Churchill and the house that saved the world

A short train journey from London, in the outer reaches of suburbia in Kent, sits the house that saved the world. Or rather: it’s the house that saved the man who saved the world.

The property in question, of course, is Chartwell, which 100 years ago this month was bought by a certain Winston Churchill, then a Liberal MP. Back then his career was in ascendance: in 1924, with Churchill having crossed the floor, Stanley Baldwin made him Chancellor, a post he retained until 1929. But then, rather suddenly, he was out in the cold.

That was when Chartwell – and the 81 acres it sits in – came to the rescue. And that’s why this not particularly beautiful property, once described as a ‘Victorianised Elizabethan manor house’, is deserving of attention today.

‘Chartwell was a very absorbing, and expensive, pastime’

This is the house which fortified, enthralled, inspired and resuscitated Churchill during those long years of his political wilderness, which lasted from 1929 right through until he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939, and the years when he suffered from the ‘black dog’ of depression.