Blenheim Palace
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How it came to be
On 13 August 1704 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated a French and Bavarian army near the village of Blindheim on the Danube. The French commander-in-chief, Tallard, was taken captive to England. As a reward the Crown gave Marlborough the royal manor of Woodstock near Oxford, and Parliament voted a large sum towards a palace. The rent for the land was set at one copy of the French royal flag, to be handed to the monarch every year on the anniversary of the battle.
Work began in 1705 to designs by John Vanbrugh, a playwright with no formal training as an architect, who worked with the more practical Nicholas Hawksmoor. Costs rose, and the Crown stopped its funding in 1712. The Duchess, Sarah, who dealt with Vanbrugh while the Duke was on campaign, fell out with him, and he was banned from the site. After the Duke died in 1722 she recalled Hawksmoor to finish the work.
The 4th Duke later employed Capability Brown, who dammed the River Glyme to create a great lake. Winston Churchill was born in the palace on 30 November 1874. The palace and park, 961 ha in all, were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1987.
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