Playing at chequers

In the first of two articles on the country seat of Britain’s Prime Ministers, John Goodall uses a diary to explain the circumstances of its magnificent Edwardian transformation

- John Goodall

CHEQUERS COURT is popularly familiar as the country seat of the Prime Ministers of Britain. It is not, however, a public or Government-owned building—rather, it is managed by a trust set up for the purpose by Ruth and Arthur Lee, later Viscount Lee of Fareham, in 1917. The couple first leased —and later bought—this Elizabethan house as a second home in 1909 and restored it with the help of the doyen of Edwardian architects, Sir Reginald Blomfield. When the Lees first undertook the transformation of the house in their late thirties, they had no idea of where it would lead them.

To rediscover how the Edwardian renovation of Chequers Court unraveled, it is necessary to turn to Ruth’s unpublished diaries. These are preserved in the house and run in a continuous sequence from 1906 to 1946. Each volume is bound in red leather and locked by a single clasp. Within them is to be found an unusually detailed account of how the Lees fell in love with Chequers and then went about its restoration.

As we shall discover next week, they also reveal how the decision to gift it to the nation was catalyzed by a plane crash in 1912 and then came to an unexpectedly rapid fruition on New Year’s Day, 1921.