An epoch-making idea

Chequers Court, Buckinghamshire, part II By courtesy of the Chequers Trust In 1917, the newly restored Chequers was gifted to the nation as the country seat of Britain’s Prime Ministers. John Goodall turns to a personal diary to explain how this came about

- John Goodall

ON September 22, 1912, the leaseholders of Chequers Court, Arthur and Ruth Lee, read in the Sunday papers that the owner of the house, Delaval Astley, had been killed in a flying accident. As was described last week, the Lees had just restored the property (Fig 1) at enormous expense and the news came as a shock. The accident would prove a turning point in the history of Chequers and directly encouraged the Lees to make a gift of the house to the nation as the country seat of Britain’s Prime Ministers. To understand why, it is necessary to return to Ruth’s compelling diaries.

All Astley’s property, including the freehold of Chequers, passed to his wife, ‘May Kinder, a chorus girl from Philadelphia’, as Ruth later noted. An American herself, it is nevertheless implicit from the diaries that she believed the Astley family to be embarrassed by the connection. The Lees received news of the tragedy, moreover, after troubles of their own.

Arthur, then serving as an MP, and Ruth had recently both been seriously ill and the latter had undergone a major operation. Illness changed their attitude towards a house they had leased for two lifetimes only three years before and restored, especially as they remained childless.