# Blenheim Palace

country house near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, UK

Blenheim, United Kingdom

Palace · Landscape. 1705 CE

## Story

• Blenheim Palace, at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, was built for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, after his victory over the French and Bavarians in 1704.
• John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor shaped the Baroque house from 1705, and the Crown stopped paying for the work in 1712.
• Lancelot Brown later flooded the River Glyme to make the lake, over an older royal hunting park that still holds a medieval mill and a Roman sarcophagus.
• The near-bankrupt estate was rescued by the marriage of Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, to Consuelo Vanderbilt, and Sir Winston Churchill was born in the house.
• The palace and its walled park were designated a World Heritage site in 1987 and remain the home of the Dukes of Marlborough.

## Visiting

All tickets must be purchased in advance, and a ticket may be booked online on the day of the visit. Annual pass holders do not need to book in advance. The park is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00, and the palace shop is open daily from 09:30 to 17:30. Gardens and parkland are open daily from 10:00 to 15:45.
The park is open through the year, and the palace and formal gardens are open from mid-February to mid-December. The palace state rooms are closed until Friday 13 November 2026 while they are prepared for Christmas, and a timed entry ticket is required for palace entry from 13 November 2026 to 3 January 2027. A park and gardens day ticket is £34 on site or £31 online for an adult, £18 or £15 for a child, and £91 or £85 for a family. A palace, park, and gardens ticket is £44 on site or £41 online for an adult, £27 or £24 for a child, and £116 or £110 for a family.
A palace, park, and gardens ticket with adventure play is £54 on site or £51 online for an adult, £44 or £41 for a child, and £171 or £165 for a family. An adventure play ticket for the same day is £5 for an adult and £7 for a child, and that ticket is not valid on its own. The ticket desks, the palace shop, and catering outlets do not accept cash. A carer ticket for a blue badge holder is free, and that carer does not need to book in advance.
Car parking is included in the entrance ticket, except during some events when an extra parking charge applies. The price of admission may be treated as a donation so that tax on it can be reclaimed for the care of the house.

## History

Blenheim Palace is a country house at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. It was built as a reward for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, after he defeated French and Bavarian troops at Blenheim in 1704. The house was first called Blenheim Castle, it has been known as a palace since the nineteenth century, and it was designated a World Heritage site in 1987.

The ground was the royal manor of Woodstock, a deer park rather than a great residence, and the rent is still a copy of the French royal flag each year on the anniversary of the battle. Henry I enclosed the park. Henry II kept Rosamund Clifford there, and a spring still carries her name. Elizabeth I was held at the lodge by Mary I from 1554 to 1555, and she was allowed to leave in April 1555.

Troops of Oliver Cromwell ruined the manor in the Civil War. The first duchess had the remains cleared when the new landscape was made, against the architect's wish to keep them, and one account dates that demolition to 1720. Beneath the later park a Roman and medieval landscape is still visible. A Bronze Age bowl barrow survives in the open parkland, and a medieval mill, recorded as demolished in 1334, has left a stone-lined race in the Queen Pool.

That mill was partly excavated in the mid-1970s and again before a great dredging of the lake. The channels run on under the water, and the silt was to be used to form new ground in the North Park. A marble trough brought by the fifth duke in the nineteenth century, first a water feature and then a flowerpot, was recognised as a Roman sarcophagus about 1,700 years old. It shows Dionysus, a satyr, Hercules, and Ariadne, and it is now kept indoors.

John Churchill was born on 26 May 1650 into a gentry family and died on 16 June 1722. He never lost a battle. He married Sarah Jennings in 1678, deserted James II for William of Orange in 1688, and became earl, then, in 1702, duke and captain-general. His victories at Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet made him a prince of the Holy Roman Empire as well as a British commander.

Anne, Queen of Great Britain, reigned from 1702, and from 1707 over the kingdom united with Scotland. Sarah had been her friend and Mistress of the Robes, but the friendship broke, in accounts dated both to 1711 and to 1712, and the money for Blenheim then stopped. The Marlboroughs went abroad and returned the day after Anne died on 1 August 1714, childless, the last Stuart monarch. George I of Hanover succeeded her under the Act of Settlement.

The foundation stone was laid on 18 June 1705 on a site above the River Glyme, prepared by Henry Wise. John Vanbrugh, a dramatist turned architect, designed the house with Nicholas Hawksmoor, after the duke preferred him to Christopher Wren. The nation wanted a monument and the duchess wanted a home. By August 1705 about 1,500 men were at work, and the cost ran far beyond the first hopes.

Vanbrugh later put the whole at £287,000. The Crown spent £220,000 before payments ended on 1 June 1712, with £45,000 more accepted as owing, while an inscription over the east gate speaks of a grant of £240,000. It is unlikely the building cost less than £325,000. Work resumed in 1716 at the family's expense, the duke's stroke is placed in 1716 and in 1717, and he died in 1722 before the saloon throne he had imagined was ready.

The family moved in during 1719. Hawksmoor returned to finish the gallery, the chapel, and the Woodstock arch, and the duchess drove the house on into the early 1730s. One description dates the fabric to 1706–1729, and others to 1705–1722. The chapel tomb, designed by William Kent and carved by Rysbrack, was finished in 1733, and in 1744 the duke's body was brought from Westminster Abbey to lie with Sarah's, where later dukes also rest.

The hall ceiling, painted by James Thornhill in 1716, shows the duke offering Britannia a plan of the battle. Louis Laguerre painted the saloon, paid in 1718 and also dated 1719 to 1720, as an image of the coming peace. The long library, 183 feet, was Hawksmoor's work of 1722 to 1725 and now holds about 10,000 books. Its organ, built in 1891, is the largest in private hands in Europe.

Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Robert Adam all found fault with the design, though Adam usually admired Vanbrugh. Addison's poem The Campaign, commissioned after the battle, made his name. Pope mocked the vast bridge over a tiny stream, and Horace Walpole, seeing it in 1760, said it begged for water. Vanbrugh was shut out of his own building, and his wife was refused the park in 1725.

Lancelot Brown, called Capability Brown, was brought in in 1764, and another account starts his design in 1761. He dammed the Glyme, drowned the lower rooms of the bridge, and turned Vanbrugh's canals into a lake that is also described as two. He grassed the great parterre and the Great Court. The Temple of Diana, by William Chambers and John Yenn, was built in 1772 to 1773, and Winston Churchill proposed there in 1908.

The first duke's daughter Henrietta succeeded him, then his grandson Charles Spencer. The fifth duke spent heavily but could not sell the entailed house. In 1880 the seventh duke broke the entail, and pictures, gems, and the Sunderland Library left the palace. The library sale is dated both to 1881–1883 and to 1882, when some 18,000 volumes raised almost £60,000, and when the ninth duke inherited in 1892 the land was failing him.

Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, married Consuelo Vanderbilt in November 1895. The settlement was 2,500,000 dollars in railway shares and 100,000 dollars a year to each of them. She had been locked in until she agreed, and he told her he had married to save the house. Her money bought back furnishings and paid for Achille Duchêne's formal gardens and water terraces, before they separated in 1906, divorced in 1921, and had the marriage annulled in 1926.

