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Articles
Testimony to History: Churchill’s Chartwell Visitors Book
- By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
- | June 12, 2023
- Category: Explore Personal Matters
Winston and Clementine Churchill moved into Chartwell in 1922 and lived there until shortly before his death in January 1965. They kept a Visitors Book with the signatures of family, friends, guests, political figures and advisors who came to see them. It is over 200 pages and contains 2362 signatures of 749 people visiting between 1924 and 1964. It omits the war years 1940-45, when Chartwell was shut up. (And of course some 1930s guests, bearing secret information about German rearmament, did not sign the book.)
Visitors with the highest number of signatures are Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (“the Prof”) with 138; Sylvia Henley, Clementine’s cousin and lifelong friend, 85; the Churchills’ eldest daughter Diana, 74; Field Marshal Montgomery, 46; and Jack Churchill, Winston’s brother, 41.
Churchill’s Chartwell Project comprised several projects of which the visitors’ book was one element. To Katherine Carter, Chartwell’s Curator, goes much of the credit for the interactive visitors book Chartwell has today. Having begun her role at Chartwell in 2013, she immediately felt that the Visitors Book had so much potential as an a research resource into the Churchills’ lives at Chartwell. “It had always been a fascinating object,” Ms. Carter writes, “but a static one under glass. The fragility of the original book meant it could only have pages turned a few times each year, and it was therefore difficult to understand the breadth of extraordinary signatories who’s names feature across the decades of its pages.” (See addendum)
Early research
The first efforts to research the Visitors Book were by Grace Hamblin, secretary to Winston and later Clementine Churchill and first administrator of Chartwell. Recognizing the book’s historic importance, Miss Hamblin started by numbering the signatures and making notes on some.
Years later, a team of four volunteers analyzed the contents, photographed each page, and created an Access database. They assigned new numbers and a code to each name, and prepared thumbnail biographies for those identified.
“This provided important information that was of great use,” wrote Beverly Chioccon, a key project volunteer. “However, some of the data was missing and in the ensuing years, many of researchers sadly died. Their work was lost, so it was decided to undertake a review, as more visitors’ names were recognizable and greater research was available.”
Fine-tuning the contents
The Visitor’s Book project started in August 2017 when five volunteers offered to develop a new expanded record of the Visitors Book. The first phase was to import the Access database material into Excel. This was successfully done by volunteer Philip Reilly and his wife. “It took nearly two years for me to create the new master spreadsheet,” says Ms. Chioccon, “since was constantly changing as Philip Reilly and I made our discoveries. Beverly Chioccon and Philip Reilly also designed the format for the biographies.
The contents were divided between Philip Reilly, Beverly Chioccon and others. Three had to step down for personal reasons, leaving Reilly and Chioccon to go through half of the book each. Their purpose was to check each signature against the database.
It soon became clear that there were numerous errors, including incorrect visit dates, omitted or duplicate visits, wrong names recorded, and unclear page photos. This required a very thorough, line-by-line check. It took a year to create a new master spreadsheet for the resultant data. The information gave volunteers an accurate and easily managed picture. All the visitor book pages were rephotographed digitally, which aided identification of unclear dates and signatures.
Creating biographies
The team agreed to create an expanded database with biography formats, details of sources, photos and the links of each individual with the Churchills. A shorter version was later created for use on the virtual Visitors Book. The expanded version was so vast that five more researchers and two proofreaders joined the challenging task.
Chartwell researcher Ron Coomber says Google was a starting point that led to many websites and sources of information. Wikipedia was an excellent source. It was not always 100% accurate, and further investigation was needed to validate some of the finer points. “Dates in particular can easily catch us out,” Coomber writes. “Just when you think you’re looking at the right person, you suddenly discover he or she died years before appearing in the Visitors Book. The Ancestry website is very good for checking birth and death dates.”
National newspapers such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph provided useful obituaries. Other regular sources of information included the Peerage website, the Churchill Archives, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and many others.
Researching visitors: Montagu Norman
As an example, Ron Coomber described the biography of Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England during Churchill’s Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Norman visited Chartwell only once, in 1926. Research showed that he was the Bank’s longest-serving Governor, from 1920 through 1944. The Bank’s archives produced a wealth of information, including Norman’s digitalized diaries. Unfortunately, they were difficult to interpret because Norman never wrote names, only initials.
“He was involved in a controversy in 1939,” Coomber explains. “He authorized the Bank to move large quantities of Czechoslovak gold to an account that was ultimately linked to Germany. There was much speculation that he was a Nazi sympathizer, but it was never conclusively proved.” (Norman was a friend of Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht. According to historian David Blaazer, Norman again attempted to transfer Czech gold two months after war had broken out. The Chamberlain government intervened to stop him.)
