Records relating to Rothschild estates
The Rothschild Archive London primarily holds the business records of the London firm of N M Rothschild & Sons, together with some papers of Rothschild banking businesses in Paris and Vienna.
The archive has comparatively few records relating to the estates and private houses of the Rothschild family. Much of the archival material we hold relating to estates consists of photographs of the interior and exterior of properties, and gardens. Large quantities of records relating to the running and administration of houses and estates are known to have been destroyed, as estates passed through the generations, or left Rothschild family ownership. Many of the Rothschilds requested that personal records be destroyed upon their death. The estates for which we hold the greatest amount of archival material are:
Aston Clinton
Exbury
Gunnersbury Park
Halton House
Tring Park
Schillersdorf (Moravia)
and a number of French family properties
We also hold a very few items concerning Palace House and Mentmore Towers.
For further information about estate papers held by the archive, please see the Guide to the collections or contact us
Employees in Rothschild houses and on Rothschild estates
The Rothschild Archive has very few records relating to employees of Rothschild houses and etates. As houses and estates were sold or re-developed, many records of the minutiae of domestic life have been lost.
For genealogy researchers, information about domestic and estate staff employed by the branches of the family can be difficult to find. If you know by which member of the Rothschild family or at which of the many Rothschild estates and houses a person was employed, we might be able to tell you a little more in general about the Rothschild family members they worked for, or the place they worked at.
Another useful starting point for research is to check the relevant Census returns, which may record staff who 'lived in' at a particular address.
Brief information concerning over 75 Rothschild estates and properties in England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and The Netherlands will be found on the Rothschild estates pages.
