Chequers

The mansion at Chequers was built in 1565 for William Hawtrey, and may incorporate the remains of an earlier building. The south front was completed in the early 17th century. It underwent significant remodelling in the early 19th century in a Gothic style for Robert Greenhill Russell, undertaken by William Atkinson, a pupil of James Wyatt. Around 1890 to 1917, it was restored to an Elizabethan appearance by Sir Reginald Blomfield, commissioned by the Astley family and Sir Arthur Lee, Viscount Fareham.

The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and old tile roofs, featuring diagonal brick chimney shafts with offset heads. The layout is based on a courtyard plan with a 19th-century infill. It has two storeys and an attic. The north front, which is eight bays wide, retains much of its original detail, including stone quoins, string courses, and parapet coping carried over five small gables. The windows are stone mullioned, double-transomed, and partly renewed, with canted bay windows in bays two and six, which have shaped stone parapets displaying 16th-century heraldic devices. Five cross windows light the attic space. A door is situated to the right of centre, featuring a four-centred stone arch and carved spandrels.

The south front comprises seven original bays; the outer and centre bays are gabled and project, while the narrower bays flanking the centre are recessed and incorporate a first-floor stone frieze displaying the Astley family motto "Justitia tenax." Later 19th-century stone mullion and transom windows, matching those on the north front, are present. The centre bay features a rectangular bay window with a heraldic parapet. Double doors are set within a segmental stone arch in the third bay. A taller gabled bay was added to the left in the mid-19th century by E.B. Lamb. The east front is irregular, with a two-storey porch designed by Blomfield around 1910.

Gardens surround the house on its east and south sides, enclosed by brick walls built in 1912. The south garden features small corner pavilions with ogee tile roofs, stone cornices, mullion windows, and four-centred stone arches with Tudor hoodmoulds. A glazed arcade from the 1970s can be found along the west side of the south garden, leading to a covered swimming pool, and a sunken centre incorporates brick walls. A gate between the gardens has three stone obelisk finials, echoed on the scrolls of the east gate piers.

The interior of the house was substantially refurbished in the early 20th century, incorporating plaster ceilings in an Elizabethan style and reused 16th- to 17th-century panelling, none of which is original to the house. Chequers was given to the nation in 1917 by Sir Arthur Lee, intended as a country residence for the Prime Minister.