Cherkley Court, near Leatherhead, Surrey, in England, is a late Victorian mansion and estate of 370 acres, once the home of Lord Beaverbrook.
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The house was built in 1866-70 for wool manufacturer Abraham Dixon (1820–1900) and re-built for him in 1893 after a fire, being lived in by his wife until her death in 1909. Cherkley Court was acquired in 1910 by Lord Beaverbrook, politician and owner of the Express Newspapers group, with him living there for the next 50 years. During Beaverbrook's time, the house attracted many famous weekend guests including Winston Churchill, Andrew Bonar Law, Rebecca West, H.G. Wells, Harold Macmillan and Rudyard Kipling.[1]
Beaverbrook passed the house on to his son Max some years before his death in 1964. After the death of Beaverbrook's second wife in 1994, the house became the property of the Beaverbrook Foundation, a charitable foundation set up by Lord Beaverbrook.
By 2002 Cherkley Court had fallen into disrepair but over seven years the Beaverbrook Foundation restored the property, with the intention of opening it to the public in the same way as the great houses owned by the National Trust.
On 1 April 2007 it opened its 16 acres (65,000 m2) of formal gardens and walks to paying visitors. As well as grand terraces, garden pavilions, a stone grotto and an Italianate garden there are wild flower meadows, a walnut grove and woodland walks.
However, in December 2009 it was announced that the house would no longer be open to the public, from 2010, the Foundation having decided that it could not be profitable. In September 2010 the house and estate were put on the market at £20 million. Plans by one prospective buyer to turn the main house into a hotel and the grounds into a golf course were opposed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.[1][2][3]
Cherkley Court is situated off the A24 Leatherhead bypass near the Beaverbrook roundabout (grid reference TQ178544: Landranger Sheet 187, or Explorer 146).