Sir Winston Churchill was born in the palace in 1874. The long library was a hospital ward in the First World War. In September 1940 the Security Service took the house, remaining either to 1944 or to the end of the war, after Malvern College had been evacuated there. The palace reopened to visitors in 1950, the eleventh duke opened it further to the public and to filming, and his son became the twelfth duke in 2014.

The park and gardens have been Grade I on the register since 1 June 1984, and the palace itself since 27 August 1957. Forty-five key buildings are Grade I or Grade II starred. A dry-stone wall encloses about 961 hectares. The park is open through the year and the palace and formal gardens from mid-February to mid-December, and the house is still a family home, a burial place, and a monument to a general who never lost a battle.

## Photographs

- [Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. — Jvhertum](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Blenheim_Palace_6-2008_4.jpg)
- [Blenheim Palace from the Air. Taken from overhead Lower Park, the Grand Lake, Queen Pool and the avenue beyond are clearly visible. The cricket pitch, in use — Martin Addison](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Blenheim_Palace_from_the_Air_-_geograph.org.uk_-_620690.jpg)
- [Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, taken 1964 Blenheim Palace is a baroque masterpiece - a World Heritage site - and was built (1705-22) for the 1st Duke of — Christine Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Blenheim_Palace%2C_Oxfordshire%2C_taken_1964_-_geograph.org.uk_-_742171.jpg)
- [Entrance to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, taken 1964 Impressive entrance to the palace. http://www.blenheimpalace.com/ — Christine Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Entrance_to_Blenheim_Palace%2C_Oxfordshire%2C_taken_1964_-_geograph.org.uk_-_742179.jpg)
- [Approach to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire taken 1963 — William Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Approach_to_Blenheim_Palace%2C_Oxfordshire_taken_1963_-_geograph.org.uk_-_800746.jpg)
- [Archway on the east side of the Great Court, Blenheim Palace The view from the Great Court through an archway towards the main entrance. — Robin Drayton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Archway_on_the_east_side_of_the_Great_Court%2C_Blenheim_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1000581.jpg)
- [Ornamental lake, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock Taken on the evening of a rather posh musical event held here in late July 2006. The small island is in this — Brian Robert Marshall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Ornamental_lake%2C_Blenheim_Palace%2C_Woodstock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1084933.jpg)
- [Approach to Blenheim Palace — Sarah Charlesworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Approach_to_Blenheim_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1803767.jpg)
- [Visitors queue at Blenheim Palace, April 1980 — Kim Traynor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Blenheim_Palace_queue.jpg)
- [2005 MAN prime mover with incident support unit — Oxfordshire County Council](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Prime_Mover_with_Incident_Support_Unit.jpg)

## Sources

- [Blenheim Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim_Palace) — Wikipedia
- [John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Churchill,_1st_Duke_of_Marlborough) — Wikipedia
- [John Vanbrugh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vanbrugh) — Wikipedia
- [Anne, Queen of Great Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne,_Queen_of_Great_Britain) — Wikipedia
- [Alexander Pope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope) — Wikipedia
- [Joseph Addison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Addison) — Wikipedia
- [Robert Adam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adam) — Wikipedia
- [Consuelo Vanderbilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consuelo_Vanderbilt) — Wikipedia
- [Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spencer-Churchill,_9th_Duke_of_Marlborough) — Wikipedia
- [Blenheim Palace](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/425/) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- [Blenheim Palace](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000434) — Historic England
- [Blenheim Palace](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1052912) — Historic England
- [Blenheim: Blenheim Palace](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol12/pp448-460) — British History Online
- [Archaeologists unearth exciting discovery in Blenheim pool](https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/20168404.archaeologists-unearth-exciting-discovery-blenheim-pool-ahead-massive-dredging-project/) — Oxford Mail
- [Blenheim Palace flowerpot turns out to be Roman coffin](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-39216040) — BBC News
- [Opening times](https://www.blenheimpalace.com/visitus/opening-times/) — Blenheim Palace
- [Ticket prices](https://www.blenheimpalace.com/tickets/) — Blenheim Palace
- [Visiting questions](https://www.blenheimpalace.com/visitus/faqs/) — Blenheim Palace
- [Things to do](https://www.blenheimpalace.com/visitus/) — Blenheim Palace
- [Bowl barrow in Blenheim Great Park](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1009416) — Historic England
- [Blenheim Palace 6-2008 4.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blenheim_Palace_6-2008_4.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Blenheim Palace from the Air - geograph.org.uk - 620690.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blenheim_Palace_from_the_Air_-_geograph.org.uk_-_620690.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, taken 1964 - geograph.org.uk - 742171.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blenheim_Palace,_Oxfordshire,_taken_1964_-_geograph.org.uk_-_742171.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Entrance to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, taken 1964 - geograph.org.uk - 742179.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_to_Blenheim_Palace,_Oxfordshire,_taken_1964_-_geograph.org.uk_-_742179.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Approach to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire taken 1963 - geograph.org.uk - 800746.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Approach_to_Blenheim_Palace,_Oxfordshire_taken_1963_-_geograph.org.uk_-_800746.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Archway on the east side of the Great Court, Blenheim Palace - geograph.org.uk - 1000581.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archway_on_the_east_side_of_the_Great_Court,_Blenheim_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1000581.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Ornamental lake, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock - geograph.org.uk - 1084933.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ornamental_lake,_Blenheim_Palace,_Woodstock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1084933.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Approach to Blenheim Palace - geograph.org.uk - 1803767.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Approach_to_Blenheim_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1803767.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Blenheim Palace queue.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blenheim_Palace_queue.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Prime Mover with Incident Support Unit.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prime_Mover_with_Incident_Support_Unit.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Blenheim Palace is a country house at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. It is one of England's largest houses, and it is the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. The building was first called Blenheim Castle, and it has been known as Blenheim Palace since the nineteenth century. It was designated a World Heritage site in 1987.

The palace takes its name from the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, had beaten French and Bavarian troops near the town of Blenheim, in what is now southern Germany, during the War of the Spanish Succession. The English nation gave him the royal manor so that a house could stand there in recognition of that victory. One account says the victory decided the future of the Empire and made him a figure of international importance.

The land was the manor of Woodstock, sometimes called the Palace of Woodstock, a royal demesne that was in reality little more than a deer park. The Crown also granted the tenancy of the royal manor of Hensington, on the site of Woodstock, as the ground for the new house. The rent due to the Crown was a peppercorn, or quit-rent, of one copy of the French royal flag, to be tendered to the monarch every year on the anniversary of the battle. As of October 2016 the family still tendered that copy, and the flag is displayed on a seventeenth-century French writing table at Windsor.

King Henry I enclosed the park to hold the deer. Henry II housed his mistress Rosamund Clifford, sometimes called Fair Rosamund, in a bower and labyrinth, and a spring in which she is said to have bathed still carries her name. The unostentatious hunting lodge was rebuilt many times. Before her succession, Elizabeth I was imprisoned there by her half-sister Mary I between 1554 and 1555, after Elizabeth had been implicated in the Wyatt plot.

The lodge had a longer royal history than that short imprisonment. It is associated with Woodstock Palace, a hunting lodge said to have hosted monarchs across some seven hundred years, from Ethelred the Unready to Henry VIII. Edward, the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III and heir to the English throne, was born there, and he died before his father, so his son Richard II succeeded instead. One Thomas Wyatt led a Protestant rising to stop Mary I marrying Philip of Spain. Elizabeth knew nothing of the plot, which failed, but she was held first in the Tower of London and then at the lodge.

