The government refused Mentmore for £2 million, and Sotheby's sold its contents for more than £6 million in 1977

Mentmore Towers was built in the 1850s for Baron Mayer de Rothschild and passed to the Earls of Rosebery by marriage. Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, bred the Derby winner Blue Peter at its stud. He died at Mentmore on 30 May 1974. His heirs faced death duties. The house and its contents were offered to the nation for £2 million. The Labour government, through the Department of the Environment, declined. Sotheby's sold the contents on the estate from 18 to 27 May 1977. The sale raised more than £6 million. The campaign group SAVE Britain's Heritage published "SAVE Mentmore for the Nation" the same year. In December 1978 the Maharishi International College bought the empty house for £240,000. The property developer Simon Halabi bought it in the late 1990s to make a hotel with 171 suites. The High Court upheld the planning permission in March 2005, but the work stalled. Halabi's property group defaulted on $1.9 billion of bonds in June 2009, and he was declared bankrupt in the High Court in London on 1 April 2010. A 2022 report called the house abandoned, and police attended a reported burglary in May 2024. Historic England rated the Grade I house at priority A, "immediate risk of further rapid deterioration", in 2022, 2023 and 2024. In 2026 it stands empty^†.