Life at Blenheim Palace

When I learned Rizzoli had released a new title that features a famed castle in England, I couldn’t wait to crack open the covers. I had just published my book of essays Lives Illuminated, which includes a piece about Consuelo Vanderbilt. Delving into her story had brought it to my attention that the lauded estate loomed large in her life, as you can read in full in my previous post about her. The grandly-sized and gorgeous book that features it, titled Blenheim: 300 Years of Life in a Palace, presents the peculiarities of the ancestors of its author, Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, and the monument to the 1^stDuke of Marlborough in which an array of those predecessors once lived. Conseulo was the author’s great-grandmother and her presence is very much on display in certain parts of Blenheim Palace.

The photography by Hugo Rittson-Thomas captures the aged beauty of the building sitting majestically within the sweeping landscape of Woodstock Park and the luxuriousness of its interiors, about which Lady Spencer-Churchill noted, “As the centuries rolled by, fashions changed and new materials and techniques became available. At Blenheim, we have seen all manner of styles—solid Stuart English to gilded French to elegant Georgian to fusty Victorian and, finally, to country house Edwardian—all within the context of a Baroque palace built to stately proportions.” One of my favorite things about this book is that it isn’t merely eye-candy: There is history in the mix every step of the way, particularly when she is laying out the marks her ancestors made—or in some cases didn’t make—on the building and its contents. 

She opened Chapter One, titled “The People,” with, “Just one family have lived, loved, squabbled, partied, plotted, laughed, cried, and indulged in passions artistic, scientific, horticultural and theatrical under the three-acre roof of Blenheim Palace for the past 320 years…and that is my family, the descendants of John Churchill, 1^st Duke of Marlborough and his redoubtable Duchess, Sarah.” The palace came to be because the 1^st Duke happened to be an exquisite strategist on the battlefield and Great Britain’s Queen Anne wanted to reward him for trouncing Louis XIV and making England proud. A crowning moment of his glory took place during the Battle of Blenheim, fought in a small Bavarian village on the banks of the river Danube on August 13, 1704. It was a magnificent victory. 

“A relieved nation and a grateful monarch cast about for a suitable, monumental, heroic thank you,” Lady Spencer-Churchill explained. “For Queen Anne, besotted at the time by Sarah, John’s captivating Duchess, only the grandest of palaces would suffice.” The site chosen was the Royal Manor of Woodstock in Oxfordshire, a royal park and residence that had seen better days. “The plan was more than ambitious—to conjure up something akin to Versailles,” Lady Spencer-Churchill wrote. “The choice of architect was left up to the Duke and Duchess. The naturally frugal Sarah, who could foresee endless budget troubles looming over this grandiose plan, suggested the tried-and-tested Christopher Wren, but the Duke chose John Vanbrugh, convivial fellow member of the Kit-Kat club, soldier, spy, wine merchant, playwright, and latterly self-taught architect. What could possibly go wrong?” To keep the ship upright, Wren’s star pupil Nicholas Hawksmoor was summoned to collaborate with Vanbrugh.

Returning to the parade of ancestors, Lady Spencer-Churchill presents the spend-thrifting nature of the 3^rd Duke, the intensely shy and sensitive personality of the 4^th Duke, whose wife was Lady Caroline. About her the author wrote, “Caroline Russell was not intimidated by inheriting Blenheim, as she had grown up at the almost equally grand Woburn Abbey. She embraced the task of rejuvenating the dark, old-fashioned furnishings and dreary damasks that had remained unchanged since Sarah’s day with a cheerful palette of yellows, blues, and greens.” The 5^th noble to take control was known as “The Profligate Duke” given he laid out extravagant gardens with the rarest of plants and held the wildest of parties, the sums of which bankrupted him. This meant the 6^th Duke, who inherited a very shabby and run-down Blenheim Palace, was required to raise money to renovate and repair it. 