Her journey to Woodstock took four days, and people cheered her along the route. She scratched a couplet on a windowsill: much suspected by me, nothing proved can be. Philip slowly persuaded Mary to release her, and she was allowed to leave in April 1555 after nearly a year under guard. During the Civil War the manor was bombarded and ruined by troops of Oliver Cromwell. When the park was made into a setting for the new house, the first duchess wanted the historic ruins demolished, while the architect wanted them kept and restored as a landscape feature. The duchess won, and the remains were swept away. One account dates the demolition of the lodge to 1720, to make way for the palace.

The buildings and the park were laid out over an earlier Roman and medieval landscape, and remnants of that older ground are still visible through the later design. A Bronze Age bowl barrow stands on a gentle ridge in open parkland, 350 metres south-west of Furze Platt Farm. The mound is 14 metres across and up to 0.3 metres high. A slight hollow about a metre across and 0.1 metres deep in the centre may be an early excavation. A quarry ditch about 2 metres wide, from which the mound was built, is no longer visible and survives as a buried feature. Even after partial excavation, the barrow is expected to hold archaeological and environmental evidence of its making and of the landscape around it.

Water on the estate is older than the great lake. A small pond, called Queen Pond or Queen Pool, had stood on the present site since the Middle Ages, beside a second fishpond called King's Pool. Both belonged with Woodstock Palace. The pond is said to have been named after Queen Philippa, mother of Edward, the Black Prince, who was born at Woodstock in 1330. In 1976, excavation of a medieval watermill site linked the original Queen's Pond to a mill pond made by damming tributaries of the River Glyme. Queen Pond may have been held back to drive a mill wheel. The name was kept for one of the lakes made when the valley was later flooded.

The mill itself was recorded as demolished in 1334, and it was partly excavated in the mid-1970s. During the Queen Pool restoration, before a large dredging, archaeologists found stone water channels that had formed part of that mill. Andrew Manning, who led the field team, described a stone-lined mill race that directed water from the mill, surprisingly well preserved and substantial. Drone survey showed the stone races running on into the present lake, with further structures visible below the surface. The dredge was to lift about 300,000 cubic metres of silt, enough to fill a great stadium, and to return the lake from shallows of about 30 centimetres to a depth of about two metres. The silt was to be laid in part of the North Park as a new landform. Once recorded, the remains were to be recovered and logged.

A later find belonged to the Roman centuries rather than the Middle Ages. A large marble container used in the grounds as a flowerpot had been brought there by the fifth Duke of Marlborough in the nineteenth century, and it was first used as a water feature. It collected water from a spring near the great lake and was later moved to the rock garden, where it held flowers. An antiques specialist, visiting on other business, recognised the front of a white marble sarcophagus about 1,700 years old. The piece is 2 metres, or 6.6 feet, long and weighs 400 kilograms. It shows a drunken Dionysus leaning on a satyr at a party, with Hercules and Ariadne among the figures, and two large lion heads.

The palace had no papers to show whether the fifth duke bought the coffin or was given it, or where it came from. It was unbolted from the lead cistern to which it was fixed, cleaned, repaired, and stabilised under Nicholas Banfield, and then brought indoors so that a steady climate would protect it from the weather. It was valued at £300,000. One account says it had served as a flowerpot for 200 years, and another says for over 100 years. The fifth duke was Sir Winston Churchill's great-great-grandfather. He was a member of Parliament, first as a Whig and later as a Tory, and he lived out his last years at Blenheim amid mounting debt.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was born on 26 May 1650 and died on 16 June 1722, Old Style. He was a general and a statesman, Prince of Mindelheim, Count of Nellenburg, and a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and he is known for never having lost a battle. He came from a gentry family rather than the highest rank of seventeenth-century society. He was the second but eldest surviving son of Sir Winston Churchill of Glanvilles Wootton in Dorset and Elizabeth Drake. His father had fought for the king in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and was heavily fined. After the Restoration of 1660 the father sat in Parliament and worked on Irish land claims. The family fortune turned in 1665 when John's sister Arabella became maid of honour to Anne Hyde and began a long affair with James, Duke of York, later James II. John was made a page to James and, in September 1667, an ensign in the Foot Guards.

In 1678 he married Sarah Jennings. That April, Charles II sent him to The Hague to negotiate a convention on the English army in Flanders, but the mission failed, and the Treaty of Nijmegen ended the chance of a continental campaign. He had been given the temporary rank of brigadier-general of foot in May. When the Popish Plot drove James into a three-year banishment, Churchill attended him at The Hague and then in Brussels. In 1682 he was made Lord Churchill of Eyemouth in the Scottish peerage, and the next year colonel of the King's Own Royal Regiment of Dragoons. On the death of Charles II in 1685, James II made him governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, the third man to hold that office, Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and Baron Churchill of Sandridge in Hertfordshire. After the Monmouth Rebellion he was promoted major-general and given the colonelcy of the Third Troop of Life Guards.

When William, Prince of Orange, invaded in November 1688, Churchill rode to join him at Axminster with some 400 officers and men. James, seeing that he could not keep even this long-trusted servant, fled to France. At the coronation honours of William III, Churchill was created Earl of Marlborough, sworn of the Privy Council, and made a Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber. Charges of Jacobitism later brought him down and a spell in the Tower of London. William still used his skill, and made him deputy in the Southern Netherlands before the War of the Spanish Succession opened in 1701. Fame and fortune waited for the accession of the queen in 1702.

Anne, Queen of Great Britain, was born at 11:39 in the evening on 6 February 1665 at Saint James's Palace, and she died on 1 August 1714. She was queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 8 March 1702, and queen of Great Britain and Ireland after the Acts of Union of 1707 joined England and Scotland, until her death. She was the daughter of James, Duke of York, and Anne Hyde, and she and her elder sister Mary were raised as Anglicans on the orders of Charles II, though their father was Catholic. Mary married William of Orange in 1677. Anne married Prince George of Denmark, a Lutheran, in 1683. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Mary and William reigned together. The sisters quarrelled, Mary died in 1694, and William reigned alone until 1702.

Anne favoured moderate Tory politicians, who were closer to her Anglican views than the Whigs. The Whigs grew stronger during the War of the Spanish Succession until 1710, when she dismissed many of them. She had seventeen pregnancies and died without a surviving child, the last monarch of the House of Stuart. The death of her young son, Prince William, had already opened a succession crisis. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, which shut Catholics out of the succession, she was followed by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover. Her health was poor throughout her life, and from her thirties she grew increasingly ill.

Sarah Jennings had befriended Anne when Anne was a princess. As Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Marlborough held great influence over the queen, personal and political. The friendship turned sour over political differences, and the duchess later left an unflattering picture of the queen that was widely accepted until Anne was reassessed in the late twentieth century. Their final quarrel is dated both to 1711 and to 1712. Money for Blenheim then ceased. For political reasons the Marlboroughs went into exile on the Continent, and they returned the day after the queen died.

