The 7 best National Trust properties if you’re a complete hopeless romantic

A POLITICAL SCANDAL: Cliveden, Bucks

As the home of the wealthy Astor family, the 1851 Grade I-listed country house at Cliveden – the third to be built on the site – was a hub of society, bearing witness to exclusive parties and political gatherings for generations. But it hit the headlines in 1963 when John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, was revealed to have first met 19-year-old model and dancer Christine Keeler by the swimming pool at Cliveden two years earlier.

Their brief affair became a political scandal when it was revealed Keeler was also in a relationship with Soviet naval attaché Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, sparking security fears among politicians and the public alike.

Having first denied a relationship with Keeler, and convincing prime minister Harold Macmillan of his innocence, Profumo came clean and admitted impropriety.

The Profumo Affair, as it became known, ended his political career, while also leading to Macmillan’s resignation and contributing to the Conservative government’s downfall in 1964’s general election.

The scandal also shattered the Astors’ lives, and the death shortly afterwards of Waldorf and Nancy Astor’s son Bill hastened the family’s decision to leave Cliveden. They gifted it to the Trust in 1942 on the proviso they could carry on living there, with the Trust taking over completely in 1966. Today it remains one of the charity’s most visited properties.

BY ROYAL COMMAND: The Vyne, Hampshire

There are few relationships that have had quite the same impact as the one between King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. In 1509, the Tudor king and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had made the first of several visits to The Vyne, whose owner was William Sandys, a royal favourite, later to become Lord Chamberlain.

Sandys had emblems of the most important dignitaries in Tudor society carved into the panelling at the house, highlighting his powerful connections.

Catherine’s emblem, the pomegranate, symbolised fertility and her homeland of Spain, yet after nearly 24 years, with their only surviving child a daughter Mary, Henry wanted to divorce her.

Having become infatuated with her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, the King moved to annul his marriage, leading to England’s eventual schism with the Catholic Church. The Pope, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, refused to grant a divorce, so Henry declared himself Head of the Church of England, in a move that changed the course of British history.

In October 1535, Henry and his second wife visited The Vyne, with a courtier describing them as being “very merry in Hampshire” – but she could not have missed seeing some of the pomegranate emblems of her predecessor.

Sandys was a staunch supporter of Catherine (hence the pomegranates). But he also understood the delicate balance between power and politics.

Just a year after her visit, and only three years after her marriage to Henry, Sandys escorted Anne to her imprisonment in the Tower of London, prior to her bloody execution for adultery, proving his allegiance to the King.

A LASTING AFFAIR: Knole, Kent

Giovanna Zanerini, known by her stage name La Baccelli, was a celebrated Italian dancer who performed ballet at a time when it was beginning to develop into an art form independent of opera. She made her debut in 1774 as the Rose in Le Ballet des Fleurs at the King’s Theatre and it was there that she caught the eye of the bachelor John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset.

By 1779, La Baccelli had taken up residence at Knole, the Duke’s ancestral home in Kent, and they had a son together, named John Frederick Sackville after his father. There are many references to La Baccelli in the surviving family accounts, including laundry bills, toys, pocket money and cricket stumps for her son.

She had her own personal servants at Knole and the part of the house now known as Shelley’s Tower is thought to be named after an mispronunciation of her name.

The 3rd Duke commissioned portraits of La Baccelli by his favourite contemporary painters, Gainsborough and Reynolds. But in contrast to the formal portraits of generations of Sackville women, Giovanna’s legacy is a voluptuous plaster statue of her naked reclining form, by John Baptist Locatelli.

In 1789, the Duke and La Baccelli separated, she receiving £400 annuity, and by the following year the Duke had settled down to a respectable marriage with an heiress. According to an inventory of Knole in 1799, the statue of La Baccelli was no longer in pride of place. It had been discreetly removed to the attics, to “the Top of the Stairs, next [to] the Wardrobe”.

COURAGE AT SEA: Killerton, Devon

There can be no greater love and devotion than at times of war, but some examples led to truly thrilling tales of adventure. The story of Harriet Fox-Strangways, who married into the Acland family of Killerton House, was one such story.

Harriet’s husband John Acland joined the British forces in the 1770s during the American War of Independence. When he was posted to Canada to help subdue an uprising, Harriet insisted on going with him to be nearby in Montreal.

When John was taken sick in the summer of 1776, Harriet travelled “to attend him upon his sickbed in a miserable hut at Chamblee”.

