The Rothschilds were a banking dynasty, the Rockefellers of the Victorian era. They seemed to congregate around the Aylesbury Vale, which became known as Rothschildshire. Now, the area is littered with their fabulous mansions. This is the story of some of them.
Their origins in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt were far from fabulous. It was a grindingly impoverished hellhole where, in 1743, Amschel Moses Bower, a goldsmith by trade and aided by his formidable and capable wife Gutle, expanded into finance as a way to make money when many other avenues were closed to Jews.
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The Frankfurt Ghetto,
a century later |
Houses in the ghetto were not numbered, so he placed a sign of an eagle on a red shield over the door. Rothschild is German for ‘red shield’ so, later, his son Mayer adopted that as his family name. Mayer prospered and, to extend the scope of his nascent banking empire, dispatched his sons around Europe.
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| The Red Shield |
Mayer's fourth son out of 10, Nathan Mayer, emigrated to England, where he made a fortune trading in bonds and established his own bank. During the course of the Victorian period, helped by those European family connections, he was a key financier of Britain’s Government and its allies in the Napoleonic War and, as a result, became the richest man on earth.
In this visit to Rothschildshire, we will follow Nathan Mayer's sons, another Mayer, Anthony, another Nathan and Lionel, together with some of their own offspring, who continued in business in England.
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| The Sons |
Many of them prospered in their own right. Tracing them is complicated, not least because, as you will already have noticed, the family recycled names, used different titles at different times and places, and often married within the wider family.
Here is the genealogy from the family archive, which includes the main European branches and adds an entire new dimension to the concept of doom-scrolling.
It would have been so much easier if Nathan had just started a numbering system, maybe a bit like Britain's legendary 00 system for agents licensed to kill, but he didn't, so I expect to make some mistakes. In any event, what follows is not a tour of the family but of its visible legacy as Rothschildshire, with them as actors. That allows me to prune the cast of characters!
You might also notice that this account is remarkably short of women. This isn't misogyny on my part, but a feature of the time and, in particular, a decision by Mayer, in his Will, to forbid the female members of the family from inheriting or playing any part in the decisions of the various businesses, despite Gutle's contribution and in much the same enlightened way that he encouraged inbreeding.  |
| Gutle |
It's a pity because there were brains, characters and eccentrics aplenty among the women. It wasn't long after Mayer's death that his son Nathan explicitly involved his equally able wife Hannah, and enjoined his sons to do the same. If you are interested, The Tatler (who else!) reviewed a book about them all. Link : Rothschild Women.
I wonder if those sleeves hid biceps?
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| Hannah |
You may well have a view on whether their banking business was just healthy commerce or ‘casino capitalism’ at its worst, but the name has always attracted more than simple ideological censure. Do they deserve their reputation? To my mind, while they were undoubtedly unscrupulous capitalists, there is more than a whiff of antisemitism in all this, hidden in a smokescreen of Illuminati-style hysteria.
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| A quote attributed - probably falsely - to Nathan Rothschild |
At times, they were accused by both left and right-wing conspiracy theorists of manipulating markets and even fomenting wars for personal gain. Conspiracy theories have ranged from the possible but improbable to the hilarious and probably owe as much to rampant anti-Semitism as to the lingering suspicion of parasitic and monopolistic financial activity. Among other things, they are said to have started wars where they could profit from both sides, assassinated US Presidents and, most ridiculously, triggered the holocaust.
Some still believe that they secretly control the global economy, presumably from rural Rothschildshire, where many of the family still live.
Nathan Meyer's enterprise, arbitrage and connections during those Napoleonic wars were the foundation of the family fortune. It gave them a role in managing its consequences, not unlike that of the European Central Bank today. Probably the most famous legend is that in 1815, Nathan used his own messengers to make sure he was the first to know of the outcome of Waterloo and spread rumours that the Battle of Waterloo had been lost to cause a collapse in the price of shares, which he then scooped back up before market prices soared when the news of Wellington’s victory was officially announced.
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| Rothschild's Global Reach |
Over time, virtually every element of this story turned out to have been embellished or fabricated, but it is still often repeated – not least by City of London Guides! The story was compelling enough to inspire a 1940 Goebbels production for the Nazis entitled “Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo”.
Nathan Mayer mostly lived at Gunnersbury Park in London rather than in Buckinghamshire, so I can cut short his role in this tale. But his legacy lives on in London. His Gunnersbury house is now a museum, and his bank, N M Rothschild, is, and has always been, based in New Court, near London's Cannon Street Station.
It would have been helpful if the family could have built their houses in generational or date order, clockwise or anti-clockwise; I wouldn't have minded. But they didn't, so this roughly follows the anti-clockwise route of one of my bike tours, and you will have to put up with any consequential confusion. I am starting at Waddesdon, around five miles north of Aylesbury.
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Waddesdon
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This was built for Ferdinand (Ferdy), who was actually a member of the Austrian branch of the family, which had a valuable spider's web of connections across Europe. He was an Austrian, a great-nephew of Nathan Meyer's who sneaked in by 'keeping it in the family' and marrying Evalina, Nathan Meyer's granddaughter and his own 2nd Cousin.
