March 22, 2017

Chartwell remained the family home for forty years (although the Churchills moved out during the war and shut the house (between August 1939 and January 1946). From September 1945 the Churchills also kept a London house at 28 Hyde Park Gate, and it was here that Churchill died on 24 January 1965.

After the Second World War, in the 1940s, a consortium of wealthy benefactors, led by Lord Camrose, bought Chartwell from the Churchills and presented it to the National Trust on condition that Churchill and Clementine would have the right to live there for the rest of their lives. A trust was established, the Chartwell Trust, to manage his income from writing; for the first time in his life Churchill was able to indulge in the ‘best of everything’ without any worries that the money would run out. In his years as an ‘elder statesman’ he bought up agricultural land around Chartwell and settled down to life as a gentleman farmer, looking after pigs, sheep and cows, while continuing with his writing and his passion for painting.

Visit Chartwell: you can now visit Chartwell yourself and see the house and grounds very much as they were when the Churchills lived there.