Villa Melchett, east (lake) front
Israel is not known for its country estates and mansions. Having languished as an Ottoman backwater until the British gained it under the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, the brief period of European influence in the twentieth century hardly provided enough time―or inclination in what was viewed in time as a troublesome mandate―for the British to exert the huge colonial influences manifested elsewhere in their empire through the development of a landed class. So it was with some surprise that we came to Villa Melchett one Friday, hidden in plain sight between route 90―north of Tiberias―and the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) at Migdal.
We found it! Amber and Yonatan at the gate to Villa Melchett
The villa's name hints at its origins. Sir Alfred Mond, Bt, styled first Baron Melchett, was a British industrialist, financier and politician who―in his later life―became an active Zionist.
Alfred Mond (1910-20) [Credit: Henry Walter Barnett, public domain]
Alfred Moritz Mond was born in Farnworth, near the heavy industrial town of Widnes, Lancashire. His father was Ludwig Mond, a chemist and industrialist who had emigrated from Germany. After attending Cheltenham College and St John's College, Cambridge, he failed his natural sciences tripos, going on to study law at the University of Edinburgh. He was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1894. Following this he joined his father's firm, Brunner Mond & Company, as director, later becoming managing director both of this and another of his father's companies, the Mond Nickel Company. He was also a director of the Westminster Bank (later NatWest), but his greatest business achievement was creating―in 1926―one of the world's largest industrial corporations at the time through the merger of four separate companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), of which he was appointed its first chairman.
Mond sat as Liberal Member of Parliament for Chester from 1906 to 1910, for Swansea from 1910 to 1918, and for Swansea Westfrom 1918 to 1923. He served in the coalition government of David Lloyd George as First Commissioner of Works from 1916 to 1921 and as Minister of Health (with a seat in the cabinet) from 1921 to 1922. He represented Carmarthen from 1924 to 1928, initially as a Liberal. Although a supporter of the "New Liberalism" in his early political career and a "vocal proponent of constructive social reform" in the postwar government, Mond became a Conservative in 1926 after falling out with Lloyd George over the former Prime Minister's controversial plans to nationalise agricultural land. Mond was created a Baronet, of Hartford Hill in Great Budworth in the County of Chester, in 1910, and was admitted to the Privy Council in 1913. In 1928 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Melchett, of Landford in the County of Southampton.
Mond's Zionist awakening followed his first visit to Palestine, with Chaim Weizmann, in 1921. During the visit, he wrote to his wife:
“I have learned much I didn’t know and which, possibly, no one who is not a Jew will ever be able to understand, for it can only be felt… But the Hills of Judea are today as dramatic as in the days of the prophets and the Lake of Galilee smiles in its beauty as when Jesus of Nazareth walked its shores…I have never lived so intensely as a Jew before.”
He subsequently became an enthusiastic Zionist, contributing money to the Jewish Colonization Corporation for Palestine, writing for Zionist publications, and becoming President of the British Zionist Foundation. He founded the town of Tel Mond in 1929, located east of Netanya and north of Kfar Saba. The Israel Plantations Company, headed by Mond, purchased land in the region and planted citrus orchards to provide employment for Jewish laborers. In 1933, a group of farmers purchased land from the company and established Moshav Tel Mond. In 1936, another group established Moshav Kfar Ziv, named after Baron Sieff who followed Lord Melchett and settled in Tel Mond with his wife. In 1943, new immigrants from Yemen established Shechunat Ya'akov. And in the 1950s, Neve Oved and Hadar Hayim were built to accommodate the large wave of immigration (mainly from Yemen) after the founding of the state. In 1954, all these communities were merged to form the Local Council of Tel Mond. The surrounding moshavim, Kfar Hess, Herut and Ein Vered, were also founded by the pioneers of Tel Mond. Mond built a house in Tel Mond, which is now the House of the Lord museum, documenting the history of Tel Mond; outside the museum is a statue of Lord Melchett designed by Batya Lishansky. Tel Aviv and several other Israeli cities have a Melchett Street commemorating him.
Statue of Lord Melchett at Tel Mond, designed by Batya Lishansky [Credit: מאת צילום:ד"ר אבישי טייכר, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11974151]
But Mond also started building what is now one of the few private houses on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, now known as Villa Melchett. It was during his first visit to Israel that he was given a tour of the new farming community of Migdal, north of Tiberias, by Chaim Weizman and Moshe Glikin. In an effort to please Mond, Glikin suggested planting a grove there in Mond's name, but during the visit the area was swept by a flood, leaving mud and destruction. Despite this, Mond could not stop thinking about the Kinneret landscapes, even as he dined with guests at the table of Brigadier Kisch―the British Army officer and Zionist leader―in Jerusalem. Halfway through the meal, Mond produced a £2,000 cheque and gave it to Glikin to purchase the land on which the villa was later built as a summer home for Mond's daughter, Lady Eva Violet Redding.
Villa Melchett, east (lake) front, 1930s [Credit: תמר הירדני]
Construction on the villa began in 1928 and continued until 1931, a year after Mond's death. The architects were Benjamin Chaikin and Zelik Axelrod. Between the years 1931-39, Monde's daughter, Lady Eva Violet Redding spent her vacations at the villa, hosting many community leaders, among them David Ben-Gurion, Orde Wingate, Chaim Arlosoroff, Chaim Weizmann, George Bernard Shaw and others.
George Bernard Shaw at Villa Melchett, 1931 [Credit: Collection of Photographs of Herbert and Edwin Samuel, Israel National Archives, public domain]
The family sold all of its holdings in Israel, the villa included, in the 1950s Kibbutz Ginosar and a partner purchased the villa. For a short while, the villa was used as a guest house. In 1977, Shaul Eisenberg―Jewish tycoon―purchased it, after years of neglect. His daughter, Edith, who inherited it, opened it to the public in 2006 after renovations, but by the time of our visit it was closed, and it was unclear whether it was still in use for events or rental, or lived in, but it was certainly well-maintained. The house has been declared a heritage site by the Council for the Preservation of Heritage Sites in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu visited the historic house in 2017.
One of Mond's most enduring contributions to Zionism came through his enthusiastic and active support of Pinhas Rutenberg, whom the British Government granted exclusive concessions to produce and distribute electricity in Palestine. Mond sat on the Board of the Palestine Electric Company and actively promoted the case of the company in London's political and industrial circles.
Panorama of the east (lake) front of Villa Melchett, with the Arbel cliff in the background.
The Sea of Galilee Trail (Shvil Sovev Kinneret)―a walking trail which goes around the circumference of the lake―passes to the east of the villa. It leads past what seems to have been an estate-worker's cottage of similar vintage to the villa, and crosses over the burbling, clear Nun brook, where there is a ruined lakeside restaurant. We rather thought it might make a restoration project for a great lakeside, stream-side home...if you could stand the humid summer heat!
Amber beside Nahal Nun