I spent the day in Buckinghamshire yesterday to visit some National Trust properties. Weather was promising for a high twenties early thirties temperature as the cloud burned off, and by the time I got to Hughenden Manor the sun was beginning to seep through the trees. I wanted to return to Hughenden to look at the Second World War displays which I did not do justice to on my previous visit. Hughenden was known as 'Hillside' in the war, and the manor was basically requisitioned by the RAF to make maps for bomber command. Today on the ground and first floors you can visit the 'Disraeli' part of the story, with rooms laid out as they would have been when British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli lived there in the nineteenth century. However, to the left in the entrance hall is a stairway going down to the basement, and here everything is devoted to the extraordinary story of how Hughenden provided a vital link in the chain of the war effort.
There was a tour at 12.45 which lasts about 40 minutes. This I joined and found myself with a predominantly older audience, as you'd expect, with just the odd teenager. Hughenden's wartime secrets were kept for a very long time, right into the twenty first century. It was actually on Hitler's hit list as Schloss Hughenden, it seems not necessarily because it was a map making factory but because it was a big building where something might have been going on therefore it was worth bombing! Stately homes requisitioned during the war were often damaged but Hughenden was rather better looked after as household items were packed away until the end of the war. Meanwhile the manor was given over to receiving the photographs taken by reconnaissance aircraft and turning them into manageable chunks for bomber command to use. Hughenden was part of the solution to a massive problem. Up to the work of Hillside the allies had been relying on German tourist maps for their target preparation, but then the Germans had stopped producing tourist maps in the mid thirties. This had meant that the allies 'hit rate' had been very poor as they were relying on such old maps, so a commission was put together to solve the problem. As a result reconnaissance aircraft took millions of photos which were processed and ended up as target maps produced at Hughenden. From here the maps were driven out by a set of drivers to bomber command airfields to provide much greater accuracy to the bomber crews.
Maps made here were of Berlin, Hamburg, Peenemunde and the dams of Dambuster fame. In the Ice House, and outbuilding near the main house were installed the Ice house boys who helped produce the maps. They had a reputation for mischief which included getting new recruits to pose for a snap for their girlfriend, then releasing a bucket of water over their heads! Planes took photos from slightly different angles which when put together gave a three D image. When maps were put together the makers were never told exactly where the location of these maps was. Those that put the maps together had to highlight particular features such as woods, railways, roads and obviously the target.
My day in Buckinghamshire also included a visit to Dorneywood, one of the government's grace and favour houses. It is normally occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer but not exclusively so. It can also be occupied by the Deputy Prime Minister. Right now George Osborne is on the way out having lived there for six years, and it sounds like the staff will miss the children who have grown up with them. Osborne out but Philip Hammond, allegedly an ex Goth from his teenage years, will be in as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Dorneywood garden is a National Trust visit, but you can only visit the house if you book ahead by email for a tour of the ground floor. The whole area is bristling with security cameras so no photography is allowed otherwise you might be chased through Buckinghamshire countryside by assorted police cars. Dorneywood is in the Burnham area but is hidden away in a tangle of country lanes that makes it more difficult to find than Frodo's ring. I set my sat nav on my mobile phone but it seemed to freeze up so I had to interpret the map on the screen from the actual road names. Thankfully the lanes round here had cute English names.
You can't enter by the main gates which open onto a tree lined drive which bends round to the right and up to the house door. You have to enter by a gate a little way down the road and park in a field by the estate. A man lets you in and you can walk past the kitchen garden on the right, then through a clutch of outbuildings and cottages which are obviously being worked on. Everything is pristine, green and Home Counties neat and tidy. You soon find yourself at the front door and a very pleasant Englishman ticked me off on the list and let me in, wondering if I had cycled all the way from Worthing (I obviously looked that fit).
The house itself was the epitome of Englishness, with a light and airy ground floor and eight bedrooms upstairs. You enter through a porch with finely painted miniatures on the wall, then straight into an elegant dining room with a very large dining table at which you can imagine the Chancellor and his favourite in crowd enjoying a five course dinner together. Windows open out on both sides, notably out to the garden which rolls away across a gentle landscape of trees and fields. The next room is a drawing room of some sort which again is stuffed with desks, armchairs, pictures and a TV cabinet. Through a little annexe and you find yourself in the living room, just about the highlight of the house, large and airy with a grand piano at one end (although I am told the Osbornes were not into it) and a fine large desk at the other end looking out through large bay windows to the rather alluring gardens outside, falling away into a dell. Here one can imagine a Chancellor struggling for inspiration to balance the books being hit by a eureka moment as he ponders over those soothing green lawns. The rest of the room provides a comfortable space for a family to while away a winters evening. Adjoining this room, the little annexe opens into a sort of garden room with seating space where you can picture a splendidly hatted granny reading a picture book to a bonneted grandchild.