In that war Churchill became captain-general of the British forces and, in 1702, duke. As the de facto leader of the allied armies in the Low Countries, he won at Blenheim in 1704, Ramillies in 1706, Oudenarde in 1708, and Malplaquet in 1709. From 1701 to 1711 his command of the main allied army against Louis XIV helped to set Britain among the front rank of powers, and he held a fractious coalition together. He is remembered as much for organisation and supply as for tactics. In 1705 the Emperor Leopold made him prince of Mindelheim. Double-headed eagles on the marble doorcases of the saloon allude to that title. He was also a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and the decoration of the saloon, the great drawing room, recalls that rank.

The house as a reward was discussed within months of Blenheim, while further victories were still to come. A grateful nation led by the queen wished to give its hero a suitable home. The exact size of that home was never settled. A warrant of 1705, signed by the parliamentary treasurer the Earl of Godolphin, appointed the architect and set his remit, but it did not mention the queen or the Crown. In the winter of 1704 to 1705 the duke engaged the architect to build in Woodstock Park, and together they chose a site overlooking the Glyme valley, opposite the old royal palace. From the first, in accordance with the queen's wishes, the house was called Blenheim. The foundation stone was laid on 18 June 1705 on ground prepared by the royal gardener Henry Wise, who lived from 1653 to 1738.

The duke contributed £60,000 when work began in 1705. Parliament voted funds, but it named no exact sum and made no provision for rising prices. The queen paid something, with growing reluctance. Vanbrugh later said the duke had first had in mind a house of £40,000. In July 1705 Sir Christopher Wren, surveyor-general of the royal works, visited and estimated about £100,000, omitting the service courts, the ambitious northern approach, the heightening of the main block, and the laying out of gardens and park. The model the architect later said the queen had approved, and which he said he had followed exactly, evidently came after Wren's visit and several changes, and may date from as late as 1708.

By August 1705 some 1,500 workmen were on the site. The park quarries failed to give suitable freestone, so stone came first from Cornbury and Glympton, then from farther off, notably Burford and Taynton, from which 136 carters hauled in the summer of 1706. In all, more than twenty quarries were used, the farthest at Portland, Plymouth, and Ross-on-Wye. Materials and statuary came up the Thames by barge from London. The work employed a wide district and pushed prices up. When large quantities of royal timber were granted from Wychwood forest in 1709, it was hoped that local timber would fall to a price country builders could pay. Fortunes were made, and distress and bankruptcy followed when the money failed. Tourism began almost as soon as the foundation stone was laid.

The queen's decision to pay was never officially recorded. Warrants of June 1705, appointing the architect and the joint comptrollers, were issued by the Lord Treasurer at the duke's request and did not mention the Crown. It was understood that costs would come from the Civil List, but Samuel Travers, surveyor-general of Crown lands, and his deputy John Taylor were accountable to the duke, not to the Treasury. When the Marlboroughs' political power fell, the spending was challenged at once.

In July 1707 the architect expected to finish in 1709. By 1708, after delays over stone, he saw that even two more seasons would leave the west side unfinished. In October 1710, when money grew acute and the duchess ordered all work to stop until the Crown allowed further payments, he felt he might almost finish for another £30,000. Four years later he was still estimating over £54,000. Pressed, he admitted a total of £287,000, which he called a large sum for a house and a poor reward for the services that occasioned it. The Crown's expenditure before its commitment ended on 1 June 1712, excluding £13,000 spent clearing the park of encumbrances, was £220,000, and a further £45,000 was later accepted as owing to the workmen. An inscription over the east gate speaks of a grant of £240,000 towards the building, given by Queen Anne and confirmed by Act of Parliament, together with the royal manor of Woodstock, for John, Duke of Marlborough, and his duchess Sarah, and it dates the work of Sir John Vanbrugh from 1705 to 1722. The inscription has been judged somewhat inaccurate.

After the restart in 1716 the family spent a further £32,000 up to 1720. The duchess claimed another £25,000 after the duke's death, out of £50,000 left to her to finish the house, and elsewhere she claimed that the house had cost or would cost the family £100,000. Several years are unaccounted for. It is unlikely that the building cost less than £325,000. The architect protested his frugality and blamed the failed park quarries. The duchess thought him a spendthrift who paid excessive wages, wasted materials, and changed extravagant plans without authority.

Whether the workmen were employed by the Crown or by the family sat at the centre of the debt disputes. As early as 1713 a minor creditor won an action against the duke. The chief creditors, the masons Strong, father and son, were persuaded to wait for the Crown. In 1716, after debts were acknowledged at a level higher than the duchess thought reasonable, the Crown paid only a third, and creditors turned on the family. The Strongs were awarded over £12,000 in 1721. The duchess sued 401 workmen and obtained an injunction forbidding the architect to pursue her family for debts incurred before 1712. His own debt was later acknowledged by the Crown. Henry Joynes, comptroller and the careful accountant of the works, was still seeking settlement in 1748.

John Vanbrugh was baptised on 24 January 1664 and died on 26 March 1726. He was an architect, a dramatist, and a herald, knighted in 1714, and he is known above all for Blenheim and for Castle Howard. He wrote The Relapse in 1696 and The Provoked Wife in 1697, Restoration comedies that lasted on the stage and caused a scandal, both for their sexual openness and for what they said about women's rights in marriage. Jeremy Collier attacked him in a short view of the immorality of the English stage. As a young Whig he joined the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne, and the French held him as a political prisoner. He created what came to be called English Baroque.

He was born in London, the fourth child and eldest surviving son of Giles Vanbrugh, a cloth merchant of Flemish descent, and he grew up in Chester, where the family had gone because of the plague of 1665 or the Great Fire of 1666. He was not the son of a humble shop. His people were Anglo-Flemish Protestant merchants, minor courtiers, and country gentry, and that network served him in architecture, ceremony, the theatre, and politics. The duke is said to have commissioned him at a playhouse after a chance meeting. The duchess had favoured Sir Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh was an untrained architect who usually worked with the trained Nicholas Hawksmoor. Their first stages at Castle Howard, one of England's first houses in the flamboyant European Baroque, led the duke to want something similar at Woodstock.

The nation, which both architect and owners then assumed would pay, wanted a monument. The duchess wanted a tribute and a comfortable home, two demands that eighteenth-century architecture did not easily join. The duke was often away on campaign, so she negotiated, and she attacked the grandiose ideas as extravagant because she knew how fragile the aid was. Hawksmoor carried much of the detailed execution in the first phase. Wren was consulted on parts of the plan, notably the northern approach. Henry Joynes and William Boulter were joint comptrollers from 1705. Boulter died in 1708 and was succeeded by Tilleman Bobart.

The plan grew out of Castle Howard. An early outline shows the main block much as built, but without the north portico, and with service wings that were half H-shaped rather than full courtyards. In the summer of 1705 the hall was enlarged and heightened, a north portico was added, and the chapel and kitchen were moved from behind the colonnades to the north ends of those colonnades. In the winter of 1706 to 1707 the main block was heightened. North and south fronts had been designed in the Doric order. To gain a taller elevation on the same foundations the order became Corinthian, and early in 1707 parts of the south front were rebuilt. The low roofs of the corner towers became tall open lanterns. Later changes widened the archways between the great court and the service wings and elaborated the clock towers.

