What is Chequers?
Everybody knows that the British Prime Minister’s home is Number 10 Downing Street. But the Prime Minister’s countryside retreat, Chequers in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, is less well known.
Chequers
Learn more about the Prime Minister’s countryside retreat, Chequers.
Ellesborough, United Kingdom. 15th May, 2023. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, meets privately with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a walk around the gardens at Chequers, the official country estate of the prime minister, May 15, 2023 in Ellesborough, England. Credit: Pool Photo/Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/Alamy Live News
Ellesborough, United Kingdom. 15th May, 2023. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, meets privately with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a walk around the gardens at Chequers, the official country estate of the prime minister, May 15, 2023 in Ellesborough, England. Credit: Pool Photo/Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/Alamy Live News
The Country House
During the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was common for Prime Ministers to have large country houses. Many of the aristocratic Prime Ministers like the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Rockingham, and Lord Rosebery had a number of homes outside London.
A country house was not only a convenient escape from the city, but a symbol of status, good taste, and custodianship of the countryside. Benjamin Disraeli bought Hughenden in Buckinghamshire precisely because, as a prominent member of a party representing the values of traditional England, as well as a landowning class, a country house gave him considerable symbolic standing.
However, during the twentieth century, with the onset of mass democracy and the expansion of the franchise, it became likely that Britain’s political leadership would be drawn from a wider social background. As such, they would be less likely to possess a place in the countryside where they could escape from the hectic London scene.
This was a problem foreseen by Sir Arthur Lee of Fareham, then owner of Chequers estate, who bequeathed the house to the nation in 1917. The Trust Deed stated that:
‘…the periodic contact with the most typical rural life would create and preserve a just sense of proportion between the claims of town and country… the better the health of our rulers the more sanely they will rule, and the inducement to spend two days a week in the high and pure air of the Chilterns and woods may, I hope, result in a real advantage to our nation as well as to its chosen leaders’.
The history of Chequers
Margaret Thatcher:
‘I do not think that anyone has stayed long at Chequers without falling in love with it’.
The name Chequers might well come from an early owner of the land named Elias Ostiarus, who seems to have worked in the Exchequer, and whose name was sometimes given as de Scaccario – similar to ‘chessboard’ in Italian. His coat of arms bore the symbol of the Exchequer chequer board, so a link to that office seems very likely.
The Hawtreys possessed the Chequers estate for three centuries, until the death of the last in 1638. William Hawtrey, a businessman and merchant, built much of the house that stands today during the mid-1500s. Incidentally, Hawtrey married Agnes Walpole, a distant relative of first Prime Minister Robert Walpole.
In 1565, Robert Hawtrey took ‘into his charge and custody’ the luckless Lady Mary Grey, sister of the even more unfortunate ‘nine-day-queen’ Lady Jane Grey. Lady Mary had offended Queen Elizabeth I by marrying Thomas Keyes without her permission. She was imprisoned at Chequers for two years (Keyes was sent to the fleet, and Mary never saw him again).
Over the centuries, the house was owned by many families, and was briefly confiscated by Parliament during the Civil War because the owner was a royalist. Later, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell left a collection of items related to the Lord Protector.
During the early 19th Century, the house was ‘modernised’. Neo-gothic pinnacles and battlements were added and stucco was affixed to the outer walls.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the house came to the attention of Arthur Lee, then a Conservative MP, and his wife Ruth (nee Moore), an American heiress. They had met when Lee, then a military attaché to the United States, had been observing the Spanish-American War (1898). It was Ruth who was first taken with Chequers, and the two signed a lease for the house in 1909, finally acquiring the property in 1917 after protracted negotiations following the death of owner Delaval Astley (an early aviation pioneer) in a plane crash in 1912.
It was the Lees who removed the stucco, the battlements, and the pinnacles, and restored the house to its 16th Century redbrick appearance. Several bricked up doors and windows were restored to function. There was also an internal restoration, with the Lees working hard to return the rooms to the way they would have looked during the early part of the house’s life.
The Lees were well connected; Lord Kitchener, former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, and former American President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt (who was in England for the funeral of Edward VIII) all attended the house-warming party in May 1910.
Chequers was used as a military hospital during the First World War.
The Lees finally acquired the freehold of Chequers in 1917. They decided that, having no children of their own, that they wished to bequeath the property to the nation, as the official country residence of the Prime Minister. In July 1917, Lee discussed the decision with Prime Minister David Lloyd George who approved. He wrote to the Lees:
‘Your offer…is most generous and beneficent, and one for which P.Ms of England in the future will have much to thank you… You have my full authority to go ahead with he scheme.’ (Quoted in Major, Chequers, p. 86).
The Chequers Estate Bill was subsequently passed by Parliament.
