Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, England

The mansion at Ditchley was built by the[ George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield second Earl of Litchfield], a member of the Lee family, in 1722, to a design by James Gibbs. It stands on the site of an earlier timber-framed family house in classic north Oxfordshire wooded farmland, once the royal hunting ground of Wychwood Forest.

The entries in this section give the history of the house and its owners and describe the visits there of Sir Winston Churchill before and during the Second World War.

The Lees, Dillons and Trees

The Ditchley estate was bought by Sir Henry Lee in 1580 when he was made the Ranger of the Wychwood Forest, the royal hunting forest based round the hunting-lodge at Woodstock. Elizabeth I' visited him at Ditchley in 1592, after he had an alliance with one of her Ladies-in-Waiting without her permission. Annoyed at this, so the story goes, the Queen stayed rather longer than she might otherwise have done, putting her host to considerable extra expense. The visit is commemorated in a painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, “The Ditchley Elizabeth”, which shows Elizabeth with her foot on Oxfordshire and her toe on Ditchley. This hung in the Mansion until 1932 and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. A copy can be seen at Ditchley Park.

The Ditchley Elizabeth

Four generations later Sir Henry’s heir, Edward Henry Lee, was created the 1st Earl of Litchfield in 1676 when he married Charlotte Fitzroy, the illegitimate daughter of Charles II and Barbara Villiers, the Duchess of Cleveland, both of whose portraits hang in the White Drawing Room. Their son, the 2nd Earl, built the present Ditchley Park in 1722, to a design by James Gibbs, architect of St Martins in the Fields and the Radcliffe Camera. The interior was richly decorated by William Kent and Henry Flitcroft.

In the grounds the fish pond was extended to form the lake in 1746. After 1760 the Park was “naturalised”, with smooth lawns sweeping down to the lake, and the Great Temple or Rotunda was built in about 1760 by Stiff Leadbetter.

The 4th Earl died in 1776 without heir, so the estate passed to his niece, Lady Charlotte Lee, who had married the 11th Viscount Dillon, an Irish Peer.

In 1807 the 12th Viscount employed Louden to build the Ha Ha, further extend the lake and plant tree avenues, many of which survive today. At that stage the family funds began to run short, so no alterations were made to the Mansion in the subsequent century, a period which saw much modernisation (and ruination of the character) of many great country houses.

The 17th Viscount Dillon died in 1932 and the estate was sold to Ronald Tree, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Market Harborough, a very wealthy Anglo-American (his description). Of American parentage, Ronald was born and educated in England and had returned to the US when his father died in 1914. He met and married Nancy and, after they returned to England, he was elected to Parliament and they bought Ditchley in 1933. They restored the Mansion sympathetically and with great taste. Nancy subsequently married Colonel Lancaster, and as Nancy Lancaster became one of England’s premier interior designers as proprietor of Colefax and Fowler in the 1950’s and 60’s. Ronald and Nancy employed Geoffrey Jellicoe, then a relatively unknown young garden designer, to remodel the grounds. He laid out the Italian style sunken garden immediately West of the main house and resurrected the terrace to the North, part of the original Gibbs design. Under the Trees Ditchley regained some of its earlier social prominence, most notably through several visits there by Winston and Clementine Churchill.

Winston Churchill

Ronald Tree, a Conservative Member of Parliament between 1933 and 1945, visited Germany in 1934, where amongst other things he saw a Hitler Youth camp. This and other meetings and conversations he had there convinced him that Hitler had expansionist plans. On his return he sided with Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill against the more accommodating Neville Chamberlain and made speeches in the House of Commons warning of Hitler’s intentions.

In 1937 Churchill and Eden visited Ditchley for a house party and clearly enjoyed the Tree hospitality. When the Battle of Britain started in 1940 Churchill was advised not to go to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country residence in Buckinghamshire, “when the moon was high” (the title of Ronald Tree’s autobiography), as German bombers were expected to attack it. He invited himself (and members of his war cabinet) to Ditchley for the weekend of 9-11 November 1940, and subsequently came for a further twelve weekends up to September 1942. Ronald Tree was at that time a Junior Minister in the Ministry of Information charged with fostering Anglo-American relations and invited many influential friends of Roosevelt, including Harry Hopkins, to meet Churchill during his Ditchley weekends. The early stages of “Lend Lease” were negotiated at Ditchley.

In the general election in 1945 Ronald Tree lost his seat at Market Harborough and decided against a return to politics. He and Nancy divorced in 1948 and his second wife Marietta was disinclined to live in the English countryside. He sold Ditchley in 1950 and returned to the US, living in New York and the Bahamas for the rest of his life. He returned to Ditchley posthumously and is buried in the parish churchyard at Spelsbury.

The estate was owned briefly by Lord Wilton, but he found it too large, and in 1953 it was bought by Sir David Wills, a member of the Wills tobacco family and a great philanthropist. He donated the Mansion and 290 acres of parkland to the Ditchley Foundation, which was formed in 1958. Sir David’s vision in creating the Foundation was to ensure that the UK and the United States had a venue for strengthening the transatlantic dialogue through discreet and relaxed discussions on matters of mutual concern. The first conference was held in 1962 and they have continued to be held regularly ever since.

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