Looking at the house, I think of the style as 'the Adams Family win the Lottery'. The architecturally literate opine that it copies the Chateau de Chambord in the Loire and was fully equipped with Victorian mod-cons, including an electric chandelier, which Queen Victoria spent 15 minutes switching on and off, never having seen such a thing before.
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| Ferdy. From 'Vanity Fair'. |
Most recently, it was in the hands of Jacob, a 6th-generation descendant of Nathan Mayer. He ran yet another branch of the financial empire and gained fame as the model for Monty Burns in The Simpsons, who acknowledged the inspiration in the show.
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Monty Burns meets Jacob Rothschild
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He died recently (Jacob, Monty is immortal) and had already handed the property to the National Trust, thus avoiding a massive inheritance tax bill. You can visit it. As you can imagine, there are gardens and a lot of cultural and craft bling. I particularly liked the Musical Elephant and the garden statuary made from used bottles of Rothschild's own 'Chateau Lafite' champagne. This can fetch £2,000 a bottle, so have fun working out how much the contents of were worth and the scale of the resulting hangover.  |
| The Wine Bottle Sculpture |
You will have noticed that it sits on a hill. The idea was that the major homes of the extended family would be mutually visible. Was it an aesthetic decision? Or paranoia? Or to reinforce a collective family identity? I don't think anyone knows.
Just down the hill from Waddesdon is Eyethrope, now a farmed park. After Evalina died, his sister Alice kept Ferdy company and acted as his ‘hostess’. Eyethrope was bought for her. It stands near the River Thame, which was wet, as most rivers are. The damp exacerbated Alice’s rheumatic fevers, so she never moved in, and this more modest house, referred to by the family as the Pavilion, was built as a place to house her collections and entertain guests during the day. Bedrooms were not deemed necessary, so it is effectively a giant Wendy House.
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| Eythrope 'Pavilion'. |
After Alice's death, it was left to the wife of Somerset Maughan. That must have been a tough gig; he described himself as being ‘three-quarters queer’, and he used the other quarter to spread the love even further.
Next stop is Ascott House near Wing, intentionally designed in a mock Elizabethan rustic style and to look as if it had expanded higgledy-piggledy style over the ages. Originally, it was given by Mayer (who built Mentmore, next stop!) to his nephew Leopold as a hunting lodge (!),
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| Ascott House |
Until his recent death, this was the country residence of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Apparently, he originally wanted to be a cowboy, following pleasant experiences on Grannie’s ranch in Paraguay, but ended up as the last English Rothschild at the helm of the family bank. Beyond that, he has been a financial advisor to the queen, a jack of all noble trades and a board member of just about everything. The house is also owned by the National Trust and is open to the public to enjoy the gardens and art. (Check opening hours).
Heading south and moving back upscale in mansion-size, you find the Jacobethan extravagance that is Mentmore.
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| Muffy |
This was the home of Nathan Meyer's youngest son, Mayer Amschel, aka Muffy! and his wife and cousin Juliana. It was the first and largest of the Rothschildshire mansions, built in the 1850s and designed by Joseph Paxton, who was also responsible for the Crystal Palace. The best view of the house is from the south. It is unoccupied, semi-derelict, and there is often nothing to stop you wandering up the drive to get a better look.
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| Mentmore |
Muffy dabbled in politics but wasn't much into grubby things like finance. His great love was gee-gees. He passed the house, incomplete, to his daughter Hannah. She married the Earl of Rosebery, a ‘liberal imperialist’ who became Prime Minister in the 1890s and the butt of Churchill's jibe that 'he would not stoop and he did not conquer'.
Her death was the start of a downhill journey. In 1973, the Labour Government, preferring cold cash to finery, refused to accept the house and the attendant liability for repair and upkeep as a substitute for the outstanding tax owed, and it was sold to the Maharishi Foundation. He was the Guru to the Beatles and Transcendental Meditation fans, who was beautifully lampooned on TV in 'Goodness Gracious Me'. Later development proposals failed, and it is now empty and on the English Heritage list of 'at risk' historic buildings.
It might look familiar, having been used in a truly eclectic variety of films, including Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Johnny English, Eyes Wide Shut, Marquis de Sade, The Mummy Returns, Ali G in Da House and as Wayne Manor in Batman Returns.
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| The Maharishi |
Continuing south takes you to Tring Park. This original Manor here was designed by Christopher Wren, but Buckinghamshire attracts more than its fair share of bankers with dubious taste, and in this case, Sir Drummond Smith (of Drummonds Bank, now part of NatWest) messed around with Wren's legacy.
It was bought by Lionel who had helped fund the Crimean War and made a huge contribution towards the cost of relieving the Great Irish Famine. Gladstone recommended him for a peerage, but Queen Victoria demurred because he was Jewish and his fortune was based on 'a species of gambling'. You could become an MP. It was the House of Commons after all. But to become a Lord was pushing your luck!
In 1872, Lionel passed the house to his son Nathaniel as a wedding present. It beats a toaster.
