WADS-dun

England

Buckinghamshire

Aylesbury

51.815231

-0.81307

1874

1889

Fully Extant

Grade I

Grade I

No

XII, 808. 1902. CXXI, 1277 [Treasures]. 1957. CXXVI, 66. 1959. CXLVII, 1154 [Store Rooms]. 1970.

Yes

Yes

01296-653-203

01296-653-237

Museum of the Year. Best National Trust Property 1997. Silver Award for England for Excellence 1998.

The National Trust

Visitor Attraction

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Rothschild family.

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild was the grandson of the founder of the Austrian branch of the Rothschild banking empire. He moved to England at age 21 and married his English cousin, Evelina, the youngest daughter of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, the first Jew to serve as a Member of Parliament. Baron Lionel had a country house (Tring Park) in nearby Hertfordshire (the Rothschilds tended to live around the borders of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, an area known unofficially as “Rothschildshire;” at one point they owned seven large country houses and 30,000 acres of land in the area). In 1874 Ferdinand purchased the Waddesdon and Winchendon estates from the Duke of Marlborough. The Waddesdon hillside was originally almost barren of trees; this was remedied by the planting of hundreds of fully-grown trees; sometimes requiring 16 horses to haul just one of the large trees (Ferdinand also had a special railroad built to haul the building materials to the top of the hill on which the House was built). Waddesdon is built of Bath stone and is designed in the French Renaissance style of the 16th century, with traces of the Loire Valley throughout the House. Baron Ferdinand once admitted that the towers of Waddesdon were borrowed from Maintenon, the chateau of the Duc de Noailles. The interiors were extravagantly done up in the French 18th century taste, with many rooms fitted out in historic paneling. The majority of the paneling came from historic Paris houses that were demolished in 1860s by Baron Haussmann as part of his improvements to the city during the reign of Napoleon III. The Billiard Room came from a chateau of the Montmorencies and the Grey Drawing Room was extracted from the convent of the Sacre Coeur, formerly the hotel of the Duc de Lauzun. The Tower Room paneling came from a villa which was once the residence of the famous Fermier-General Beaujon, who also owned the Élysée Palace. The Louis XV paneling (circa 1750) in the Green Boudoir is one of three sets of paneling at Waddesdon that came from the Paris house of the maréchal-duc de Richelieu; the maréchal was a great nephew of the famous cardinal (his house was at 27 Rue de Richelieu). The second set is in the Low White Room and is in the Louis XVI style from circa 1780. The third room is the Breakfast Room, which has panels carved with medallions of cupids representing the seasons of the year. (The Dining Room walls at nearby Mentmore Towers, built by Ferdinand's cousin, Baron Mayer de Rothschild, were covered with boiseries taken from the Hôtel de Villars in Paris, the first example of this type of decoration to be used in an English house. The fragments of the boiseries not used at Mentmore were later installed at Waddesdon). Queen Victoria came to visit on May 14, 1890 and Kings Edward VII and George V were both frequent guests, as well as more ordinary mortals, such as Henry James, British prime ministers, and the Shah of Persia. After Ferdinand’s death in 1898 he was succeeded by his sister, Alice, at Waddesdon. Miss Alice was remembered for her many kindnesses and generosity as well as adding to the Waddesdon collections. After Miss Alice’s death in 1922 her great nephew, James de Rothschild, inherited Waddesdon. He was a member of the French branch of the family and became a British subject in 1919. In 1939, and for the duration of World War II, the House became a residential nursery for one hundred London children under the age of five years. In addition, James was one of the leaders in Britain of the Kindertransport, a program that brought over 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and German-controlled countries to Britain in the years leading up to World War II to protect them from Nazi persecution (the story of the Cedar Boys, German Jewish refugees from Frankfurt who spent the War at Waddesdon, was the subject of the Warner Bros. documentary film narrated by narrated by Judi Dench entitled "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2000). James was a notable supporter of the arts, a trustee of The Wallace Collection, a major supporter of the state of Israel. He was also Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply during World War II. It was James who left Waddesdon, with a sizeable endowment, to The National Trust at his death in 1957. Waddesdon today has some of the highest visitor numbers among National Trust properties; in 2003 it was visited by 225,000 people. At one time there were 40 great Rothschild houses across Europe, all of them decorated in the over-the-top taste that gave birth to the term “le goût Rothschild.” Today Waddesdon is one of the very few Rothschild houses that retains its original collections and character; thus, it truly deserves the moniker le goût Rothschild.

