Iford Manor SSSI, Avon
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Iford Manor () is a
manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal mea ...
in Wiltshire, England. It is a Grade II*
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
sitting on the steep, south-facing slope of the Frome valley, in Westwood parish, about southwest of the town of
Bradford-on-Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon) is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire (district), Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset. The town's canal, historic buildings, shops, pubs and restauran ...
. Its Grade I registered gardens are open to the public from April to September each year. Iford was rated as among the "20 most beautiful villages in the UK and Ireland" by
Condé Nast Traveler ''Condé Nast Traveler'' is a luxury and lifestyle travel magazine published by Condé Nast. The magazine has won 25 National Magazine Awards. The Condé Nast unit of Advance Publications purchased ''Signature'', a magazine for Diners Club me ...
in 2020, with the manor taking "center stage".


History

There has been a dwelling here since the
Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...
and the origins of the present house are as early as the late fifteenth century or the early sixteenth. At that time the buildings were a wool factory and the seat of the Horton family who became a wool dynasty. Thereafter the
Hungerford Hungerford is a historic market town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, west of Newbury, east of Marlborough, and 60 miles (97 km) west of London. The population of the parish at the 2021 census was 5,869. The Kennet and Avon Can ...
family of nearby
Farleigh Hungerford Castle Farleigh Hungerford Castle, sometimes called Farleigh Castle or Farley Castle, is a medieval castle in Farleigh Hungerford, Somerset, England. The castle was built in two phases: the inner court was constructed between 1377 and 1383 by Thoma ...
and
Corsham Court Corsham Court is an English country house in a park designed by Capability Brown. It is in the town of Corsham, 3 miles (5 km) west of Chippenham, Wiltshire, and is notable for its fine art collection, based on the nucleus of painting ...
lived here. Following a change in ownership the classical the building was remodelled; the façade was added around 1725–30. Three generations of the Gaisford family lived here in the Georgian period, notably Dean Gaisford of Christ Church, Oxford; his father John had purchased the property in 1777. Previously, the estate was owned by the Chandler family who was responsible for the modifications in the early eighteenth century. The Gaisfords created
pleasure ground In English gardening history, the pleasure ground or pleasure garden was the parts of a large garden designed for the use of the owners, as opposed to the kitchen garden and the wider park. It normally included flower gardens, typically directl ...
s with a park and woodland. In approximately 1820, the Gaisford family bought an old house in the area (later demolished) in order to extend the grounds of their manor. The Gaisford family owned the estate until 1853 and were responsible for planting the hanging woodlands above the garden and several of the notable trees in the garden and surrounding landscape. The Rooke family lived here until
Harold Peto Harold Ainsworth Peto FRIBA (11 July 1854 – 16 April 1933) was a British architect, landscape architect and garden designer, who worked in Britain and in Provence, France. Among his best-known gardens are Iford Manor, Wiltshire; Buscot ...
purchased the property in 1899. After Peto's death, the estate was inherited by family and was sold in 1965 to Elizabeth Cartwright (later, Cartwright-Hignett). Her restoration of the garden was completed in the early 1970s. The family (William and Marianne Cartwright-Hignett) retained ownership of the manor as of October 2020. The gardens were open to visitors for many years but were closed in 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
. A coffee shop was being added, to open in April 2021; the tea room continued in operation. In 2020, the cloister and Georgian summer house were repaired to prevent their collapse.


