not a lightning bolt.

Cliveden is best enjoyed when the National Trust day visitors leave for the day. Overnight guests have exclusive access to the Louis Treize-style Library, with its conceited marble fireplace and cloyingly elaborate wooden walls lined with books about lord chancellors. Order a Profumo hibisco-infused champagne cocktail. Appropriately, it’s rather fruity with a very bitter aftertaste. Bag a table by the window and watch the parterre being slowly smothered by dusk.

Cliveden House, Berkshire
Cliveden's staff pose for a picture on the lawn [1930s].

Dinner in the André Garrett restaurant also delivers the goods. This might have been the Astors’ mere drawing room, but it’s still preposterously lavish, with vast duck-egg velvet chairs built for the obese, and tables laid with show plates based on a china set recently discovered among the Astors’ things. The food is of the foie gras-sodden, garlic-breathed variety. I feasted on English rose veal tartare as soft and inviting as an Egyptian-cotton quilted bed. It was creamed with a quail yolk and salt-spiked by way of caviar.

This was followed by locally stalked venison in a jus with clippings of chestnuts and an after-sigh of blackberry. Eating deer always makes sense here, by the way: the Duke of Buckingham chose the site for Cliveden in 1666 partly so he could to hunt them here in the surrounding nearby woods.

Cliveden House, Berkshire - Credit: Adrian Houston Limited/Adrian Houston
Even the smallest rooms have antiques and handmade beds. Credit: Adrian Houston Limited/Adrian Houston

The Duke also built Cliveden for Anna Maria, his dozey, hypochondriac mistress. Critics said the rumpole-nosed best friend of Charles II and one-time geometry student of Thomas Hobbes had a 'diseased and crazy' lust for pleasure. Many blamed him for the King’s 'ill principles'. The duke killed Anna Maria’s husband when challenged to a duel. But it was his reformist politics that prompted parliament to accuse him of promoting popery, beating a man in a cornfield and sodomy. Dismissed from all offices, he spent his final days holed away in his laboratory, trying to conjure a philosopher’s stone that would turn all base metals into gold.

Cliveden House, Berkshire - Credit: © All images subject to copyright - Richard Booth
Dinner in the André Garrett restaurant delivers the goods. Credit: © All images subject to copyright - Richard Booth

As you saunter through the halls, it’s also worth sparing a poor thought for the thousands of servants who have tended to the whims of Cliveden’s owners over the centuries. Even just 100 years ago, the footmen had to polish all of the silver by hand. If the lady or lord of the house passed, they stood with their noses against the wall.

History lovers should book into the Sutherland Suite, with a bed that Queen Victoria slept in and a Grade I listed dressing table. The riverside cottage where the monarch came for tea is available to hire. I stayed in the Inchiquin suite: a princess bed swooning with pink drapes, a working fireplace and snowdrop-specked garden views. Even the smallest rooms have antiques and handmade beds. Some also have a private terrace with hot tubs. I’m certain Nancy Astor would not approve.



Cliveden Road, Taplow, Maidenhead, Berkshire (01628 605069; clivedenhouse.co.uk). Double rooms from £495, including breakfast. For more information on Cliveden, read the full review, and for more Berkshire recommendations, read our guide to the best hotels.