It seems that once the public started dissecting the photos of the Princess of Wales in the wake of “Kate-gate,” they couldn’t stop there. They continued to inspect photos of David Cholmondeley and Rose Hanbury posing at their Houghton Hill home. Although the marquess is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, some say his grand estate is filled with stolen treasures. The controversy occurred after eagle-eyed readers unearthed a May 2013 Vanity Fair article, along with a piece in the Financial Times exactly 10 years later. In both articles, the couple is surrounded by the beauty, architecture, and priceless art of their Norfolk country home, but there were a few pieces in particular that caught the attention of some people on X, formerly Twitter.
“People in China looked a little too closely at this photoshoot of the Marquis and Marchioness of Cholmondeley in their gorgeous stately home, and noticed that it’s full of authentic Chinese furniture and artefacts (sic) that were stolen from China during the fall of the Qing dynasty, and they are pissed,” tweeted one user.
The thread went on to accuse Cholmondeley’s paternal grandparents, the Sassoons, of taking the items while they were trading opium in China. While no one is left to deny or confirm that claim, it is known that the Sassoon family was big in international trading and did business with China, but as of now, it remains a mystery.
