In the 19th century members of the English Rothschild family bought and built many country houses in the home counties, furnishing them with the art the family collected. The area of the Vale of Aylesbury, where many of the houses were situated, became known as Rothchildshire. In the 20th century many of these properties were sold off with their art collections dispersed. Today only Eythrope House still belong to the family however they still rentain influence in how Ascott House and Waddesdon Manor are managed. However in the loss of country houses in the 20th century only Aston Clinton was lost.
Properties
The country houses that were purchased or built in or around Buckinghamshire included:
Ascott House, Wing in the Vale of Aylesbury
Aston Clinton House, Aston Clinton in the Vale of Aylesbury
Champneys, Wigginton on the edge of the Chiltern Hills
Eythrope, Buckinghamshire
Exbury estate, Hampshire Exbury in the New Forest National Park. Flint House, Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire Gunnersbury Park, Middlesex Halton House, Halton Mentmore Towers, Mentmore Shorncliffe Lodge, Folkestone, Kent Tring Park Mansion, Tring, Hertfordshire Waddesdon Manor, Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire Windmill Hill, Buckinghamshire, Waddesdon
History
Nathan Mayer Rothschild had rented Tring Park in Tring, Hertfordshire in the 1830s. It was purchased with 4,000 acres (16 km2) by Lionel Rothschild in May 1872 as his principal country residence. Waddesdon Manor, near to the market town of Aylesbury, was built in the 1870s, Further afield, the Rothschild family owned the Exbury estate in Hampshire, known for the Rothschild collection of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, now run by a charity.