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Lionel
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Nathaniel proved to be an expert at the dark arts of moving and shaking. He financed the Government's purchase of the Suez Canal and Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, while buying big stakes in future mining giants such as Rio Tinto and De Beers and helping the Unionists in the American Civil War, perhaps partly because their rivals, Barings, were helping the Confederates! But he gets credit for also financing efforts to relieve the Great Irish Famine.
That was enough to get him the peerage denied to his father, and which demonstrated how the financial and aristocratic elites were becoming entwined.
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| Tring Park |
Nathanial's son was Walter, later 2nd Baron Rothschild (and Freiherr von Rothschild of Austria!) He is a star of this show, but his passion wasn’t banking but zoology. In 1889, the current Tring Museum was his 21st birthday prezzie, built in the grounds to house his massive collection of great, small, stuffed, dried and pickled creatures. You can imagine his Mum was pleased to see them out of the house! On the ground floor of the house is an outpost (open to the public) of the Natural History Museum.
Dad, however, was a man of business and not amused by Walter’s inability to manage the Museum’s finances. When he died, he left him his title and a miserly £1m (equivalent to perhaps £75m today).
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| Kangaroos in Tring Park |
By this time, Walter’s zebras, emus, rheas and kangaroos wandered freely around Tring Park, the latter unconstrained by the haha (a hedge or ditch) that was supposed to (but didn't always) protect the formal gardens and prevent the beasts from wandering into the town. Later, the family gave the house and grounds to the people of Tring and Walter ended up living with Mum in her ‘dower house’ (i.e. the house occupied by the widow of an estate owner). This is now Champneys Spa Hotel in nearby Wigginton.
He was apparently quite shy, but the animals were everything. There are photographs of him riding on a giant tortoise and driving a carriage pulled by four zebras to Buckingham Palace, just to prove they could do it.
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| Walter in Tring |
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| Walter in London |
Shy, but far from a flier below the radar, he still played an active role in politics both as an MP and as a leading political light in the Jewish community. It was Walter who, in 1917, received the 'Balfour Declaration' which stated British Government support for the establishment of a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine. And for those who parse these things, yes, it does say 'home' and not 'state'. Just down the road from Tring, in Aston Clinton, was Aston Clinton House. A relatively modest concoction by Rothschild standards, it was originally built for a fellow with the wonderful title of General Gerald Lake, 1st Viscount of Delhi and Laswary and of Aston Clinton. Anthony 'Fat Bill' Rothschild, who I think was Nathan's 2nd son, bought the place in 1853 as a country escape from his grim garret in Grosvenor Square.
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| Anthony 'Fat Bill'. |
After he died, the place was variously used as a hotel, a radar research facility and a school for ‘backwards boys’. Evelyn Waugh began his teaching career there and described it as an “inconceivably ugly house but a lovely park”. It was demolished in 1958, leaving only some outbuildings, now used as an outdoor activities centre.
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| Aston Clinton House |
Next up is Halton House, which is still there, but surrounded by the trees and difficult to see from the road. Personally, I wouldn't bother. The grandiloquent style of the house wasn’t much admired; one critic described it as a cross between a French Château and a gambling house. This didn't save it from eventually being sold to the RAF at a knockdown price, and it remains the officers’ mess today. You might reasonably wonder if our supposedly cash-strapped military might find a more lucrative use for it?
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| Alfred |
Alfred wasn't as sharp as his Dad, so he became a Director of the Bank of England (!), which was quite something for a Jew at the time. However, I gather that he had to leave the bank some years later, following a dispute and indiscretion related to the purchase of a painting.
His own positive contribution to history rose obliquely. He had an illegitimate daughter, who was formally unacknowledged but who he adored. She married Lord Carnavon, who famously accompanied Howard Carter in the search for and excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun, an expedition bankrolled by her father, Alfred.
If you do want a closer look, have fun snubbing the MoD ‘Keep Out’ signs. What are they going to do? Shoot you? This was built for another of Lionel's sons, Alfred.
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| Halton |
The dynasty is still immensely wealthy but has shrunk in relative size and influence, as you might expect. I doubt that extraordinary business acumen is heritable. The English branch of the bank has now merged with the French, the Italian fell with the revolution there in the 1800s, and the substantial Austrian branch unsurprisinglyisingly suffered under the Nazis. Now, the bank only has outposts there. But the family's wealth now spreads way beyond the limits of the bank, from mansions in London to chateaux in France, castles in Scotland and grand Villas in Italy. You can get an idea of the remnants of the Empire here: Link Rothschild Estates
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| Villa Ephrussi, Nice |
In Rothschildshire, some of the houses are gone, others are going. Mentmore is almost beyond economical repair, and the RAF will surely not want to bear the cost of using Halton as an officer's mess indefinitely. Waddesdon and Ascott are still used by the family, but not exclusively, thanks to the National Trust. Tring has found another use and, on the hills above, Champneys remains a luxury spa.
And they are certainly visible reminders of their presence in Rothschildshire.
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| The Rothschild Arms, Aston Clinton |