The architect claimed that both courts were on plans shown to the duke in the winter of 1707 to 1708. Against the charge of extravagance he argued that the kitchen court, as the likely main entrance for visitors, justified cloisters and a massive gate tower, and that the stable court needed coach houses. Its conservatory, required for balance, was not for foolish plants but would be a room of pleasure, with books, statues, and pictures. One account places the stable court to the east and the kitchen court to the west. Another places the kitchens, laundry, and domestic offices in the east court, with the stables and the chapel in the west court beside one another. The east gate, later called the Flagstaff gate, holds the water cistern and is also the palace's water tower. Its sides are slightly tapered to make it look taller, and the wrought-iron gates in it date from the 1840s.

Priority went to the east wing of the main block, where the family's rooms were to be. In 1710, before the duchess halted the work, even the west wing was close to roof level and the colonnade towards the chapel had begun. That work was vandalised when the men were dismissed. Work resumed in 1711 at a slower rate. The house was uninhabitable when Treasury payments ceased in 1712. In 1716 the most advanced, eastern, part still lacked floors, ceilings, staircases, and chimney pieces. At the west end the shell was incomplete, two corner towers were largely unbuilt, and part of the great gallery was not yet roofed. The kitchen court was the furthest forward of the service blocks. The chapel and the orangery were hardly above the ground.

The principal early masons were Edward Strong and his son, Henry Banckes on the colonnades, John Townesend on the clock tower and kitchen, and Bartholomew Peisley, who died in 1715, on the Grand Bridge. From 1708 to 1712 Grinling Gibbons carved enrichments in wood and stone. The principal joiners were Sir Charles Hopson, John Hopson, and John Smallwell with his son. Robert Wetherill plastered. Matthew Banckes and John Barton carpentered the roof of the main block. The clock in Townesend's tower was made by Langley Bradley in 1710, and the tower, finished that year at a cost of £1,435, was despised by the first duchess, who called it a great thing where the clock is.

Vanbrugh resigned as architect in 1716, and by then Hawksmoor and Joynes had also left. The duke had suffered a stroke. One account places that stroke in 1716, and another places a severe stroke in 1717. The duchess took control, with the cabinet-maker James Moore, the clerk of works John Desborough, and Bobart, who stayed until 1719 but was increasingly limited to the garden. She blamed the architect for the cost of a design she had never liked. After a meeting he left in a rage, saying that her new masons, carpenters, and craftsmen were inferior. Gibbons and the other masters he had patronised refused the lower rates. The men she brought in, guided by Moore and by Hawksmoor, finished the work in close imitation of those masters. Before the architect left, new contracts had been drawn to finish the western towers and the kitchen court.

The family took up residence in 1719. Much of the exterior of the main block and kitchen court, and the interior of the eastern rooms and the central state rooms, were then complete. More than seventy rooms in the main block were furnished, including rooms in both quadrants and much of the upper floors, but not the great gallery or the state rooms west of the saloon. The duke and duchess moved into apartments on the eastern side. The whole was not finished in the duke's lifetime. He died in 1722, aged about sixty-four when he had decided, on the return from exile, to finish at his own expense. The duke did not live to sit enthroned in the saloon beneath the bust of the defeated king.

From 1722 Hawksmoor was engaged again to design or complete the great gallery, the chapel, and the triumphal arch, but he was passed over for the Marlborough tomb and the Column of Victory. The widowed duchess made completion her driving ambition. Cutting wages and using cheaper materials in unobtrusive places, she finished the house as a tribute. In 1716 Vanbrugh had already chosen cheaper stone to finish the kitchen court, and costly repairs followed in modern times. Her work on the chief features of his plan, and on outworks such as the Grand Bridge, the Triumphal Arch, and the Column of Victory, was substantially complete by the early 1730s. A listed description dates the country house itself to 1706–1729, while other accounts date the building from 1705 to 1722. The final date of completion is not known. As late as 1735 she was still haggling with the sculptor Rysbrack over the cost of the statue of Queen Anne.

Hawksmoor designed the Arch of Triumph, based on the Arch of Titus, in 1723, at the entrance from Woodstock. He completed the library interior, ceilings of many state rooms, and various outbuildings. The three unfinished state rooms were ceiled in 1724. The great gallery and the chapel were prepared for plastering that year. Isaac Mansfield carried out the gallery plasterwork in 1725 under Hawksmoor's supervision. The chapel's unfinished walls were completed about 1723 to 1724, with carpentry by William Townesend of Woodstock. Early plans gave it an apsed western end for the altar. By 1752, and probably from its completion in the 1720s, the west end stood in line with the stables and held two long round-headed windows. It was paved in 1727 beneath a raised gallery. The duchess quarrelled with the bishop of Oxford over consecration, which took place in 1731. In 1744 the chapel was said to have neither altar nor altarpiece. After a refurbishment in 1787 it was described as extremely grand, finished in grey and white.

The duke's death gave the chapel still greater weight. The Earl of Godolphin, a friend of the family, altered the design and set the high altar against the west wall, against religious convention, so that the tomb could dominate. The duchess commissioned the monument in 1730. William Kent designed it, and John Michael Rysbrack carved it. It was completed in 1733 at a cost of £2,200. Statues of the duke and duchess as Caesar and Caesarina stand on the sarcophagus. In the base relief she ordered the surrender of Marshal Tallard. The theme of honour did not reach its height until her death in 1744. The duke's coffin was then brought back from its temporary resting place in Westminster Abbey, husband and wife were buried together, and the tomb was finished. Later dukes and their wives lie in the vault beneath the chapel. Other members of the family lie in the churchyard of Saint Martin's at Bladon.

Vanbrugh was banned from the site after the final altercation. In 1719, while the duchess was away, he viewed the house in secret. In 1725 his wife came as one of the public and the duchess would not let her enter the park. His severe massed Baroque never truly caught the public imagination and was soon overtaken by a Palladian revival. His reputation was badly damaged, and he received no further truly great public commission. His last design, Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, used a refined version of the Baroque he had used at Blenheim, and it was hailed as his masterpiece. He died shortly before it was finished.

The palace was planned to be seen in perspective, from a distance, and the site covers some seven acres, or 2.8 hectares, so that distance is also a necessity. The principal block is a rectangle pierced by two courtyards that are little more than light wells. Behind the south front lie the state apartments. The private suites of duke and duchess are on the east. A long gallery, first conceived as a picture gallery and now the library, runs the length of the west side of the piano nobile. Two service blocks around square courtyards flank the house and, with the main block, form the Great Court, meant to overpower the person arriving. Pilasters and pillars crowd the fronts. Statues in a Renaissance manner look down from roofs that resemble a small town. Many are by Grinling Gibbons, among them Britannia on the entrance pediment above two reclining chained French captives, and the English lion devouring the French cock on the lower roofs. That lion was already thought poor taste in 1737. The original stands on the east clock tower, with later copies on the west.

Comfort was subordinate to magnificence, because the brief was a home and a national monument to the power of the nation. Great masses of stone imitate strength and make shadow into decoration. The north portico is more like the entrance of a pantheon than of a family house. A low tower at each corner of the central block, crowned with belvederes of massed stone and finials that disguise the chimneys, gives what the architect called his castle air. The towers hint at the pylons of an Egyptian temple. The great East Gate is a triumphal arch, more Egyptian than Roman, and through it one sees a second gate under the clock tower and then the Great Court. Low towers at the corners carry four tall finials by Gibbons, each a reversed fleur-de-lys under a ducal coronet.

