Inner sanctum where Churchill woke ablaze with inspiration
Prince of Wales sees how ex-pm kept speech notes at his bedside as Chartwell room is opened to public
Royal Correspondent
IT WAS the inner sanctum of one of Britain’s greatest figures and for the first time the public are to be invited to step inside the bedroom of Sir Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell in Kent.
The small bedroom was described as looking “frightfully comfortable” by the Prince of Wales, who visited yesterday to support an appeal to save Sir Winston’s treasures for the nation.
The Prince was shown around Chartwell by Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Sir Winston, who told him he had fond memories of growing up there with his family.
Later this year, Sir Winston’s bedroom will for the first time be included in a tour of the house. An appeal to raise funds to buy some of Sir Winston’s belongings has allowed the National Trust to buy the paintings to hang inside as it looked in his day.
Although the house has been open to the public since 1966, it is only now considered suitable to open the intimate space of the bedroom.
Tucked away behind Sir Winston’s study at Chartwell, the bedroom has a specially built shelf running alongside the bed where Sir Winston put his speech notes to work on immediately upon waking.
The room also contains a chair said to have been offered to a secretary each time Sir Winston wished to dictate while he was in his bath, in the adjacent room.
Paintings of Sir Winston’s mother and father, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, and his favourite horse Colonist II now hang again on the walls just as they did in Sir Winston’s day.
The secretary’s room, described as the “heart of the house”, will also be added to the tour for the first time, with the help of oral histories taken from former staff.
The Prince, who is president of the Trust, visited Chartwell in recognition of the huge fundraising campaign to save Sir Winston’s treasures, with the National Trust so far finding £6 million of a £7.1million target.
He was shown an eclectic selection of artefacts, including Sir Winston’s Nobel Prize for Literature medal, an abandoned cigar, a toy lion perched on the politician’s bookshelves and very first and last oil paintings, hanging in his garden studio.
Sir Nicholas also showed him some family photographs, including one of Sir Winston campaigning with a bulldog and one of him having his cigar lit by an eager member of the public in a flatcap.
Lady Soames drew the Prince’s attention to a small black and white photograph of himself as a small boy with the Queen and Sir Winston at Balmoral his still in 1952. The Prince replied that he remembered well encountering Sir Winston.
Entering the simple bedroom, where Sir Winston slept after his frequent late nights working in his study, the Prince declared that it looked “frightfully comfortable”, with a “wonderful view” across the grounds.
During a visit to the painting studio, the Prince, himself an artist, admired a selection of the 128 canvases at Chartwell, saying it was “amazing how many he did”.
He and Sir Nicholas were shown an enormous globe, one of only three in the world, sent over from America so that Sir Winston could look at precisely the same map as President Roosevelt.
The Trust announced yesterday that the fundraising campaign had so far allowed it to acquire Sir Winston’s box for speeches, a collection of more than 40 medals, freedom awards, a paintbox, a hairbrush made from the wood of the Second World War ship HMS Exeter and a commemorative birthday book signed by almost every sitting MP in 1954 on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Money raised from the appeal will also enable new rooms and spaces to be opened at Chartwell.
If the Trust reaches its £7.1million
‘We will continue to fund-raise for our project to ensure Churchill’s legacy for future generations’
target, it plans to rebuild a two-storey treehouse in the grounds, just as it was in Sir Winston’s day, and secure the Nobel Prize medal.
Sir Nicholas said: “It’s such a wonderful place, Chartwell. As I grew up here until I was 12, it has so many wonderfully happy, happy memories which all come flooding back every time I see the grass.
“The extraordinary way it has been set up so reflects my grandparents’ life. I’m thrilled the Prince of Wales has come to see it.”
Zoë Colbeck, the general manager for Chartwell, said: “It was a great honour to welcome the Prince of Wales to Chartwell today and to introduce him to staff, volunteers and some of the many people across the world who have supported the appeal.
“We’re delighted that we have almost reached our target but we will continue to fund-raise so that we can complete our acquisition of the final objects in the collection and our wider project that will ensure Churchill’s legacy for future generations at the home he loved.”
Members of the public have pledged their own money to help to keep Sir Winston’s belongings on show and conserved, while the Heritage Lottery Fund has donated £3.45million.