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Chartwell is a country house near Westerham, Kent, in South East England. For over forty years, it was the home of Sir Winston Churchill. He bought the property in September 1922 and lived there until shortly before his death in January 1965. During the 1930s, when Churchill was out of political office, Chartwell became the centre of his world. At his dining table, he gathered those who could assist his campaign against German re-armament and the British government's response of appeasement; in his study, he composed speeches and wrote books; in his garden, he built walls, constructed lakes — both with his own hands — and painted. During the Second World War, Chartwell was largely unused, the Churchills returning after he lost the 1945 election. In 1953, when again prime minister, the house became Churchill's refuge when he suffered a debilitating stroke. In October 1964, he left for the last time, dying at his London home, 28 Hyde Park Gate, on 24 January 1965.
The origins of the estate reach back to the 14th century; in 1382, the property (then called Well-street) was owned by William-at-Well. It passed through various owners and was auctioned in 1836, as a substantial brick-built manor. In 1848, it was purchased by John Campbell Colquhoun, whose grandson sold it to Churchill. The Campbell Colquhouns greatly enlarged the house and the advertisement for its sale at the time of Churchill's purchase described it as an imposing mansion. Between 1922 and 1924, it was rebuilt and extended by the society architect Philip Tilden. From the garden front, the house has extensive views over the Weald of Kent, "the most beautiful and charming" Churchill had ever seen, and the determining factor in his decision to buy the house.
In 1946, when financial constraints forced Churchill to consider selling Chartwell, it was acquired by the National Trust with funds raised by a consortium of Churchill's friends (led by Lord Camrose), on condition that the Churchills retained a life-tenancy. After Churchill's death, Lady Churchill surrendered her rights to the house, and it was opened to the public by the Trust in 1966 as a historic house museum. A Grade I listed building, for its historical significance rather than its architectural merit, Chartwell has become among the Trust's most popular properties; 232,000 people visited the house in 2016, the fiftieth anniversary of its opening.
The previous 15 months had been personally and professionally calamitous. In June 1921, Churchill's mother had died, followed three months later by his youngest child, Marigold. In late 1922, he fell ill with appendicitis and at the end of the year lost his Scottish parliamentary seat at Dundee.
Philip Tilden, Churchill's architect, began work on the house in 1922 and the Churchills rented a farmhouse near Westerham, with Churchill frequently visiting the site to observe progress. The two-year building programme, the ever-rising costs – which escalated from the initial estimate of £7,000 to over £18,000 – and a series of construction difficulties (particularly relating to damp) soured relations between architect and client; by 1924, Churchill and Tilden were barely on speaking terms. Legal arguments, conducted through their respective lawyers, continued until 1927. Clementine's anxieties about the costs, both of building and subsequently living at Chartwell, also continued. In September 1923, Churchill wrote to her, "My beloved, I beg you not to worry about money, or to feel insecure. Chartwell is to be our home (and) we must endeavour to live there for many years." Churchill finally moved into the house in April 1924; a letter dated 17 April to Clementine begins, "This is the first letter I have ever written from this place, and it is right that it should be to you".
In February 1926, Churchill's political colleague Sir Samuel Hoare described a visit in a letter to the Media proprietor Lord Beaverbrook; "I have never seen Winston before in the role of landed proprietor, ... the engineering works on which he is engaged consist of making a series of ponds in a valley and Winston appeared to be a great deal more interested in them than in anything else in the world". As Hoare's presence indicated, Churchill's holidays were very rarely pure vacations. Roy Jenkins, in his study, The Chancellors, contrasted Churchill's approach to holidaying with that of his then boss, Stanley Baldwin. "Churchill went to Chartwell or elsewhere to lengthen the stride of his political work, but not greatly to reduce its quantity; far from shutting himself off, he persuaded as many as possible of his colleagues and henchmen to visit him, to receive his ever-generous hospitality." In January 1928, James Lees-Milne stayed as a guest of Churchill's son Randolph. He described an evening after dinner; "We remained at that round table till after midnight. Mr Churchill spent a blissful two hours demonstrating with decanters and wine glasses how the Battle of Jutland was fought. He got worked up like a schoolboy, making barking noises in imitation of gunfire, and blowing cigar smoke across the battle scene in imitation of gun smoke". On 26 September 1927, Churchill composed the first of his Chartwell Bulletins, which were lengthy letters to Clementine, written to her while she was abroad. In the bulletins, Churchill described in great detail the ongoing works on the house and the gardens, and aspects of his life there. The 26 September letter opens with a report of Churchill's deepening interest in painting; "Walter Sickert arrived on Friday night and we worked very hard at various paintings ... I am really thrilled ... I see my way to paint far better pictures than I ever thought possible before".