The south pediment breaks convention. A trophy in the centre holds a marble bust of Louis XIV, taken from the gates of Tournai after the sack of 1709, and weighing 30 tons, or 30 tonnes in another statement of the same mass. The defeated king was to look down on the parterre. The line of honour was meant to run from the Column of Victory, with the duke's statue and the list of his triumphs, along an avenue of elms planted in the positions of his troops, to the bridge, through the portico into the hall, under a triumphal arch, and through a marble doorcase topped by his effigy, into the saloon where he was to sit enthroned. The inscription on that doorcase includes the line that Augustus could not better calm mankind. Gibbons carved the Marlborough arms and a statue of Pallas Athene on the north portico. Later descriptions prefer the name Minerva, and the name Britannia for that statue is a mistake. Above it, chained captives recline beneath a gilded ball.

State apartments followed the etiquette of the day, an axis of rooms of increasing importance. The central saloon was the communal state dining room. To either side, rooms grew more private: an audience chamber, a withdrawing room, and a bedroom. A small room off the bedroom was a dressing room. On the east, a smaller matching set served the duke and duchess, with the bow room standing to those suites as the saloon stood to the great ones. The most important guests, such as a visiting sovereign, were the intended users. Principal and secondary rooms sit on the piano nobile, so there is no great staircase of state. The grand approach is the steps in the Great Court up to the north portico. Anyone worthy of that state was not expected to leave the principal floor.

Sir James Thornhill painted the hall ceiling in 1716, for £978. It shows the duke kneeling to Britannia and offering a plan of the Battle of Blenheim. The hall is 67 feet, or 20 metres, high, remarkable for its size and for Gibbons's stone carving, and it is still only an anteroom to the saloon. The saloon was to have been Thornhill's as well, but the duchess suspected him of overcharging, and the commission went to Louis Laguerre. Laguerre was paid in 1718. The walls and ceiling are also dated 1719 to 1720, and the ceiling is dated about 1720. The Peace of Utrecht was about to be signed, and the painting speaks of peace. The duke rides in a chariot with a zigzag thunderbolt of war, and a woman who holds back his arm represents Peace. The walls show the nations come together. Laguerre painted himself beside Dean Jones, the first duke's chaplain, whom the duchess disliked and tolerated because he played cards well. French spies, with large ears and eyes, stand to the right of the doorway into the first state room. Of four marble doorcases bearing the ducal crest as a prince of the Empire, only one is by Gibbons. The other three were copied by cheaper hands. The ceiling was badly damaged by fire in 1896.

The long library, designed by Hawksmoor in 1722 to 1725, is 183 feet, or 56 metres, long. It was meant as a picture gallery. Saucer domes in the ceiling were to have been painted by Thornhill until the duchess upset him. The room held artefacts the duke had been given or had taken as spoils, including a fine collection of pictures. The duchess set there a larger-than-life statue of Queen Anne, its base recording their friendship. Rysbrack's statue was placed in the bow window in 1738, and it was given its present pedestal in 1746. The palace, and this room in particular, also now holds about 10,000 books. At the northern end stands the largest pipe organ in private ownership in Europe, built in 1891 by Henry Willis and Sons for £3,669. It replaced an organ of 1888 by Isaac Abbott of Leeds, which was moved to Saint Swithun's church at Hither Green. Norman and Beard of Norwich moved the Willis organ to the north-western end in 1902, added stops, and cleaned it the next year. In 1930 the firm lowered the pitch to modern concert pitch. A Welte player was added in 1931, with seventy rolls. A duke of the time is said to have sat at the bench and pretended to play until the machine once started before he had sat down. By 2013 the organ was declining, and a campaign had been launched to restore it. A second organ, in the chapel, was built about 1853 by Robert Postill of York and is a rare unaltered example of his work.

The third duke altered the gallery, finished as a picture gallery about 1725, to take the Sunderland Library. That library had been collected by his father, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who died in 1722, and it was brought to Blenheim from Sunderland House in Piccadilly before 1749. The carved bookcases were not wholly successful. Those blocking the windows at the north and south ends suffered from damp, and those on the east wall stood in sunlight. The Sunderland Library was sold in 1881 to 1883, and another account places the sale of its 18,000 volumes in 1882, when they raised almost £60,000. Volumes in that sale included the Epistles of Horace, printed at Caen in 1480, and the works of Josephus, printed at Verona in 1648. The room was not at once turned back into a picture gallery. Bookcases still lined the east wall in 1900 and had been removed by 1909 except at the south end. The ninth duke restored it as a library before 1912, with pastiches of the old cases, some of them reused.

Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Robert Adam all criticised the design, and Robert Adam was normally an admirer of Vanbrugh. Voltaire's judgement was that if the apartments were as large as the walls were thick, the mansion would be convenient enough. Joseph Addison was born on 1 May 1672 at Milston in Wiltshire and died on 17 June 1719. He was a writer and a politician, educated at Charterhouse, where he met Richard Steele, and at The Queen's College, Oxford, and he became a fellow of Magdalen. The Battle of Blenheim gave him a chance after a period without employment. Lord Treasurer Godolphin commissioned a commemorative poem, The Campaign, and its reception brought Addison the post of Commissioner of Appeals. In 1705 he was made under-secretary of state. With Steele he founded The Spectator, whose first issue appeared on 1 March 1711. His tragedy Cato was produced in 1713 and was applauded by both Whigs and Tories.

Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 and died on 30 May 1744. He was a poet, translator, and satirist of the early eighteenth century, author of An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, and The Dunciad, and a translator of Homer. His parents were Catholic, and the Test Acts limited his schooling. From the age of twelve he suffered from Pott disease, a tuberculosis of the spine, which deformed him and left him 4 feet 6 inches tall. He saw the great bridge and put words in the mouths of the minnows passing under it: they murmur how like whales they look, thanks to your Grace. Horace Walpole, who saw the bridge in 1760, shortly before the lake was made, said it was like the beggars at the old duchess's gate, begging for a drop of water and refused.

Robert Adam was born on 3 July 1728 at Kirkcaldy and died on 3 March 1792. He was a Scottish neoclassical architect and designer, son of the architect William Adam, and with his brother John he continued the family practice. From 1754 he spent nearly five years on the Continent, much of it in Rome. On his return he developed the Adam style in London with his brother James, and he was Architect of the King's Works from 1761 to 1769. He led the first phase of the classical revival in England and Scotland from about 1760, and he sat in Parliament for Kinross-shire from 1768 to 1774. His criticism of Blenheim sits against that usual admiration for Vanbrugh.

When Vanbrugh first looked over the park in 1704, the River Glyme was a small marshy brook, and he imagined it crossed by the finest bridge in Europe. Ignoring a second opinion from Wren, he channelled the marsh into three canal-like streams and built a bridge of huge size, reported to contain some thirty rooms. It was finished about 1722 to 1724. In this setting it looked incongruous, which is what Pope and Walpole were answering. Another of his schemes was a great parterre, nearly half a mile long and as wide as the south front. He wanted an obelisk to mark the old royal manor and the meetings of Henry II there. The first duchess replied that if obelisks were made for all that kings had done of that sort, the country would be stuffed with very odd things. The obelisk was never built.

