📍Hughenden Manor, High Wycombe HP14 4LA, UK
1848 – 1881“I bought Hughenden in 1848, with money lent by friends, because a man who would lead the party of the English countryside needed acres of his own. I had spent part of my youth at Bradenham, just across these Chiltern hills, where my father wrote among his books, so coming to Hughenden felt like coming home. It sat on a slope above a little church, surrounded by beechwoods, and I came to love its silence after the noise of Westminster. My wife, Mary Anne, made it beautiful. While I was in London she supervised the gardens herself, laying out the terraces and parterre, setting urns and statues along the walks and planting the paths through the woods we called the German Forest, after the spa towns we had visited together. In the 1860s we had the house remodelled in a romantic Gothic style, and I filled it with portraits of friends and statesmen. I walked the woods for hours, counting my trees, and worked on my last novels here. After Mary Anne was gone I kept the house as she had made it, and Queen Victoria, who had become a dear friend, sent me primroses from Osborne. Hughenden is now cared for by the National Trust, and visitors can see my study much as I left it, and Mary Anne's garden restored to the way she planned it.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today