Churchill described his life at Chartwell during the later 1930s in the first volume of his history of the Second World War, The Gathering Storm. "I had much to amuse me. I built ... two cottages, ... and walls and made ... a large swimming pool which ... could be heated to supplement our fickle sunshine. Thus I ... dwelt at peace within my habitation". Bill Deakin, one of Churchill's research assistants, recalled his working routine. "He would start the day at eight o'clock in bed, reading. Then he started with his mail. His lunchtime conversation was quite magnificent, ...absolutely free for all. After lunch, if he had guests he would take them round the garden. At seven he would bathe and change for dinner. At midnight, when the guests left, then he would start work ... to three or four in the morning. The secret was his phenomenal power to concentrate." In his study of Churchill as author, the historian Peter Clarke described Chartwell as "Winston's word factory".
In the opinion of Robin Fedden, a diplomat, and later Deputy General Secretary of the National Trust and author of the Trust's first guidebook for Chartwell, the house became "the most important country house in Europe". The historian Graham Stewart, in his study of Tory Party politics, Burying Caesar, described it as "a sort of Jacobitism court of St Germain". A stream of friends, colleagues, disgruntled civil servants, concerned military officers and foreign envoys came to the house to provide information to support Churchill's struggle against appeasement. At Chartwell, he developed what Fedden calls, his own "little Foreign Office ... the hub of resistance". The Chartwell visitors' book, meticulously maintained from 1922, records 780 house guests, not all of them friends, but all grist to Churchill's mill. An example of the latter was Sir Maurice Hankey, Clerk of the Privy Council, who was Churchill's guest for dinner in April 1936. Hankey subsequently wrote, "I do not usually make a note of private conversations but some points arose which gave an indication of the line which Mr Churchill is likely to take in forthcoming debates (on munitions and supply) in Parliament". A week later, Reginald Leeper, a senior Foreign Office official and confidant of Robert Vansittart, visited Churchill to convey their views on the need to use the League of Nations to counter German aggression. Vansittart wrote, "there is no time to lose. There is indeed a great danger that we shall be too late".
Churchill also recorded visits to Chartwell by two more of his most important suppliers of confidential governmental information, Desmond Morton and Ralph Wigram, information which he used to "form and fortify my opinion about the Hitler Movement". Their sharing of data on German rearmament was at some risk to their careers; the military historian Richard Holmes is clear that Morton's actions breached the Official Secrets Act. Chartwell was also the scene of more direct attempts to prepare Britain for the coming conflict; in October 1939, when reappointed First Lord of the Admiralty on the outbreak of war, Churchill suggested an improvement for anti-aircraft shells; "Such shells could be filled with zinc ethyl which catches fire spontaneously ... A fraction of an ounce was demonstrated at Chartwell last summer".
