The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Burnham and Taplow.

[2]:29 The Victorian three-storey mansion sits on a 400-foot (120 m) long, 20-foot (6.1 m) high brick terrace or viewing platform (visible only from the south side) which dates from the mid-17th century.

[2]:206 Below the balustraded roofline is a Latin inscription which continues around the four sides of the house and recalls its history; it was composed by the then prime minister William Ewart Gladstone.

It is rendered in Roman cement like the rest of the house and features four clock faces framed by gilded surrounds and a half-open staircase on its north side.

"[22] The tower is topped with a modern reproduction of Augustin Dumont's 19th-century winged male figure Le Génie de la Liberté (the Spirit of Liberty).

[25][dead link‍] Cliveden stands on the site of a house built in 1666 designed by architect William Winde as the home of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

[26] Derived from several historical sources including George Lipscombe's History of the County of Buckingham, the Lysons brothers Magna Britannia, and James Joseph Sheahan's History of Buckinghamshire, it shows that in 1237 the land was owned by Geoffrey de Clyveden and by 1300 it had passed to his son, William, who owned fisheries and mills along the Cliveden Reach stretch of the Thames and at nearby Hedsor.

The grots in the chalky rocks are pretty: it is a romantic object, and the place altogether answers the most poetical description that can be made of solitude, precipice, prospect, or whatever can contribute to a thing so very like their imaginations.

The staircase is for its materials singular; the cloisters, descents, gardens, and avenue through the wood, august and stately; but the land all about wretchedly barren, and producing nothing but fern.

"[35]After Buckingham died in 1687, the house remained empty until the estate was purchased in 1696 by George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, a soldier and colonial official.

[31]:15 The landscape designer Charles Bridgeman was also commissioned to devise woodland walks and carve a rustic turf amphitheatre out of the cliff-side.

[40] After Frederick fell out with his father, Kew and Cliveden became his refuge from life at the royal court, becoming family homes for his wife Augusta and their children.

(an aria by the English composer Thomas Arne with lyrics by Scottish poet James Thomson) was first performed in public in the cliff-side amphitheatre at Cliveden.

To rebuild Cliveden, Warrender selected William Burn, a Scottish architect, and decided on a design for a two-storey mansion with entertaining on a grand scale in mind.

[50] During his ownership of the estate (1868–93), he contributed significant additions to the house and gardens, including the porte cochère on the north front of the mansion, a new stable block and the dovecote, all designed by Henry Clutton.

[14] The combination of the house, its setting, and leisure facilities offered on the estate – boating on the Thames, horse riding, tennis, swimming, croquet and fishing – made Cliveden a destination for film stars, politicians, world leaders, writers and artists.

[55] In the preface to her memoir, James Roose-Evans stated that during the Second World War, Grenfell ran two wards of the hospital and worked as an informal welfare officer.

This work included completing errands for patients, writing letters, shopping, teaching needlework, and organising social events, and informal concerts.

[56] At the outbreak of World War I, Waldorf Astor offered the use of some of the grounds to the Canadian Red Cross for the building of a hospital—the HRH Duchess of Connaught Hospital—which was dismantled at the end of the hostilities.

"[79] The Duke commissioned both Charles Barry (who had rebuilt the mansion after the second fire) and John Fleming (the head gardener) to produce designs for a complex parterre of flower beds.

The circular garden has a diameter of 250 ft and restoration will include reinstating the paths and wrought iron arches as well as original fruit varieties where possible.

[98] At the far end of the parterre is a twentieth-century copy of a bronze group entitled The Rape of Proserpina (Italian, c.1565), bought by William Waldorf Astor from Italy.

[100] Sitting on modern plinths in the Long Garden are two ancient Egyptian baboon sculptures, thought to be 2,000 – 2,500 years old, that were purchased by William Waldorf Astor in Rome in 1898.

Purchased by Lord Astor in the late 19th century from the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome, it is crafted from Travertine stone and brick tiles by Giuseppe Di Giacomo and Paolo Massini in c.1618–19.

The first structure on the site was a Gothic-style summerhouse with an octagonal vaulted plaster ceiling designed in 1813 by architect Peter Nicholson for Mary FitzMaurice, 4th Countess of Orkney.

In auction particulars dated 1821, which list all structures on the estate, the building is described as a Banqueting house "at the much admired spring",[105] while several decades later it was described as an "ornamental fishing villa.

[104] The subsequent alterations were in the vernacular style with brick and stucco walls, fish-scale pattern roof slates, a Gothick-style loggia and a turret above an exterior staircase leading to a balcony.

[106] Throughout the remainder of the 19th century the main purpose of the cottage was as a place of leisure, and it was frequently used by the Duke's wife Harriet to entertain guests, most notably her friend Queen Victoria.

[113] The house has been used for filming on multiple occasions, including: A Very British Country House (2018);[114] Hampstead (2017);[115] Paul Hollywood City Bakes (2016);[116] Mr Selfridge (2016);[117] Cinderella (2015);[117] A Little Chaos (2014);[118] Endless Night (2013);[119] Sherlock Holmes (2009);[120] Made of Honour (2008);[121] Cards on the Table (2005);[122] Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005);[123] Thunderbirds (2004);[124] Antiques Roadshow (2000);[125] Carrington (1995);[126] Chaplin (1992);[127] Dead Man's Folly (1986);[128] Operation Daybreak (1975);[129] Don't Lose Your Head (1966);[130] Help!

[131] Cliveden has been referenced in literature including: Three Men in a Boat (1889);[108] Boogie Up the River (1989);[132] Alexander Pope's Moral Essays;[133] Daniel Defoe's A Tour Through England and Wales (1726)[134] and Gore Vidal's novel The City and the Pillar (1948).