Hughenden Manor

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 28/09/2020

SU 89 NE 4/88

HUGHENDEN HUGHENDEN PARK Hughenden Manor

21.6.55

I Mansion, now part used as Disraeli museum and offices. 1738 core, extended late C18, remodelled in about 1860 by E B Lamb for Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Born into a Sephardic Jewish family and baptized as a child, Disraeli was a prominent novelist and politician who played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative party, and twice served as British Prime Minister. West wing added in about 1900 for Coningsby Disraeli. Red and vitreous brick, slate roofs, diagonal brick chimney shafts with cogged pyramidal caps.

Three storeys and cellars. First floor band course, string courses at impost levels of first and second floor windows, the lower string cogged; dentilled cornice; stepped parapet with dentil course and stone coping; diagonal pinnacles with stone finials; corbelled diagonal wall-shafts. Eight bay entrance front, the four centre bays recessed with single storey arcade. Ground floor left bays and first floor have cross windows; tall three-light transomed windows to ground floor right; horizontal sliding sashes to second floor, three-light to outer bays, two-light to centre. All windows have narrow horizontal glazing bars and segmental brick hoods with diagonal flanking pendants. Glazed arcade with four-centred arches of three orders, dentil cornice and parapet as before. Entrance in third arch. Two storey, two bay projection to right, formerly a service block, with matching c.1900 service wing at right end. Garden front is of nine bays with canted projections to bays three and seven, stone steps to centre bays, and cellar windows to remainder. Tall ground floor windows with large arched lower lights and twin top lights; other fenestration similar to entrance front. Both fronts have small stone coats-of-arms to centre.

Interior: two mid C18 stone panelled fireplaces with keyblocks and cornices; late C18 plaster ceiling to north east top floor room, with moulded cornice and bowl-of-fruit motifs on frieze. Ground floor rooms and staircase Gothicised by John Norris c.1840 and Disraeli c.1860: fan-vaulting and moulded four-centred arches to hall; former library with ribbed ceiling and screen of two four-centred arches; dining room with heavily moulded Gothick alcove, traceried wall panels, and ribbed ceiling with small wooden pendants; staircase with wooden balustrade of ogee arches, ribbed plaster soffits and traceried skylights. Circa 1900 doorcases and alterations to north east corner.

Between 1848 and 1881 Hughenden was the home of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister 1868 and 1874-80. Now property of the National Trust.

Listing NGR: SU8621294925