After the first duke's death the duchess put her energy into the house, and the park changed little until Lancelot Brown arrived. He is called Capability Brown. One account has his designs overlaying Vanbrugh's landscape from 1761 onwards. Another says the fourth duke called him in in 1764. He lived from 1716 to 1783. He began an English landscape scheme, with tree planting and made undulations, and he dammed the Glyme to form a huge lake, ornamented with cascades where the river enters and leaves. The original landscape had regulated the river. Brown's water is described both as one great lake and as two lakes, seen as one of the great examples of a naturalistic design, a naturalistic Versailles. He narrowed the water at the bridge and drowned the lower storeys and rooms, so that the bridge lost its awkward height. He grassed the parterre and the Great Court. The court was paved again in the early twentieth century.

The fifth duke made a substantial rock garden and a series of flower gardens, mostly now gone, south of the lake. Sir William Chambers, assisted by John Yenn, designed the small summerhouse called the Temple of Diana, down by the lake, in 1772 to 1773. In 1908 Winston Churchill proposed to his future wife there. The landscaped park, woods, and formal gardens are Grade I on the register of historic parks and gardens, and the park was first listed on 1 June 1984. The main phases of that landscape are the early and middle eighteenth century and the early twentieth century: Wise and Vanbrugh, then Brown, then Achille Duchêne. The palace itself has been Grade I listed since 27 August 1957. Forty-five key buildings on the site are Grade I or Grade II starred, and the park wall is Grade II. Five scheduled monuments lie in the park. The lakes and High Park are a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the ancient woodland and hedgerows are protected.

On the first duke's death in 1722 both his sons were already dead, so his daughter Henrietta succeeded, which needed a special Act of Parliament because an English dukedom normally passes to sons. When she died, the title passed to the duke's grandson Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, whose mother was the duke's second daughter Anne. The first duke was not a rich man, and what he had was mostly spent on the house. The Sunderland inheritance brought some resources. The family lived comfortably until George Spencer-Churchill, fifth Duke of Marlborough, who lived from 1766 to 1840. He was a spendthrift. He sold other estates, but Blenheim was entailed and he could not sell it. He sold the family's Boccaccio for a mere £875 and his own library in over 4,000 lots. His death in 1840 left estate and family in financial trouble.

By the 1870s the trouble was severe. In 1875 the seventh duke sold The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, together with the Marlborough gems, for £10,000, which was not enough. In 1880 he petitioned Parliament to break the entail on the palace and its contents. The Blenheim Settled Estates Act of 1880 opened the way to dispersal. Raphael's Ansidei Madonna was sold for £70,000. Van Dyck's equestrian portrait of Charles I realised £17,500. Rubens's portrait of himself with Helena Fourment and their son, given to the first duke by the city of Brussels in 1704, was sold and is now in New York. These sums, vast at the time, did not cover the debts. The agricultural depression that began in the 1870s made matters worse. When the ninth duke inherited in 1892, the land was producing a dwindling income.

Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, was born at Simla on 13 November 1871 and died on 30 June 1934. He was styled Earl of Sunderland until 1883 and Marquess of Blandford from 1883 to 1892, and he was often called Sunny after the Sunderland title. He was a soldier and a Conservative politician, and a close friend of his first cousin Winston Churchill. Educated at Winchester and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he entered the House of Lords on his father's early death in 1892. He was Paymaster General from 1899 to 1902 under Lord Salisbury, and under-secretary of state for the colonies under Arthur Balfour from 1903 to 1905. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1899. On 30 May 1902 he was invested as a Knight of the Garter, and he served as Lord High Steward at the coronation of Edward VII. He was Mayor of Woodstock from 1907 to 1909 and Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire from 1915 until his death. In 1912 he hosted a Unionist rally against Irish Home Rule at the palace. On 10 August 1908, in the park, he welcomed the initiation of his cousin Winston as a Druid.

In the Second Boer War he served as a staff captain with the Imperial Yeomanry, then as assistant military secretary to Lord Roberts, and he was mentioned in despatches. In the First World War he was a lieutenant-colonel on the General Staff in France, and from 1917 to 1918 he was joint parliamentary secretary to the Board of Agriculture. He was founder president of the Women's National Land Service Corps, the forerunner of the Women's Land Army. Prevented by the social rules of the late nineteenth century from earning his way out of a near-bankrupt dukedom, he married money.

In November 1895 he married Consuelo Vanderbilt, coldly and without love. She was born in New York on 2 March 1877 and died on 6 December 1964, the only daughter of the railroad millionaire William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Erskine Smith. Her mother was determined on a great match and had her wear a steel rod to improve her posture. Consuelo was locked in her room until she agreed to the marriage. The matchmaker was Lady Paget. The price, negotiated with her divorced parents, was 2,500,000 dollars in 50,000 shares of the Beech Creek Railway Company, with a minimum dividend of 4 per cent guaranteed by the New York Central Railroad Company, plus a further 100,000 dollars a year to each of them for life. The settlement was signed in the vestry of Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in New York immediately after the vows. In the carriage Marlborough told her he loved another woman, that he would never return to America, and that he despised anything that was not British. On the honeymoon he is reported to have said he had married her because he felt obliged to save Blenheim.

The replenishing began on that honeymoon, with the replacement of the Marlborough gems. Tapestries, paintings, and furniture were bought in Europe. The state rooms west of the saloon were redecorated with gilt boiseries in imitation of Versailles, a change the duke later regretted, and one that turned Vanbrugh's rivalry with Louis XIV into a pastiche of the greater palace. State and principal bedrooms moved upstairs, so the state rooms became a run of similar drawing rooms. Achille Duchêne made a water garden on the west terrace. On a lower terrace stand two great fountains in the manner of Bernini, scaled models of those in the Piazza Navona, which had been presented to the first duke. The Italian garden on the east was made from 1908 to 1910, with a fountain of 1910 by the American sculptor Waldo Story. Duchêne's formal gardens to west and east belong to the years from 1908 to 1930, and the water terraces to 1925 to 1931. Between 1900 and 1910 the ninth duke, using early drawings and Duchêne's help, restored the Great Court with terraces and statuary, and added a sunk wall, railings, and tall iron gates on the north.

Consuelo was unhappy. For much of the marriage the couple lived apart. She left him in 1906, they divorced in 1921, and the marriage was annulled in 1926. She married the French aviator Jacques Balsan in 1921. She had two sons, John, who became the tenth duke, and Ivor. She died in 1964, having lived to see her son become duke, and she was buried at Saint Martin's, the parish church for the palace, as her will asked. She often returned to the house she had hated and had saved. After the divorce the duke married Gladys Deacon, an American and a former friend of Consuelo. A painting of her eyes remains on the ceiling of the great north portico. A lower terrace was decorated with sphinxes modelled on her and carved by W. Ward Willis in 1930. Before the marriage, while staying with the family, she encouraged Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany to form an attachment. He gave her an heirloom ring, which the diplomatic services of two empires were charged to recover. After the marriage she dined with a revolver beside her plate. The duke tired of her, closed the house, and turned off the utilities to drive her out. They separated and did not divorce. He died in 1934. She died in 1977.

