Heritage
At 2am on Tuesday 10th June, 2003, a masked gang broke into Waddesdon Manor, the 19th century chateau-style National Trust property built by the Rothschild banking dynasty near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. They stole over 100 gold boxes in the raid, worth in the region of £5m. Pippa Shirley, Director of Waddesdon Manor (and formerly Head of Collections), lived on the estate and was woken by a phone call in the early hours.
‘It was a really traumatic night,’ she recalls with a shudder. ‘The memory is still very vivid even though it's 20 years ago. The house manager phoned to tell me that there had been a break-in, so I jumped in my car and drove to the Manor. He took me into the room where the gold boxes had been on display in two cases, and there was broken glass all over the floor. It was just so shocking. It felt like the most awful violation.’
Fast-forward to today and one of the missing boxes is now back on display, thanks to the hard
