Chequers

Chequers

Chequers is a 16th-century manor house in Buckinghamshire. It is the country home of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The name may derive from an early owner of the manor of Ellesborough. William Hawtrey built the current mansion around 1565.

About Chequers in brief

Summary ChequersChequers is a 16th-century manor house in Buckinghamshire. It is the country home of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The house is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for England. The name may derive from an early owner of the manor of Ellesborough in the 12th century. William Hawtrey built the current mansion around 1565, and it may have involved the reconstruction of an earlier building. During the First World War, Chequers became a hospital and then a convalescent home for officers. In 1909, the house was taken on a long lease by Arthur Lee and his wife Ruth. After the war, the childless Lees formed a plan to give the house to Prime Minister David Lloyd Lloyd. The Lees, Lord and Lady of Fareham, delivered a recreation of the ancient house as a thank-off for her great-offering in 1914–1918. A stained glass window in the long gallery of the house bears the inscription: This house of ancient and ancient peace and memories was given to England as a.

tribute to the memory of Lady Fareham. In 1912, after the death of the last of the. house’s ancestral owners Henry Delavel Astley, Ruth Lee and her sister purchased the property and later. gave it to Arthur Lee. The current Prime Minister, David Cameron, has lived at Chequer’s since 1921 after the estate was. given to the nation by Sir Arthur Lee by a Deed of Settlement, given full effect in the Cheqers Estate Act 1917. It has been named after Elias Ostiarius, an usher of the Court of the Exchequer and scacchiera means a chessboard in Italian. It could also be named after the chequer trees that grow in its grounds, or after Lady Mary Grey, the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII.