Nuffield Place
| Nuffield Place | |
|
National Trust | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Nuffield Place | |
| Grid reference: | SU679878 |
| Location: | 51°35’8"N, 1°1’12"W |
| Information | |
| Website: | Nuffield Place |
Nuffield Place is a country home in Nuffield in Oxfordshire, at the edges of the Chilterns to the west of the comfortable village of Nettlebed.
The modest appearance of the house belies the wealth of the man whose home it was, William Richard Morris, later Lord Nuffield, the most famous industrialist of his age, founder of the Morris Motor Company and a remarkable philanthropist (the Nuffield Foundation and Nuffield College in Oxford were created for his benevolence).
Lord and Lady Nuffield bought Nuffield Place in 1933 and lived there the rest of their lives. After Lord Nuffield's death in 1963, as they had no children, the house was left to Nuffield College, Oxford, which later gave it to the National Trust.
The house
Though one of the richest men of the age, Lord Nuffield lived a frugal life: the bedroom carpets were off-cuts from the Morris factory. The furnishings retain a feel of Lord Nuffield's lifestyle, down to the tools and shoe repairing kits in the cupboards: a dedicated engineer, he preferred to mend rather than buy new.[1]
Nuffield Place is retained by the National Trust in the style in which it was left, revealing the down-to-earth lives of Lord and Lady Nuffield, displaying their personal possessions are just as they left them, and the decor and furnishings intact. It is a home of the 1930s, notwithstanding that it was inhabited until the 1960s.
Surprises in store include the bedroom with a secret built-in workshop.
Garden
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The whole estate covers just over 9 acres, in which is a 4-acre garden, laid out by the architect of the house. It is a domestic garden if on the grand scale the acreage permits, with lawns, herbaceous borders, a wildflower meadow, vegetable garden and a rock garden.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Nuffield Place) |
- Nuffield Place information from the National Trust
References
- ↑ William Morris: the humble lifestyle of Britain's greatest philanthropist revealed – The Telegraph, 27 April 2011