Drizzly rain, and the forecast for more, failed to deter the hardy Thames Valley Centre Morgan owners from visiting Nuffield Place in Oxfordshire for their monthly walk. The house, home to Lord Nuffield the founder of the Morris car company, depicts the lifestyle of the 1930s and 40s, with items furniture and objects left as they were at the time of Lord Nuffield’s death. Although the Nuffields were one of the wealthiest families in England their home was far from ostentatious, with many items brought at local stores or reproductions of Harrods furniture made by Oxfordshire craftsmen. The items in the house are not labelled, the rooms are not roped-off, and to understand more about the room’s functions and its secrets you must ask for help from the many knowledgeable volunteers, include a friendly fellow Morgan owner.
The Nuffields spent little of their wealth on themselves, instead choosing to support good causes by giving away over £30m of their fortune, equivalent to £700m in today's money. They supported medicine and medical advances, donating millions to medical research and founding Nuffield College, Oxford, which specialises in social sciences. Following an unhappy experience at the dentist, but impressed by the anaesthesia he received, Lord Nuffield gave Oxford University £2m to establish a department of anaesthetics. In 1937 he gave £50,000 to fund the expansion of the Sea Cadet Corps and donated £60,000 to Birmingham University for the Nuffield building, to house a cyclotron. He also founded the Nuffield Foundation in 1943, in order to advance education and social welfare with an endowment of £10 million. During the 1940s and 1950s he arranged and paid for the manufacture of 5,000 iron lungs, an experimental concept at the time, and distributed them to hospitals throughout the British Commonwealth. An example of an original iron lung is on display at Nuffield Place, beside Lady Nuffield’s Wolsey car.