Waddesdon houses an extraordinary assemblage of French 18th century decorative arts, formed primarily in the 19th century by Ferdinand de Rothschild. The furniture, Savonnerie carpets, and Sèvres porcelain rank in importance with the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Louvre in Paris. There are two extraordinary pieces of French furniture made by Jean-Henri Riesener at Waddesdon: a writing desk made in 1782 for Marie-Antoinette's use at the Petit Trianon that bears the stamped mark of the Queen’s furniture inventory (the matching chest of drawers and drop-front secretarie are in the Frick Collection, New York), and a massive cylinder-top desk of 1781 that Ferdinand purchased from the 6th Duke of Buccleuch. The wall-lights in the Baron's Room at Waddesdon were made for Marie-Antoinette’s apartments at the Chateau de Compiègne in 1787. Ferdinand’s collection of Sèvres at Waddesdon is outstanding, the highlight of which must be the three potpourri vases of 1761 in the shape of ships; these are the rarest form of Sèvres (only 11 examples are known to exist). The collections of Chinese vases, Dutch paintings, and Meissen porcelain are exceptional. These are complemented by two huge canvases of Venice by Francesco Guardi and an extraordinary collection of English portraits by Romney, Gainsborough (his famous “Pink Boy” is one of the standouts of the Waddesdon collection), Lawrence, and Reynolds (Reynolds’s “David Garrick Between Comedy and Tragedy” and his painting of the Athenian courtesan Thais are especially fine). There are two iconic portraits by Francois Boucher in the collection at Waddesdon: Madame de Pompadour of circa 1755 and Duc d’Orléans (later Philippe Égalité) of 1749. In 2006 the 4th Lord Rothschild purchased a full-length state portrait of Louis XVI by Antoine-Francois Callet (in its original frame by Francois-Charles Buteux) and placed it on long-term loan at Waddesdon. In 2002 the 4th Lord Rothschild acquired a large part of a silver service commissioned from the French silversmith Robert-Joseph Auguste (1723-1805) in the 1770s by George III for use in Hanover (in addition to being Kings of Great Britain and Ireland, the Hanoverians were also Electors of Hanover). Lord Rothschild has placed the silver service on loan to Waddesdon (much of the art at Waddesdon is owned by Rothschild family trusts and is on long-term loan to The National Trust for display at Waddesdon). Ferdinand de Rothschild was not noted as a collector of Neoclassical objects; however, he did acquire a set of four silver Neoclassical wine colors made in 1809 by Robert and Samuel Hennell and based on a design by Robert-Joseph Auguste. The wine coolers were sold from Waddesdon in the 1970s and were re-acquired in the early 21st century for the House. In 1913 James de Rothschild commissioned the Russian artist Leon Bakst to do a series of seven paintings depicting the story of "The Sleeping Beauty." The paintings were intended for the Drawing Room of James's London townhouse at 34 Park Street; they are today at Waddesdon. James inherited a portion of the collection formed by his father, Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Major pieces, including Gainsborough’s “Pink Boy,” came to Waddesdon as a result of this inheritance. Edmond de Rothschild is considered by many scholars to have been the greatest of all Rothschild collectors. His passion was prints, and he owned over 40,000 of them, in addition to a very important collection of drawings. Edmond was also a noted bibliophile; he put together a major collection of medieval manuscripts. In addition, he was an amateur archaeologist with a passionate interest in Classical antiquity; he owned the 1st century Boscoreale Treasure, a major group of Roman silver today in the collection of the Louvre. Edmond and Ferdinand both purchased items from the famous Hamilton Palace sale of 1882; many of the objects acquired by both Rothschilds at this sale are today at Waddesdon. More than 100 antique gold boxes and other art worth millions of pounds were stolen from Waddesdon at 2:00 AM on Jun 20, 2003 by a masked gang that smashed into the House and made off with the treasure in less than four minutes (before the theft Waddesdon contained the world's greatest collection of gold boxes, formed over more than a century by Ferdinand de Rothschild, his sister Alice, and the present Lord Rothschild). A £50,000 reward has yet (as of 2007) to recover any of the stolen boxes, works of art, and perfume flasks. This is the second time that gold boxes from Waddesdon have been stolen; in 1983 thieves took a number of pieces, which, with one exception, were recovered 18 months later. Michael Hall, writing in the Jul/Aug 2007 issue of “Apollo” Magazine, states that the program of scholarly publications documenting the collections at Waddesdon is so outstanding that “no historic house in the world can match [it].” In 2001 a woodland path to the parterre was laid out as the Baron’s Walk; this path features two sandstones statues carved in the 1730s by Jan van Logteren: Venus and Adonis. The statues were formerly in the garden of Aston Clinton (another Rothschild house in Buckinghamshire that was demolished in 1958).

Waddesdon has one of the finest Victorian gardens in Britain, renowned for its seasonal displays, colorful shrubs, giant tree ferns, parterre, and restored Pleasure Garden. There is also a Rose Garden and Children’s Garden. The rococo style Aviary houses a splendid collection of exotic birds and the extensive Rothschild wine cellars can be visited. In 2001 a woodland path to the parterre was laid out as the Baron’s Walk; this path features two sandstone statues carved in the 1730s by Jan van Logteren: Venus and Adonis. The statues were formerly in the garden of Aston Clinton (another Rothschild house in Buckinghamshire that was demolished in 1958).

"Carry On…Don't Lose Your Head" (1966). "Isadora" (1968). “An Ideal Husband” (1999). "The 10th Kingdom" (2000 - TV mini series). "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" (2000 - documentary). "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham…" (2001). "Daniel Deronda" (2002 - TV miniseries). "He Knew He Was Right" (2004 - BBC TV (mini series). "The Queen" (2006 - as Buckingham Palace gardens, in the movie's final fountain scene). "National Trust: National Treasures" (2006 - one of 10-part documentary).