DUKE’S AMBUSH REAPS PALATIAL REWARD

THE Brits can be a thankful lot, and love slapping gongs and sashes on each other and tapping peoples’ shoulders with swords and calling them Sir and Lady, and passing the hat around for a job well done.

So in 1704 when John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough marched 56,000 British and Austrian troops in secrecy five weeks through the Low Countries to Bavaria to ambush 72,000 French and Bavarian soldiers in Blenheim as they prepared to invade Vienna, his Queen later asked him what he would like in appreciation of such brilliant English strategy.

The Duke said a little place up the country would be fine, somewhere he could occasionally get away to to escape cannon balls and gunsmoke and people who wanted to run him over with their horses.

Queen Anne gladly agreed, and the architecture Sir John Vanbrugh and the gardener Capability Brown were hired, between them knocking up plans for an appropriate country estate at Woodstock near Oxford, work starting on the Duke’s country retreat in 1705.

The centrepiece of the residence was to be a Great Reception Hall with ceilings 20m high and with enough room for the Duke and Duchess to entertain 250 mates at a time for drinks and canapés, side rooms in which they could seat a hundred or so for dinner, a library big enough for 10,000 books, and a chapel to save going into town on wet Sundays.

There were also to be a few score rooms for sleeping and staff and other things, so that by the time the plans were finished the “house” alone covered an amazing 2.8 hectares (7 acres or about 33 suburban building blocks,) yet still leaving Capability Brown with 800 hectares (2000 acres) to think about landscaping with man-made lakes, woodlands, hedges and flower displays.

Appropriately it was to be called Blenheim Palace after the Duke’s battle victory, but a rocky future lay in store.

To begin, the Duke had to keep going overseas to fight more battles, leaving his wife the Duchess Sarah to spend a lot of time with the Queen, who appointed Sarah to the highest office a woman could hold in the Royal Court: Mistress of the Robes and Keeper of the Privy Purse. But Sarah’s impish humour and unmerciful teasing of the Queen (whom she called Mrs Morley) wore thin, and after a range of disputes a plot was hatched to ease out both Sarah and the Duke.

By this stage Blenheim Palace was still a construction site and in 1712 all work stopped when the Queen severed her relationships with the Duke and Duchess – even though she’d spent nearly A$500,000 on their part-built palace.

After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the Duke himself took over the completion of Blenheim Palace and it was finally finished the same year he died – 1722, and seventeen years after work had begun.

Today its one of the most-visited attractions in England with over 500,000 visitors annually. The Palace is open daily from mid-February to the end of October (and to early December, from Wednesdays to Sundays only,) while the grounds and parklands are open year-round except Christmas Day.

And if the kids tire of looking at a billion dollar’s worth of paintings, statues, chandeliers and antique furnishings, there are boats to row on the lake, motor launches, a miniature train ride, a maze, butterfly house, adventure play area and a lake with superb fishing.

Regular special events are also held throughout the year including jousting tournaments, battle reenactments, music festivals, prestige and vintage car shows, and craft and food fairs.

Blenheim Palace is about an hour’s drive from London; excellent country dining and accommodation is available in nearby Woodstock, the heart of the Cotswolds. Ask travel agents about day tours from London to the Palace, or about in staying in Woodstock for a few days.

Website: www.blenheimpalace.com

(FOOTNOTE: Sir Winston Churchill was born prematurely at Blenheim Palace while his mother was attending a ball at the home of her husband’s great forebear in 1874. Sir Winston later proposed to his wife-to-be Clementine by a lake in the Palace grounds, and they are buried side-by-side near that spot.)