However, soon afterwards, when John was wounded in battle and taken prisoner, Harriet showed her true courage. Demanding to be allowed to cross enemy lines to be with him, she badgered a British general to obtain an open boat, two servants and a chaplain, with whom she sailed two miles downstream at night in the pouring rain, flying a truce flag that was seen by the enemy. Harriet was allowed entry and permission to stay with her husband until he recuperated, and the pair returned to England. Her spirited journey by boat is immortalised in a painting that now hangs in the drawing room at Killerton.

A WARTIME LOVE STORY: Beningbrough Hall, North Yorks

Dorothy Preston, known as Gipsy, met Canadian airman Harry “Olie” Olsen in late 1941 at the Alice Hawthorn pub in the North Yorkshire village of Nun Monkton near Harrogate. Their time together was brief, but clearly passionate.

In March 1942, Olsen was transferred to 405 Pathfinder squadron, based at RAF Pocklington in East Riding. Without transport, they had little way of seeing each other, but stayed in touch and continued to exchange letters.

However, they never met again. Olsen’s Halifax bomber was shot down while flying a mission over Essen, Germany, on June 8, 1942 . He managed to bail out over the village of Heteren in the Netherlands and was taken prisoner.

After the war, he was flown back to the UK, but could not recall Gipsy’s address and returned to Canada without having been able to contact her. However, the couple’s time together had been marked at Beningbrough Hall, the Georgian mansion which served as a billet for the air crews based locally.

Graffiti above the drawing room fireplace includes their names and originally a heart, now faded through human touch over the decades. But until fairly recently, no one knew who the names belonged to or how they were linked.

The story remained a mystery until a visit from a lady in 1987. When shown the graffiti by a room guide, she was overwhelmed to see it – and revealed that she was Gipsy. Dorothy had kept Olie’s prison-issue letters, often blacked out by censors. One, dated December 20, 1944, read: “Dear Dot, Haven’t heard from you for some time. Hope all is well. Would you send me a photo of yourself, just in case I don’t see you again. Merry Xmas to you. Love Olie.”

CHALLENGING CONVENTION: Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent

The history of Sissinghurst Castle Garden, former home of writer and garden designer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, has been shaped and enriched by people who challenged wider society’s conventional ideas of sex. The relationships Vita and Harold enjoyed outside of their marriage had a profound effect on their life and work, particularly Vita’s, some of which can still be felt at Sissinghurst.

She filled her creative sanctum, her writing room in the Elizabethan Tower, with tokens of love which symbolised her relationships with other women. One of the most enduring of Vita’s relationships was with the writer Virginia Woolf, who she first met in 1922 at a dinner party.

The two women were immediately intrigued by each other, sparking a love affair some years later which matured into a deep friendship and provided much creative fuel.

Virginia’s critically acclaimed novel Orlando is inspired by her lover, as its main character fulfils a destiny that Vita longed for, to inherit her stately childhood home.Vita had been denied her family home, Knole, as it was passed to her male relative.

The novel was described by Vita and Harold’s son Nigel Nicolson as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature”.

A LOVE THAT WAITED: Flatford Mill, Suffolk

One of England’s greatest painters had to endure a seven-year wait before he could marry the woman he loved. John Constable grew up in the family home in East Bergholt, Suffolk and spent time at Flatford Mill on the River Stour, which his father owned.

He first met Maria Bicknell, the granddaughter of the local rector, when she was 12 and he was in his early twenties, but the pair met again nine years later and fell in love. They longed to marry – but Maria’s father was a successful solicitor to the Prince Regent and the admiralty, while Constable was a struggling artist living on a small allowance from his parents.

The pair were thwarted by Maria’s wealthy grandfather who threatened to disinherit her if she married the artist, and so she and John were forced to meet secretly.

The strain of such a hidden seven-year relationship, together with unexpected deaths in both families over the following years, caused them to become quite melancholic about the situation.

However, John’s father died in 1816, providing generously for his six children, and John finally had the means to support a wife and a future family.

That same year, the pair were married and some of Constable’s most famous works were painted during the early years of his marriage to Maria, in the area that has become indelibly linked to him, including Flatford Mill in 1817 and The Hay Wain in 1821.

However, Maria had suffered all her life from poor health. After the birth of their seventh child, she became ill with tuberculosis and died after 12 years of marriage, aged only 41.

Constable was beside himself. He wrote to his brother: “Hourly do I feel the loss of my departed Angel – God only knows how my children will be brought up… the face of the World is totally changed to me.”

After Maria’s death, Constable’s artwork became more sombre in its style.