In 1938, Churchill, beset by financial concerns, again considered selling Chartwell, at which time the house was advertised as containing five reception rooms, nineteen bed and dressing rooms, eight bathrooms, set in eighty acres with three cottages on the estate and a heated and floodlit swimming pool. He withdrew the sale after the industrialist Henry Strakosch agreed to take over his share portfolio, which had been hit heavily by losses on Wall Street, for three years and pay off significant associated debts. In September 1938, the Russian Ambassador, Ivan Maisky, made his first visit and recorded his impressions of Chartwell: "A wonderful place! A two-storey house, large and tastefully presented; the terrace affords a breathtaking view of Kent's hilly landscape; ponds with goldfish of varying size; a pavilion-cum-studio with dozens of paintings - his own creations - hanging on the walls; his pride and joy, a small brick cottage which he was building with his own hands". His impression of his host was somewhat less favourable; asked what special occasion would lead Churchill to drink a bottle of wine dating from 1793 from his cellar, Churchill had replied - "We'll drink this together when Great Britain and Russia beat Hitler's Germany". Maisky's unspoken reaction was recorded in his diary, "Churchill's hatred of Berlin really has gone beyond all limits!"
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. Jock 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".
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 Baron 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 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.
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".
On the garden front, Tilden threw up a large, three-storey extension with stepped gables, called by Churchill "my promontory", which contains three of the house's most important rooms, the dining room, in the lower-storey basement, and the drawing room and Lady Churchill's bedroom above.
Churchill depicted the dining room in one of his own pictures, Tea at Chartwell: 29 August 1927. The scene shows Churchill in one of his dining chairs with his family and guests: Thérèse Sickert, and her husband, Walter Richard Sickert, Churchill's friend and artistic tutor; Edward Marsh, Churchill's secretary; his friends Diana Mitford and Frederick Lindemann; and Clementine, Randolph and Diana Churchill. Above the dining room is the drawing room and, above that, Lady Churchill's bedroom, described by Churchill as "a magnificent aerial bower".
To the south is the croquet lawn, previously a tennis court—Lady Churchill was an accomplished and competitive player of both, although Churchill was not. Beyond the lawn are several structures grouped around the Victorian kitchen garden, many of which Churchill was involved in building. He had developed an interest in bricklaying when he bought Chartwell and throughout the 1920s and 1930s constructed walls, a summerhouse and some houses on the estate. In 1928, he joined the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers, a move which caused controversy. Near the kitchen garden is the golden rose walk, containing thirty-two varieties of golden Garden rose, a golden wedding anniversary present to the Churchills from their children in 1958, and Churchill's painting studio, constructed in the 1930s, which now houses a large collection of his artistic works.
South of the terrace lawn are the upper and lower lakes, a scene of Churchill's most ambitious landscaping schemes. The lower lake had existed during the Colquhouns' ownership, but the island within it, and the upper lake, were Churchill's own creations. On 1 January 1935, while Lady Churchill was on a cruise off Sumatra, Churchill described the beginnings of his endeavours in one of his Chartwell Bulletins; "I have arranged to have one of those great mechanical diggers. In one week he can do more than 40 men can do. There is no difficulty about bringing him in as he is a caterpillar and can walk over the most sloppy fields". Excavation work proved more challenging than Churchill had anticipated; two weeks later he wrote again, "The mechanical digger has arrived. He moves about on his caterpillars only with the greatest difficulty on this wet ground". On the lakes lived Churchill's large collection of wildfowl, including the , a gift from the Australian Government, which restocked the lakes with them in 1975. Churchill had a sentimental attachment to the fauna that lived at Chartwell: his close friend Violet Bonham Carter recalled their conversation in the garden in the early 1950s; "He was bemoaning the fact that the summer had been a bad one for butterflies when suddenly to his delight he saw two Vanessa atalanta alighting on a clump of Buddleia bushes he had planted to attract them. I shall never forget his pleasure".
A more lucrative venture was the owning, and later breeding, of racehorses. In 1949, Churchill had purchased Colonist II, who won his first race, the Upavon Stakes, at Salisbury that year, and subsequently netted Churchill £13,000 in winnings. In 1955, Churchill bought the Newchapel Stud and by 1961 his total prize money from racing exceeded £70,000. In the 1950s, he reflected on his racing career; "Perhaps Providence had given him Colonist as a comfort in his old age and to console him for disappointments".
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