Cecil Chubb was looking and the newspaper in rural England in 1915 and saw a notice about a real estate auction for some nearby land. The land was actually several pieces of farm and pasture land that Sir Gordon Antrobus was selling because, well, he had no use for it and had inherited it from his brother. You see, the brother had died in the first year of World War 1, and Sir Gordon didn’t want to deal with it. Chubb was intrigued because of one of the parcels had some building stone on it. Besides, he liked the area and wanted the land to stay in local hands rather than be bought by some outsider or worse, some foreigner.
Chubb grew up only about four miles from the property Antrobus was selling. While his dad and granddad were harness makers in the village, Chubb had managed to get a university degree from Cambridge and had become a rather successful and wealthy lawyer (a barrister in the UK). He then married well, finding a wife in one Mary Alice Finch. In addition, Chubb owned several successful racehorses, and he actually made some money off them as well.
But the land, Chubb wanted it more to preserve it rather than use it for farm or pasture land and make a profit. Attending the auction was almost a whim for him; his wife had wanted him to buy some chairs that were part of one of the auction lots. Luckily for Chubb, there weren’t many bidders present, and some parcels went for the proverbial song. The land that had the stone structures on it, comprising mostly open land, was coming up next, and Chubb waited to see who would bid. Surprisingly, only one other bidder seemed interested in the land. The other man had adjoining land, and the hammer was about to come down on the sale. At the last moment, Chubb raised a finger and the auctioneer nodded in acknowledgement. No other bidders raised a hand. The hammer fell, and the land was Chubb’s for the bargain basement price of £6,600.
Oh, and he didn’t buy the chairs for Mary.
What he did buy was about 30 acres of land that he held onto for only about three years. He then decided to bequeath the land to the people of the United Kingdom with one proviso. The locals would be able to visit the land for free in perpetuity.
And that’s how the government of the United Kingdom came to own Stonehenge.
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