Then it's out onto the resplendent lawns of Dorneywood that form a ha ha, which if you didn't know is a turfed incline which slopes downwards to a sharply vertical face, such as a masonry retaining wall! As fate would have it, before me rose up a large white tent for refreshments. Is this where we would meet George Osborne at last? Sadly he was nowhere to be seen. We would have to make do with tea and cake, in this case a sumptuous slice of Victoria sponge, possible made by the incumbent chef? It was all very reminiscent of Glyndbourne or Henley on a summers day. But one can only take so much of this pampering, and time was running out before we all turn into a pumpkin at the leaving time of 4.30. So I went on a tour of the gardens, the best feature I thought being a large circle of sunken lawn surrounded by ascending foliage, having rather the effect of a natural amphitheatre. One could imagine an evening rendition of a Midsummer Nights Dream in such a cosseted spot.
Time was running out but I thought I would drive back out to High Wycombe and try to see West Wycombe Park, a grand stately home with parkland, before it closed at 6pm. Alas we were hitting the evening rush hour, and negotiating High Wycombe proved too much of a tall order, so I missed the latest time of entrance and had to be content with the wonders of the Hellfire caves with associated top of the hill church and mausoleum. Sadly again I was too late for the caves, but I did climb the rather steep hill to the family mausoleum, a giant hexagonal roofless grey crown at the top of the hill, hunched up against the church yard of the local Anglican Church also perched on the top. From this spot are grand views of the valley down into High Wycombe and the surrounding Chiltern Hills. Across the valley is West Wycombe House, a large pile surrounded by verdant parkland.
Which leads to the tale of the Hellfire Club. This was evidently a bunch of rich and privileged aristocrats and assorted personages centred on the Dashwood family, and particularly Francis Dashwood who excavated a cave network under the said hill between 1748 and 1752. Rumours abound as to what went on in this so called subterranean club, whose caves extended into the hill immediately under St Lawrence church and mausoleum, but includes the Banqueting Hall, supposedly the largest man made chalk cavern in the world, and an underground river named the Styx. Beyond the river Styx was the Inner Temple where meetings of the Hellfire Club were held. It all sounds decidedly dodgy to me, although no one seems to know exactly what went on in those rituals. Horace Walpole described the members practices as 'rigorously pagan,' which tells us all we need to know!
Before returning home that evening I thought I would take a detour through the village of Cookham and perhaps partake of some evening provender. Cookham is a small settlement on the River Thames which lies almost directly below Cliveden, that rather glamorous stately home and now hotel immortalised in the Profumo affair. The whole of this area reeks of material prosperity and a high beige handbag coefficient, in fact even the blades of grass are of an exalted grade here. Cookham in fact has been lauded as the second richest village in England in a 2011 Telegraph article. It sits right on the Thames with a classic old English high street dawdling up to a rail station, and opulent dwellings sashaying across the landscape. The high street opens up into common land and a river crossing before reaching the station, and of a summers evening the main activity seems to be contented locals spilling out of a series of pubs on to the outside benches to eat and drink. Paths lead down to the river Thames, which here is at its most idyllic as it flows through a meadow landscape on the one side and past luxurious residences on the far side with their own boat houses and back gardens flush with the waters edge. A footpath helpfully borders the river and is well frequented on this glorious summer's evening. Brightly painted barges with names like 'Vagabond' line the river bank, with their owners sitting on deck in various stages of eating, drinking and socialising. The village church is perched by the road bridge and almost on the river, with an attractive nest of cottages surrounding the entrance to the graveyard. High above the village on the far side you can spot Cliveden peeking out over the valley.
It would be nice to eat here, but I'm not so keen on eating on my own tonight, and fish and chips doesn't especially float my boat. I will aim for home and have a takeaway in the comfort of my own lounge.