We enter the Victorian Era with the 7^th Duke and Duchess. The pious and dutiful politician and his wife brought a gloomy and overstuffed air to the rooms. “Any guest wanting to admire the nine Titian paintings, The Loves of the Gods, given to the 1^st Duke by the Duke of Savoy, would have been disappointed,” Lady Spencer-Churchill explained. This is because they were considered too raunchy to remain on view at the time so they were banished to the kitchen wing. The amorous adventures of the 8^th Duke were so outrageous, the entire family was frozen out of society for years. He also sold off a treasure-trove of the collection housed in the palace—out went paintings, porcelain, and china almost as quickly as the cash drained from his coffers on the flip side. He eventually married a woman with money but the damage had been done by then. The 8^th Duke’s brother Randolph, who married the wealthy American socialite Jenny Jerome, was the father of Winston Churchill. The Duchess gave birth to the future political genius at Blenheim Palace.

It was the 9^th Duke, nicknamed Sunny, whom Conseulo Vanderbilt married. The money he secured with their union was substantial enough to make major improvements at Blenheim Palace. “We have the 9^th Duke and his wealthy American bride to thank for the sudden influx of funds for rescuing Blenheim,” Lady Spencer-Churchill explained. “It’s fabric crumbling, the interior denuded of so many of its treasures and the park looking tired and undisciplined, the Duke set about creating the Italian gardens to the east and the water terraces to the west.” With the American money he brought back to England, the staterooms were redecorated and a jaw-dropping array of art and furnishings flowed into Blenheim’s rooms. Though her money was a protected commodity, Consuelo was not—she would eventually become replaceable when another American woman named Gladys Deacon deviously set out to take Consuelo’s place. 

The 10^th Duke, Consuelo’s son, inherited Blenheim in 1934. “I think that my grandfather was somewhat lucky,” Lady Spencer-Churchill said of him; “he was of the generation where his life was already set out for him from birth, and his mother was very wealthy, which allowed him to enjoy a lavish, slightly self-indulgent lifestyle without too many responsibilities.” About the 10^th Duchess, Mary Cadogan, she said, “It is very sad to note that my great-grandmother, Consuelo, and grandmother, Mary, died so soon after one another when I was young, so I have very little recollection of either, but hold them both in huge regard.” About the 11^th Duke, Lady Spencer-Churchill’s father, she pointed out he was also nicknamed Sunny and he actually earned it by his disposition, while the 10^th Duke had not. The designation was actually derived from their shared title, the Earl of Sunderland, which each of them held before they became Dukes. Describing her father’s respect for Blenheim Palace, she said, “My father had a similar attitude to that of his namesake Sunny and understood that his life’s work was to ensure that Blenheim could be handed over to the next generation in better condition than he found it.” 

It was in his hands that the palace began its transition to a successful commercial enterprise that endeavors to generate the funds to maintain and improve the building. This continues with Lady Spencer-Churchill’s brother James and his wife Edla—the 12^th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough—and will do so when her nephew George and his wife take the reins. “When George eventually becomes the 13^th Duke, he will hopefully be in the fortunate position of finding the estate and palace in much better shape both financially and structurally, having benefitted from a long period of restoration work,” Lady Spencer-Churchill wrote. She is well aware of just what this entails, as she is an interior designer who is often in the thick of the projects at Blenheim Palace that result in these upgrades. The history of the family is followed by chapters on the architecture, the interiors, the parks and gardens, the lifestyle, the logistics, and a final one titled “To the Future.” I highly recommend this incredible book because it brings the building to life in such a rich way. You can find it online at bookshop.org or from a number of other outlets featured on the Rizzoli website.

Life at Blenheim Palace © Saxon Henry, all rights reserved. Saxon is an author, journalist, poet, and content strategist whose books include her newest title Lives Illuminated, which is also available in a Kindle edition; The Modern Salonnière; Anywhere But Here; Stranded on the Road to Promise; Four Florida Moderns; and Collaborations: A Houston Penthouse. The author received a review copy of Blenheim: 300 Years of Life in a Palace from the publisher but her comments were in no way swayed by this fact and are authentically true. The banner image credit belongs to Pete Seaward Photography.