Wikipedia
Cliveden (pronounced ) is an Italianate mansion and estate on the Berkshire/ Buckinghamshire border. It crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills by the hilltop village of Taplow, just from the riverside town of Maidenhead. Set on banks above the River Thames, its grounds slope down to the river. The site has been home to an earl, three countesses, two dukes, a Prince of Wales and the Viscounts Astor.
As home of Nancy Astor, the house was the meeting place of the Cliveden set of the 1920s and 1930s — a group of political intellectuals. Later, during the 1960s, it became the setting for key events of the notorious Profumo Affair (a scandal that led to the collapse of the Conservative government in 1964). During the 1970s, it was occupied by Stanford University, which used it as an overseas campus. Today owned by the National Trust, the house is leased as a five-star hotel run by London & Regional Properties.
Cliveden means "valley among cliffs" and refers to the dene (valley) which cuts through part of the estate, east of the house. Cliveden has been spelled differently over the centuries, some of the variations being Cliffden, Clifden, Cliefden and Clyveden. The gardens and woodlands are open to the public, together with parts of the house on certain days. There have been three houses on this site: the first, built in 1666, burned down in 1795 and the second house (1824) was also destroyed by fire, in 1849. The present Grade I listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland.
Cliveden , also known as the Benjamin Chew House, is a historic mansion in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the Battle of Germantown, fought in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War.
Built between 1763 to 1767, by Benjamin Chew, the mansion was inhabited from colonial times by seven generations of the Chew family, until 1972. Chew was head of the Pennsylvania Judiciary System under both Colony and Commonwealth, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province of Pennsylvania. From his legal mentor, Andrew Hamilton, he inherited Hamilton's lifelong clients, the descendants of William Penn.
For Chew's safety, the Executive Committee of the Continental Congress forcibly removed him and his family from Cliveden, as his close friend, George Washington, was ordering his troops to move towards Philadelphia. British Colonel Musgrave then quickly occupied the sturdily built mansion and fought off the attack from within with muskets and bayonets. Washington's army was repelled and driven back down Germantown Avenue in defeat.