Ditchley House

Ditchley is a country house and estate near Charlbury in Oxfordshire.

The estate was once the site of a Roman villa. Later it became a royal hunting ground, and then the property of George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield, who built the present house, designed by James Gibbs, in 1722. In 1933, the house was bought by an MP, Ronald Tree, whose wife Nancy Lancaster redecorated it in partnership with Sibyl Colefax. During the war, they allowed their friend Winston Churchill to use the house as his country retreat, as it was hard to spot from the air. Later, Tree sold Ditchley to Sir David Wills of the tobacco family, who set up the Ditchley Foundation, for the promotion of international relations.

Ditchley once provided lodging and access to the royal hunting ground of Wychwood Forest. In September 1603 James I dined with Sir Henry Lee at Ditchfield. The present house was erected in 1722 for George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield and was designed by James Gibbs.

Occupants of the Ditchley estate have included:

In 1933 after the death of the 17th Viscount Dillon, Ditchley was bought by Anglo-American Ronald Tree and his wife, the celebrated decorator Nancy Lancaster. It was the decoration of Ditchley which earned Nancy the reputation of having "the finest taste of almost anyone in the world." She worked on it with Sibyl Colefax (Mrs Bethell of Elden Ltd having died in 1932) and the French decorator Stéphane Boudin of the Paris firm Jansen.

In November 1933 Ronald was elected MP for Harborough, Leicestershire. Tree and his wife Nancy were among those who saw the Nazi threat, and had invited Winston Churchill and his wife to dinner on numerous occasions from 1937.

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