By the end of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had emerged from relative obscurity in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt to become one of the world’s richest families. They owned houses, vineyards, racehorses and the most amazing art collection – from 18th century English portraits to Dutch paintings, French furniture, porcelain and sculpture.

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bought the estate from the Duke of Marlborough in 1874. He commissioned Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur to design the house to entertain his guests and to house his massive art collection. Fashioned like a French chateau on the Loire, it was built on the top of a hill where ‘there was not a bush to be seen or a bird to be heard’.

Ferdinand was a complex character. Full of energy (he completed the house and gardens at Waddesdon in five years), extremely generous to his guests and staff, he was also a solitary man. He wrote: ‘I am lonely, suffering and occasionally very miserable individual, despite the gilded and marble rooms in which I live’.

Queen Victoria visited the estate in 1890 – a visit that had, according to Ferdinand, ‘passed off so satisfactorily’.

Ferdinand regarded Waddesdon as ‘complete’ – he published his aims and influences in The Red Book, published a year before his early death in 1898. [Did Ferdinand base his ideas on the Red Books produced by Humphry Repton for prospective clients?]

Ferdinand loved gardening and he created the formal and informal gardens at Waddesdon with advice from the Parisian landscape architect Elie Laine.

The Rothschild Foundation manages Waddesdon on behalf of the National Trust.