The digital Visitors Book
In 2019, the National Trust digitalized the Visitors Book with the help of Figment Productions in Surrey. Together they created a unique resource: Following an introduction, the digital book replicates the appearance of the original. Users are able virtually to “turn pages,” and to retrieve more information about any specific person’s relationship with the Churchills. There is a calendar function that enables a user to see who signed the book on any given day.
When first introduced, the digital Visitors Book provided deep detail on 100 names. It has now grown sevenfold. Easily and regularly updated, it is conveniently displayed for the use of visitors to Chartwell. Zoë Colbeck, Chartwell’s general manager, who stepped down in 2021, was present throughout the life of the project. “Our volunteers were instrumental in giving this remarkable piece of history a voice,” she said. “Thanks to their exhaustive research, we have been able to identify almost everyone who signed the Visitors Book across forty years.”
Tracking certain names was often challenging, Ms. Colbeck added: “When the volunteers started their research, 132 names couldn’t be deciphered. We have since managed to identify almost all of them. When the list of unknowns was down to 15, the public were invited to see them. Chartwell informed the author that only seven unidentified signatures remain. Two examples are presented below.
Unknowns in 1926
“Three of these four are known,” Beverly Chioccon notes: “The first signature is General Henri Gouraud, who commanded the 4th French Army on the Western Front in the First World War. The second is Major General Edward Louis Spears, Churchill’s personal representative to the French in the Second World War. The fourth is Brigadier General James E. Edmonds, then a historian of the Great War and assistant to WSC,” who in 1926 was working on The World Crisis. Linked militarily, these four probably visited together. But who is the third?
“This signature was previously identified as ‘Darny’ but nothing has been found under that name or similar names, e.g., ‘Dorny’ or ‘Dorry.’ Though itself undated, the Chartwell archives confirm this visit on 17-18 July 1926. There is no engagement card in the Churchill Archives. WSC was Chancellor of the Exchequer; his Finance Bill was read at this time and there was a Coal Strike.” The single name suggests a member of the peerage. Perhaps a reader of this article may help identify the unknown guest.
Unknown in 1931
Another “indecipherable” appears on 7-8 March 1931—the second signature down. “The visit coincided with Robert Boothby and Brendan Bracken, both close associates and parliamentary associates, who were perhaps friends,” Ms. Chioccon notes. “The second signature is a mystery. There is no relevant engagement card and again, no names in the archive that fit. At the time, WSC had broken with Baldwin over the proposed India Act. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact had been announced on 5 March, and the India Committee was to meet on the 9th.” Again, the assistance of readers would be greatly appreciated.
Completed Biographies
Beverly Chioccon described how the biographies were completed: “We identified over 330 new visitors, including 132 whose signatures were previously indecipherable. By then 739 biographies had been completed in long and short formats, and all were uploaded on NT OneDrive for use in the virtual Visitors Book.”
Another team was created to source photographs of each visitor. Two volunteers sought out images that were free of copyright, and available by donation from families, institutions and other entities willing to help. According to the Chartwell website, over 5000 hours of volunteer research were spent on signers of this historic book.
Today a fully interactive, searchable database allows visitors to search names by category and to learn about their lives, stories and careers. Beryl Nicholson, a Chartwell volunteer, told the author that the house “often has visitors whose relatives visited Chartwell when the Churchills were in residence and wanted to search for their signature.”
At the digital Visitors Book, in the Chartwell Exhibition Room, one can view signatures and profiles of all the people who visited over forty of the most historic and challenging years of the 20th century. This great work of so many hands provides viewers with a unique, highly specialized opportunity to learn more about the private lives of Winston and Clementine Churchill and their family.
Addendum
In 2016, Katherine Carter became the face of the “Keep Churchill at Chartwell” fundraising campaign, which sought to raise over £7 million. The campaign’s success meant that the team were able to raise enough to buy the Visitor’s Book as part of a larger acquisition of around a thousand objects, and then undertake all efforts needed to create the digital visitors book that is at Chartwell today. From 2017 Ms. Carter took on overall management of the project, from recruiting volunteers and overseeing the team’s research, through to commissioning the software and advising on design and usability. As a result, the team at Chartwell were able to create the remarkable digital visitors book which has become the envy of many historic houses.
Katherine Carter is always keen however to stress that this was a team endeavour. She is grateful not only to the staff who supported her in the project, but the Collections Research Team of volunteers. “Without their hard work and dedication,” she writes, “none of this would be possible. Thousands of hours of volunteer research, deciphering, recording, photograph-sourcing, copyright-clearing and writing are behind this wonderful interactive digital resource. We’re all delighted to have been able to bring the Churchills’ Visitor’s Book to life for a new generation of visitors coming through the doors of their home.”
The author
Mr. Glueckstein, of Kings Park, New York, is a freelance writer and longtime contributor to the Churchill Project.