The famous home of Sir Winston Churchill at Chartwell, near Westerham in Kent, is a repository of fabulous artefacts relating to Britain’s wartime leader and Britain at War magazine were recently shown some of them by the National Trust’s curatorial staff.
Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country home, is doubtless associated in the minds of many with the period of his wartime leadership. Perhaps its proximity to RAF Biggin Hill, where Churchill is known to have visited on occasion, and a well-known photograph of a high-flying formation of Dornier bombers, often captioned as being ‘over Chartwell’, are factors which have somehow cemented a popular notion of this being Churchill’s wartime home. It wasn’t. In truth, he rarely went there once appointed Prime Minister because his duties tied him almost exclusively to London. Not only that, and perhaps more importantly, it was widely known to be his home and was thus a significant and potential target for the Luftwaffe and his mere presence there would have been an unacceptable risk.
