Ditchley Park had to rely on the American rich to help restore it to its former grandeur, writes CHRIS KOENIG.

The rich are different to the rest of us, American author Scott Fitzgerald maintained; to which a friend replied that, yes, they had more money.

Ronald and Nancy Tree were exactly the kind of American rich of whom Scott Fitzgerald would have been in awe: charming, talented, leisured, gilded, they bought the superb mansion Ditchley Park, near Charlbury, in 1933 after the 17th Viscount Dillon died.

Buckets of the folding stuff was lavished on the house, built in 1722 to designs by James Gibbs - architect of the Radcliffe Camera - by that doyenne of interior design Mrs Tree, otherwise known as Nancy Lancaster, the owner of the company destined to develop into Colefax and Fowler.

Like nearby Blenheim before it - restored with the help of money from Consuelo Vanderbilt - Ditchley was in sore need of American money to bring it back to glory. It had only one decrepit bathroom when the Trees arrived there - apart, that is, from the bath in front of the fireplace in the saloon where Lord Dillon used to wash!

Anglo-American Ronald Tree (1897-1976) was the son of an English property developer. His mother was the daughter of Marshall Field, the founder of the Chicago department store of the same name. His wife Nancy (1897-1994), from Virginia, was a niece of yet another Anglo-American, Nancy Astor, who became Britain's first woman MP.

Both were urbane and witty and Ditchley soon became a magnate for the international rich and famous, including Cecil Beaton, assorted lords and ladies and, most famously, Winston Churchill. His name, and those of his wife, Clementine, and their daughter, Mary, appear no fewer than 13 times in the visitors' book for the period between November 9, 1940, and September 28, 1942. The reason for their frequent visits was that Churchill had been advised that his country retreat of Chequers would be too vulnerable to Nazi bombs on clear nights for his safety. He therefore wrote to Mr Tree: "Would it be possible for you to offer me accommodation at Ditchley for certain weekends when the moon is high?"

Ronald Tree edited the Forum Magazine in New York from 1922- 1926. Then he became an investor on the New York Stock Exchange until the Wall Street Crash of 1929. An aesthete to the core, he was bi-sexual.

In England he found his true vocation. He became Conservative MP for Harborough in 1933 and Churchill gave him a job in the Ministry of Information. But the great days of Ditchley in modern times were during the thirties when not only its rooms, designed by William Kent, were restored in bright colours (leading the way in interior design), but its gardens and grounds were restored and, probably, the last parterre in Britain was built there by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe - the spending rivalled the 18th century for its extravagance combined with "good taste".

After the war Ronald Tree - always known as Ronnie - divorced Nancy and took himself and his new wife, American Marietta Peabody FitzGerald, whom he met at the Ministry of Information, off to Barbados where he founded the Breakers Hotel, still a haunt of the super-rich. There he established the habit of the rich to winter in the Caribbean, a habit which had been pioneered by Anthony Eden and, of course, Ian Fleming. Are they different to the rest of us?