BRADENHAM AND HUGHENDEN Royal NEAR Connections

Homes of Queen Victoria's favourite Prime Minister.

Queen Elizabeth I was entertained in great splendour at have been caused to his Bradenham by Lord Windsor in 1566, on her return from Royal friend, should her visiting the University of Oxford. A contemporary report legs be allowed to swing records the Queen staying about freely. overnight at Great Hampden, progressing next day to Royal protocol did not Bradenham. The route from permit Victoria to attend Great Hampden brought the the private funeral, but she party through Flowers visited the tomb a few days Bottom, emerging onto the later to pay her respects, ridge top at Walter's Ash. and spent some time in his Records suggest the present study. A memorial to Bradenham Woods Lane did Disraeli was erected by the not exist and the Queen's Queen on the north side of party descended down the chancel following his through a glade in the Elizabeth I death. It was the only woodlands to reach the memorial to be erected by a Manor. This glade is still preserved. On the following reigning monarch to one of day, Her Majesty set out from Bradenham "with a large her subjects in an English party of gentlemen, because of the thieves which infested parish church. The these woods." The party passed "through some of the inscription reads: Disraeli memorial : Chris Smith loveliest bits of primeval forest at Walter's Ash, down To the dear and honoured memory of Benjamin Earl of Downley Common, through Tinkers Wood" to High . This memorial is placed by his grateful sovereign Wycombe. and friend Victoria R.I. "Kings loveth him that speaketh right”

The manor house that Elizabeth stayed in was replaced in The Queen's Christmas 1876 gift to Benjamin - an ornately about 1670 by the present Manor House which was the bound copy of Faust by Johann childhood home of , who became Prime Wolfgang Goethe - sits in the Minister of Great Britain twice in the 19th century (1868 library, along with a statue of and 1874–1880). Disraeli himself, also gifted to him by the Queen, and a Disraeli purchased nearby Hughenden Manor in 1848 statuette of her favourite because as leader of the Conservative Party "it was servant, John Brown which sits essential to represent a county," and county members had on the mantelpiece. to be landowners. He and his wife Mary Anne Disraeli, alternated between Hughenden and several homes in Sadly in May 2011, an ornate London. silver milk jug given by Victoria In the foreground a statue to Disraeli as part of a tea service of Disraeli himself and on the mantelpiece, a statue of Disraeli had a close relationship with Queen Victoria who was stolen from the drawing Victoria's favourite servant, visited him at his home at Hughenden. He was also the room of Hughenden Manor. John Brown. only commoner permitted to sit while in private audience with the Queen. When she visited Hughenden Manor in Further information 1877, Disraeli made special arrangements to have the legs Hughenden Manor: reduced in height on one of the dining room chairs. A www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hughenden thoughtful touch, and one that shows a very human References: Bradenham, – a short understanding of the potential embarrassment that may history by Dennis Claydon

Royal connections in the Chilterns