Now that's some back garden! (Cliveden parterre)

Cliveden

Cliveden House is located in a gilded stretch of countryside in Buckinghamshire, about half an hour from Windsor and north of the M4. It has a past laced with glamour, intrigue and famous people from Winston Churchill to Rudyard Kipling, so that should be enough to lure you in from the leafy surrounding lanes. 

I was fortunate enough to visit on a beautiful June day when a gorgeous slice of the Home Counties looks its peerless best. This area is plump like a well stocked salmon fishery with tokens of opulence like open top sports cars, green and brown astro turfed tennis courts, and glimpses of irresistible property. So, unless you are driving a white Jaguar and are dressed in red corduroys and sporting a big quiff just don't bother to come!    

Driving into the grounds through the main entrance with its cannon ball stones to either side you feel like an aristocrat entering their lair, but then you realise that there are a thousand other cars like yours doing exactly the same thing. I'm just another peasant! The driveway winds through extensive grounds and there was some sort of checkpoint where cars were both parked and were stopping. Some cars were carrying on and I decided to follow. The NT official at the hut waved me on (obviously knew I was aristocratic stock) and I carried on up to the main car park adjacent to where it all happens. 

Cliveden is a big site, one of the biggest I have visited, with cafes and toilet facilities scattered over a large area between gardens and house, so if you miss one refreshment stop, there's another not too far away. Where you park up it's a short walk to the outbuildings and an information kiosk where you get your map and ask if you can go on a tour of the big house, which you can do on a timed basis.  Mine was for 4pm. Meanwhile around here are gardens and a cafe to keep you occupied. Also in this area is a cinema, Gas Yard, maze and Estate Office.

Go through the gate and you find yourself not far from the Fountain of Love at the end of the main driveway to Cliveden House. Again, unless you are driving a Jag or a Bentley, with a lady in a light head scarf and shades alongside you, up the straight gravelled drive to the main house you are not doing it properly. You feel naked standing on your two pins in a pair of jeans wallowing in all this opulence. The word 'grand' comes to mind when you espy the house in the distance. The fountain is just too big and decorative, the driveway too long and wide, the house too much of a magnificent pile in the middle distance to be called anything other than.

The Fountain of Love - spot the Lamborghini!

Only to be approached in an Aston Martin!

You couldn't make it up, but as I was standing there taking photos a white Lamborghini eased down the drive and stopped by the fountain to show off or whatever. The two doors opened gull like  upwards and outwards like a Thunderbirds super car and out stepped a tall and striking man of the world dressed like somebody important with attendant big hair and sunglasses. From the other side stepped, no, not a raging beauty of the Sophia Loren sort, but a short man who could be the head gardener. But of course he could be one of the world's richest men just dressing down for the day. Or could perhaps these two be checking out the locale for the next Bilderberger conference? Who knows? 

I couldn't be bothered to quiz them or hang around for a photo op so headed towards the nearest garden off to the right to check the hinterland and move towards the Thames which is deliciously near. Up through the Long Garden with its topiary and sculpture puts you in 'wandering aimlessly' mode, and then you reach the Blenheim Pavilion built to commemorate the battle of Blenheim, a smallish white colonnaded structure, which sits just outside the Long Garden high above the Thames and sort of provides the main introduction to the less perfectly gardened outlying grounds.  

Have you seen my Long Garden?

From here the grounds fall away steeply and extensively towards the Thames. Not far away is a grass amphitheatre on the slopes surrounded by vegetation, apparently a spot where the great and the good entertained themselves with various performances, including the first rendering of Rule Brittania when the estate was leased to Frederick, Prince of Wales. This area is all rich woodland falling down to the Thames which is tantalisingly invisible due to the foliage apart from glimpses of the water. If you follow the path parallel to the Thames far below you get to a felled oak (Canning's oak), a plum spot where Lord Canning, Britain's shortest serving prime minister (119 days in 1827), would sit here for ages and contemplate the view. He often visited as a friend of Sir George Warrender. And it is some view, down to the Thames glittering below and running alongside the wooded slopes, then on the other side, a scrumpled duvet of green countryside stretching away into the distance. A great place to contemplate the affairs of State, and this spot, now so accessible from London, would have been an age from the capital in those days. Just over the Thames is the village of Cookham, reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2011 as the 2nd richest village in Britain. Well who cares! But you get the vibe.

Cliveden view

You can make your way back up the slopes to the house at this point, which I did for the tour. In the apron out front of the house is the usual assortment of cars no doubt for house guests, as this is now a top hotel. Here you can spot a massive Bentley lined up with an attention seeking number plate to go with it. 

It's only a short tour round part of the ground floor, but worthwhile nevertheless. We get a potted history of the place including the era when the American Astor family used it for lavish entertainment in the pre war years. Cliveden is known of course for the 'Cliveden Set,' a group of prominent upper class individuals who frequented the estate in the thirties, and for the Profumo affair which brought down the Macmillan government of the early 1960s. No doubt there have been some exaggerations around these topics, but you can't help thinking that there would be no better place than Cliveden for intrigue, bohemian behaviour, spy stories and illicit goings on. We were informed about the usual such as the paintings, key characters in Cliveden history and the various setbacks that have afflicted the estate, including not one but two fires finishing off a previous house. The present house was designed by Charles Barry, who incidentally was the architect of that small London building, the Houses of Parliament, as well as St. Peter's church in Brighton.

Cliveden terrace

Pity about the scaffolding

Cliveden is definitely up there with the grand houses of the UK with its large size and extensive grounds, but what gives it a bit of an edge in the competition stakes is what's on the other side of the long drive up to the entrance. Blenheim Palace might be the daddy of all UK stately homes, and Knole might have a great deer park, but Cliveden can shake her apron skirts and unfold her crown and joy, the peerless parterre rolling out of the back of the property. A parterre is a formal garden constructed on a level surface if you want to know, and the one at Cliveden is one of the largest in Britain and covers an area of four acres, filled with 30,000 bulbs and plants in the spring and summer. It really hits the eye as you peruse it from the grand terrace at the back of the house. Not only huge and beautiful, it's the setting with grand open vistas of countryside and the Thames twinkling down below in the distance that really hits you. Quite magnificent! If anything typifies Cliveden it's this view, it cannot be missed.

What do you think of my parterre?

Take a stroll around the parterre to discover one or two more delights. There is the chapel to the right hand side, a little construction suspended above the Thames with accompanying balcony for photos. Sadly I was too late to step inside, all locked up! Normally entry is free and no tickets are required.

Make your way around the outside of the parterre and take a few more snaps of the great house and it's terrace, and you can take a break at the Orangery cafe just to the north east of the main house. This has two cafes in one, a smaller snack bar and a bigger sit down affair. By the time you have downed your toffee and fudge cake it may be time to vacate the premises for a half five close.