Pinfold Manor, formerly Cliftondown, Nursery Road, Walton on the Hill, Surrey

The house at Walton, situated on the edge of Walton Heath golf course, had been built for Lloyd George in 1913, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, by his friend George Allardice Riddell (1865-1934), a director of the golf club and proprietor since 1903 of ‘The News of the World’. Riddell was to be created a Baronet in 1918 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Riddell of Walton Heath in the 1920.  The house was to provide a place where Lloyd George could relax, enjoy a round of golf at the club where he had been a member since 1907 and network with all the politicians (including Churchill), noblemen, churchmen and business magnates who made up a large part of the exclusive golf club membership.

While under construction, the house was blown up by militant suffragettes from the Women’s Social and Political Union, on the night of 19 February 1913, Lloyd George having proved something of a backslider on the question of women’s suffrage. He was in the south of France at the time and wrote to Riddell apologising for being ‘such a troublesome and expensive tenant’.  Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst was convicted of the crime, though in fact Emily Wilding Davison was the chief perpetrator.  The house was quickly repaired and on 30 March 1913 Riddell recorded in his diary that he had ‘lunched with Mr and Mrs LG at their new house at Walton …. An amusing experience, there being no furniture in the house.  The lunch was spread on rugs in one of the rooms, and we all sat round on planks laid on the builders’ steps or on small barrels which had contained building materials.  LG carved and was full of merriment’.