With all that money he could have built something nice eh?

So on a beautiful sunny day, just the sort I like, we went on an outing, we went to Waddesham Manor.  Now this pad was built by Lord Rothschild.

Prior to his living here, there was nothing here, a bare hill.  

He paid well over the odds for the land from the Duke of Marlborough at nearby Blenheim Palace, but frankly with their dosh who cares.   He wanted it landscaped so did and had mature huge trees transported form all over the county on specially made carts with whole teams of horses pulling.  Luckily for the neighbourhood, there was a depression in farming so all this work created many jobs, in the 1880's he had 120 gardeners and today the jolly old National Trust have 20.

Lord Rothschild left the house with its priceless collection of world treasures to the nation in 1957 I think, however the family in a unique arrangement hold the Chair of the committee running the whole show here.

We had a tour of the house and frankly, its ghastly, every shelf, every wall id covered or smothered in stuff.  Hardly anything I would care to have at mine, David had had enough by the first floor.

We went on a tour of the gardens with the Head Gardner who was really interesting, but the gardens weren't a patch on Hidcote.  Evidently the most visited property the NT have is Clivedon closely followed by Waddesham.  Now we have also visited Clivedon and thought it deadly dull, but the Head Gardner said that a lot of work has been done there recently, so later in the year we may well go back and give it a second chance.

So do you want to see a few photos of ghastliness?

So this is the front drive.

Front porch, drive in.

The current Lord likes modern art not that I saw much of it.  These are empty wine bottles.

So its a fake French Chateau, based on chateaux at Blois and Chambord.  

Dining room, walls of marble, it would put me off my food.

Reynolds 

More Reynolds

This I half liked, half.

Hundreds of these.

At Waddesham Lord Rothschild entertained Prime Ministers, Lords Ladies and Dukes, the house was never intended as a home, his home was in London, but it was intended to display his huge collection of French furniture, paintings, china and other items.....
But this room I did like, decorated I think in the 90's, its simple charm, the light was terrific.

These are the spades used by visiting dignitaries to plant trees, sorry but I cut off the Queen on her last visit.

Now what was very interesting was the family's history.  They started out in Frankfurt at the time was in Austria.  One man had five sons.  He was a businessman of the day, lending buying trading etc but did strike lucky with the arrival of Napoleon who wiped out the landowning aristocracy leaving vacancies....  So back to Frankfurt, the man sent his five sons to different cities in Europe, London, Paris, Naples, Vienna and Frankfurt, presumably one stayed in Frankfurt.  They did rather well at business and thrived.

The family symbol is five arrows representing the five sons.  Now the very very interesting part of the visit was to the wine cellars.

Intended for President Thomas Jefferson

So today the cellars are used for wine tasting sessions, they are open to the public and reasonably priced too, I have the dates....

All the different sized bottles.

This cellar needs a bit of a tidy up.

So there are two names that I think you would have heard of Chateau Lafite, and Chateau Mouton Rothschild.  The former has kept the same design of label every year, the other one has a different label designed by an invited artist and paid in wine!  These below were my favourites.

Francis Bacon.

Picasso

and 2014 David Hockney.

At the end of the wine tour we went to the shop and David brought a couple of rather expensive bottles for our family celebrations later in the year..... can't wait to try them.

This bottle had security.....