The fourth duke, before those late troubles, had already changed the interior and the courts. Under Chambers, and with the furniture makers William Ince and John Mayhew, he refurbished the public rooms and rearranged the pictures before 1789. Chimneypieces by Chambers were carved by Joseph Wilton and others. His pupil John Yenn designed chimneypieces and pier glasses in the 1780s. About 1773 Chambers softened the east gate, which the fourth duke altered, adding swags, laurels, and lions' heads, and statues and pinnacles taken from the north front. In the 1770s many statues, urns, and finials had been removed from the portico, quadrants, and colonnades. Some went onto the East Gate and some into the garden. In the early twentieth century the statues flanking the portico were replaced in terracotta. The Great Court, in keeping with Brown's grassing of the formal gardens, had been stripped of terraces and pavements. The fourth duke set up an observatory in the south-east tower and was establishing another in the south-west in 1789. Neither is mentioned after 1840.

In 1787 the orangery in the kitchen court became a theatre with seats for over 200. Plays were produced regularly for only two years, for invited audiences, but it remained a theatre until shortly after 1840, when it became offices. A china collection once shown to the public below stairs was withdrawn before 1789 after a theft. A china gallery was built in the park in 1796. Supposed Titians, presented to the first duke by Victor Amadeus, king of Sardinia, were moved in 1796 to a room east of the theatre. That Titian room burned in 1861. Its contents, including a notable Rubens, were destroyed, and much of the south side of the north-east court was damaged, though muniments in the strong room survived. The range was rebuilt, the former orangery restored as a conservatory, and a new estate office set on the former open yard.

The fifth duke's money troubles led to serious neglect. His successor obtained an Act so that repairs could be financed by mortgages and timber sales. During the sixth duke's years, from 1840 to 1857, the palace was renovated at immense expense, reputedly £80,000. Thomas Allason began in 1841. In 1844 the visiting king of Saxony found almost every part in disorder and under repair. The public rooms were redecorated. New kitchens were made in the basement of the main block. The palace probably gained its own gas works in the sixth duke's time. The eighth duke installed electricity in the 1880s, with radiators and telephones, and removed the gas works. The seventh duke turned a billiard room into a Gothic library designed by S. S. Teulon. From his time the whole east front was reserved as private apartments, and the public circuit was shortened.

Sir Winston Churchill was born in the palace in 1874, in a room identified as Dean Jones's room, west of the great hall. A permanent exhibition now occupies the suite in which he was born. The ninth duke was his first cousin and a lifelong friend. The long library was used as a hospital ward in the First World War. On 7 July 1939 a coming-out party for the seventeen-year-old Lady Sarah Consuelo Spencer-Churchill was held at the palace. It was a highlight of the season and has been called, in hindsight, the last season. More than 700 guests came, among them Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Ian Fleming, and a twenty-two-year-old John F. Kennedy. The house and gardens were lit, the Ambrose band played in a pavilion, and the guests danced on the lawn into the early morning.

In the Second World War the tenth duke welcomed boys from Malvern College as evacuees. The riding school was enclosed as an assembly hall for the college. In September 1940 the Security Service was allowed to use the palace. One account says it remained until the end of the war, and another says the palace was in the hands of the intelligence service until 1944. Other tenants included the British Council and the Ministry of Supply. Huts stood in the Great Court, and partitions divided many principal rooms. After restoration the palace reopened to visitors in 1950. Public access has a longer tradition, going back at least to Easter 1950, and fee-charging visits are older still. In 1712 the duke told Joynes to show visitors round without a fee. The entry fee was restored in 1856 to one shilling and stayed there until the First World War, and the money went to charities such as the Radcliffe Infirmary. In 1913 the park was closed because of a threat of damage by suffragettes. From the 1920s only the grounds were open. By the 1980s there were more than 350,000 visitors a year.

John Spencer-Churchill, tenth duke, lived from 1897 to 1972. He was the eldest son of the ninth duke and Consuelo Vanderbilt. He married Mary Cadogan in 1920. She died in 1961, and in 1972, at seventy-four, he married Laura Charteris. He died six weeks later, on 11 March 1972. She complained of the gloom and inhospitality of the house, called it the Dump, moved out, and died in London in 1990. Their elder son, John Spencer-Churchill, eleventh duke, was born on 13 April 1926 and died on 16 October 2014. He was known as Sunny from his courtesy title, Earl of Sunderland. In a rich list of 2004 he was ranked 224th, with an estimated wealth of £185 million. From 1972 he managed the palace and estate, opened the house to visitors and as a film set, and set up businesses that included garden furniture and a water-bottling plant. He died at eighty-eight.

His son Charles James Spencer-Churchill, known as Jamie, became the twelfth duke on 16 October 2014. The house remains the family's home. His brother, Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, founded the Blenheim Art Foundation to show large contemporary exhibitions in the historic rooms. It launched on 1 October 2014 with an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, described as the largest of his work yet shown in the country. In September 2019, during a show of work by Maurizio Cattelan, thieves stole America, a toilet of 18-carat gold valued at £4.75 million, from one of the bathrooms. It was not recovered. A survey in 2021 found that the palace had appeared in film and television seventy-one times, more than any other English country house. In July 2024 the house was the venue for the fourth summit of the European Political Community.

The property covers about 961 hectares, or some 2,000 acres of park and garden in the public account of the grounds. An eighteenth-century dry-stone wall encloses it and marks its extent. Within the wall the layout of the principal buildings is unaltered since they were built, and the structure of the park remains largely as Vanbrugh and Brown set it out, though owners have gone on changing landscape and buildings. The park holds important veteran trees. Disease and time have taken some of the original specimens, and they have been replanted with the same species where that is possible. Drought and a changing climate have required adjustments in the mix of trees. A management plan has been in place since 2006 and is watched each year. The Blenheim Dam was strengthened and reinstated in 2009 to meet safety rules. The whole property received a heritage tax exemption in 1999 for its architecture, its landscape, and the importance of the contents and their tie to the house. The park is open through the year. The palace and the formal gardens are open from mid-February to mid-December.

Royal visitors have included George III in 1786, who said of the view from the Triumphal Arch that nothing equalled it. The king of Denmark came in 1768, the emperor of Russia in 1814, Queen Adelaide in 1835, Prince Albert in 1841, Edward VII as Prince of Wales in 1859, 1870, 1873, and 1896, Edward VIII in 1936, and Charles, then Prince of Wales, in 1976 and 1981. In 1786 the household was large. In 1764 the family had about ninety servants, more than seventy of them at Blenheim, and wages and liveries cost nearly £3,000 a year. In the early nineteenth century there were about 187 furnished rooms and a staff of about eighty. The fifth duke cut that establishment. In 1841, with the sixth duke in residence, there were thirty servants and a governess. At the end of the nineteenth century the indoor staff numbered between thirty-five and forty, and the outdoor staff between forty and fifty, excluding the hunting department at Home Farm in Bladon. By the 1980s there were about ninety permanent employees, and twice that number in the summer, as the house became a commercial undertaking as well as a home.

The palace is at once a family house, a mausoleum, and a national monument. It honours a general who never lost a battle, it holds his body and his duchess's, and it still presents a copy of a French flag to the monarch once a year for the ground on which it stands. The Baroque stone, the drowned bridge, the lake, and the older mill race in the Queen Pool are parts of one sequence: a royal hunting park, a gift of war, a building the nation started and the family finished, and a landscape that later generations both softened and restored.

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