The Lees had planned to live in the house for the rest of their lives, but, in 1918, changed their minds, deciding to move out after the end of the First World War. They presented the house as the gift to the nation.
Chequers
Within Chequers, there is a Great Hall that can be used for social events, and has played host to many Christmas celebrations over the years. The Great Parlour room is set out like the Cabinet Room, with a large table allowing for meetings of the Cabinet. Smaller rooms like the White Parlour and the Dining Room allow for more personal events. Chequers has large gardens and an engraving above the entrance encourages visitors with a phrase: ‘All Care Abandon Ye Who Enter Here’.
Chequers is filled with historical items and the walls are covered with artwork, including paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The library in the Long Gallery contains early editions of books by Chaucer, Dickens, and Tennyson. There are also historic items at Chequers. The death mask of Oliver Cromwell, Elizabeth I’s ring, Lord Nelson’s pocketwatch, and Napoleon’s dispatch case are all on display.
Tony Blair:
‘Chequers was a blessed relief from the Downing Street swirl. Without it, the Prime Ministers life would have been very different and worse.’
Prime Ministerial Residencies
The first meetings came almost immediately once Chequers had been accepted. Lloyd George, along with the War Cabinet, met French Prime Minister Paul Painlevé and General Ferdinand Foch there in October 1917. They discussed the possibility of unity of command, which would take place the following year, when the reluctant British generals accepted the loose authority of a French Supreme Commander. Upon leaving, Foch signed the visitors book (in French):
‘The affairs of England will run even more smoothly when the Prime Minister is at Chequers’. (Quoted in Major, Chequers, p. 92).
Over the last century, Chequers has hosted many historic and famous meetings. It has the advantage of discretion, allowing business to be conducted away from the media lenses of Westminster. Famous visitors have included Queen Elizabeth II, US Presidents Richard Nixon, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as many European leaders over the decades.
During the Second World War, Churchill would conduct business long into the night, often punctuated by a movie or large dinner. General Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, later recounted Churchill pausing to get sandwiches at 2:15am, as they discussed Mediterranean operations in the Great Hall. On 21 June 1941, Churchill was woken in the morning to receive news that Nazi Germany had invaded Russia. Later that year, Churchill was also at Chequers when he heard news that the Japanese navy had attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war.
Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson adored Chequers, and loved showing guests around. He entertained Commonwealth leaders there during each of the three London Conferences that occurred during his premiership. Wilson also used Chequers to attempt to persuade Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin of the merits of his peace plan for Vietnam in February 1967, albeit unsuccessfully.
Later, in 1984, another Soviet leader, this time Mikhail Gorbachev was hosted at Chequers by Margaret Thatcher. They spoke for around four hours (via interpreter) on substantive topics, including arms control and human rights. She found him easy to get along with, and it was after this meeting that she famously declared him ‘a man with whom I can do business’.
In July 2018, Theresa May used Chequers to finalise her plan for Brexit with her Cabinet. The subsequent White Paper became known as the ‘Chequers Plan’, though it proved controversial, leading to the resignations of two Cabinet ministers.
Enjoyment of Chequers has not been universal. David Lloyd George does not seem to have liked it as much as he let on. He preferred houses with a view and found the weight of tradition, that the Lees found so inspiring, to be oppressive. Harold Macmillan did not much like it either, writing in his diary that it was a ‘fine house…rather spoilt’, and he rarely visited. By contrast, first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald took to Chequers, finding it much preferable to the rather more ramshackle Downing Street.
Just like at Downing Street, there is a wall dedicated to portraits of Prime Ministers. However, this one only features the Prime Ministers to occupy Chequers, beginning with Lloyd George. Of the subsequent Prime Ministers, only one will always been missing – Andrew Bonar Law, who never visited during his short premiership. With that exception, all Prime Ministers since 1917 have used Chequers, including Liz Truss, who found the time to visit Chequers at least twice as Prime Minister in October 2022.
There can be no doubt that Chequers will continue to provide respite to Britain’s Prime Ministers for decades to come.
Ramsay MacDonald:
‘an abode mellow with age and sanctified by the ghosts of vanished generations, given to the nation so that Prime Ministers might know that birds sing, flowers bloom and body and mind may rest.’ (Quoted in Major, Chequers, p. 183).
References
Tony Blair, A Journey, (London, 2010).
‘Chequers’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 26 July 2019, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chequers> accessed 4 October 2023.
Norma Major, Chequers: The Prime Minister’s Country House and its History, (London, 1996).
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993).
Lord Alanbrooke, Alex Danchev (ed), Daniel Todman (ed.), War Diaries, 1939-1945 (London, 2002).
Cecil Harcourt Smith et al, A Catalogue of the Principal Works of Art at Chequers (London, 1923).
