Waddesdon Manor is a National Trust property in Buckinghamshire - renowned for its Grade I listed house and outstanding Victorian gardens. Last year, Peter Driver paid a socially-distanced visit to speak to Head of Gardens Mike Buffi n
96 PC April/May 2021 L
ocated in the Vale of Aylesbury, seven miles west of Aylesbury, the house was built in the Neo- Renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. It was used as a weekend residence for grand entertaining and as a setting for his collection of various artworks. The last member of the Rothschild family to own Waddesdon was James de Rothschild (1878-1957). Upon his death, he bequeathed it to the National Trust and it
has been managed ever since by a family charity, now the Rothschild Foundation. It is one of the National Trust’s most visited properties, with over 466,000 visitors in 2018, and won Visit England’s Large Visitor Attraction of the Year in 2017. The land was purchased in 1874 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. Initially, it was a bare hill with a small farm building perched at the top, so to build the great house, three metres of soil was removed to create a plateau. This involved teams of local labourers digging and removing the
