Cherkley Court

The house was built in 1866–70 for Birmingham exporter of metal goods Abraham Dixon (1815–1907) and rebuilt 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, and he lived there for the next fifty years. During Beaverbrook's time, the house attracted many famous weekend guests including Winston Churchill, Bonar Law, Rebecca West, H. G. Wells, Harold Macmillan and Rudyard Kipling. 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…

The building is of eclectic style with classical features, notably Tuscan columns. It is made of mostly stuccoed brick, with some uniformly cut stone blocks (ashlar), and slate roofs. It has semi-hexagonal protruding side wings, an irregular plan with a large service block attached at the north-east corner and a flat-roofed pavilion at the south-east corner.