Mentmore Towers, historically known simply as "Mentmore", is a 19th-century English country house built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. Sir Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes,[1][2] designed the building in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan.[3][4] The house was designed for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, and as a display case for his collection of fine art. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era.[5][6] Mentmore was inherited by Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, née Rothschild, and owned by her descendants, the Earls of Rosebery.
Mentmore was the first of what were to become virtual Rothschild estates in the Vale of Aylesbury. Baron Mayer de Rothschild began purchasing land in the area in 1846.[7] Later, other members of the family built houses at Tring in Hertfordshire, Ascott, Aston Clinton, Waddesdon and Halton.[8]
The Grand Hall at Mentmore. Aged just five months, Hannah de Rothschild helped lay the foundation stone for the great mansion on 31 December 1851. She is pictured here in white with her mother circa 1863.[9]
Much of the estate was sold in 1944, but the mansion, its grounds, formal gardens several farms and the majority of the village of Mentmore remained in the ownership of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, until his death in 1974. The Earl's executors explored the possibility of Mentmore Towers along with its contents being preserved intact as a heritage property and opened to the public, as has been the case with some other National Trust properties. Despite prolonged discussions between the Executors and Government representatives over the following three years, no agreement to save the house for the nation was reached. Thus, in 1977, the contents of the house were sold at public auction by Sotheby's. The following year the empty mansion with its formal gardens and 80 acres were sold to the Maharishi Foundation who occupied it for the next two decades. In 1999, it was again sold, to investor Simon Halabi, who planned to build additional hotel and conference facilities; the plan did not proceed and the property was allowed to deteriorate. In 1992 the Mentmore Golf and Country Club opened, on land previously owned by the estate.
Mentmore Towers is a Grade I listed building, with its park and gardens listed Grade II*.[10]
^Hall, p16.
^Hall (Waddesdon Manor), p31, refers to them as the architectural team.
^Henry Russell Hitchcock (1958) Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Pelican History of Art), London, Penguin Books, p.73
^Historic England. "Mentmore House (1117863)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 19 September 2011.
^Hall (Waddesdon Manor), p37, makes this assertion
^Hall (The Victorian Country House), p153
^Binney, Marcus. John Robinson. William Allan (1977). SAVE Mentmore for the Nation. London: SAVE Britain's Heritage.
^Cowles, Virginia (1975). The Rothschilds, a family of fortune. London: First Futura Publications. ISBN 08600-7206-1.
^Robinson, p. 5.
^Historic England. "Mentmore Towers (1000319)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
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