Gardens

Iford is best known for its beautiful gardens, which are designated Grade I in the
National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens #REDIRECT Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England #REDIRECT Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England {{R from move ...
{{R from move ...
by
Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...
. They were designed during the early part of the twentieth century by the garden architect
Harold Peto Harold Ainsworth Peto FRIBA (11 July 1854 – 16 April 1933) was a British architect, landscape architect and garden designer, who worked in Britain and in Provence, France. Among his best-known gardens are Iford Manor, Wiltshire; Buscot ...
. He lived at Iford from 1899 until his death in 1933 during which time he built up an extensive collection of antiquities and artefacts, brought back from his travels abroad. His great love of the
Italian garden Italian garden (or giardino all'italiana, ) typically refers to a style of gardens, wherever located, reflecting a number of large Italian Renaissance gardens which have survived in something like their original form. In the history of gardenin ...
style is plainly evident at Iford, where flowers occupy a subordinate place amongst the more structural elements of cypress, statuary, hedges, water features and broad walks. According to ''Country Life'', Peto was searching for a country home that would lend itself to a great garden design. When he found the Palladian villa in Wiltshire, "it was evocative of his favourite... the Villa Giusti at Verona. ... He avoided unnecessary change to the garden, preferring instead to develop the inherent character, the natural beauty and the historic atmosphere". A number of plants of particular interest can be found at Iford: standard ''
Wisteria sinensis ''Wisteria sinensis'', commonly known as the Chinese wisteria, is a species of flowering plant in the pea family (botany), family, native species, native to China, in the provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Yunnan. Gr ...
'' blossoms across much of the front of the house and up flights of steps linking the terraces (particularly good in late May); ''
Phillyrea ''Phillyrea'' is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae, native to the Mediterranean region, and naturalized in the Canary Islands and Madeira. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees growing to 3–9 m tall, related ...
latifolia''; ''
Buxus sempervirens ''Buxus sempervirens'', the common box, European box, or boxwood, is a species of flowering plant in the genus ''Buxus'', native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, from southern England south to northern Morocco ...
'' grows in wild tree form in the woods above the house and is extensively used in the gardens as a structural plant; ''
Cupressus sempervirens ''Cupressus sempervirens'', the Mediterranean cypress (also known as Italian cypress, Tuscan cypress, Persian cypress, or pencil pine), is a species of cypress native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Iran. While some studies show it ha ...
''; ''
Hemerocallis A daylily, day lily or ditch-lily is a flowering plant in the genus ''Hemerocallis'' , a member of the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae, native to Asia. Despite the common name, it is not taxonomically classified in the lily gen ...
citrina'', the scented daylily; the naturalised
Martagon lily ''Lilium martagon'', the martagon lily or Turk's cap lily, is a Eurasian species of lily. It has a widespread native region extending from Portugal east through Europe and Asia as far east as Mongolia. Description It is stem-rooting, growing be ...
. In addition to his planting and structural work, Peto created a number of architectural garden features, which remain well preserved. Behind the manor house, to which he added a
loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior Long gallery, gallery or corridor, often on an upper level, sometimes on the ground level of a building. The corridor is open to the elements because its outer wall is only parti ...
, terraces lead up to the main lawn. Alongside the lawn he built a lily pool, a
colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...
-lined Great Terrace, and the Cloisters, a Grade II* listed
Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...
courtyard surrounded by an
arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated video, pinball, electro-mechanical, redemption, etc., game ** Arcade video game, a coin-operated video game ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade video game's hardware ** Arcad ...
, which was his "Haunt of Ancient Peace" where he displayed many of his treasures. Higher up the hillside, he built more terraces with
retaining wall Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides. Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to ...
s, and a pavilion called the Casita. Thought lost after the war, the present owners since 1965, the Cartwright-Hignett family, have restored the garden and the various structures therein, initially assisted by Lanning Roper. John Hignett has extended the garden, including the creation of a Japanese Garden. The owners appointed Troy Scott Smith in 2019, previously head gardener of Sissinghurst, Bodnant and The Courts, to help replant and expand the garden further. Iford Manor was the recipient of the
Historic Houses Association Historic Houses (formerly, and still for legal purposes, known as the Historic Houses Association or HHA) is a not-for-profit organisation that represents well over a thousand independently owned historic English country house, country houses, ...
/
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...
Garden of the Year Award in 1998, and the Little Treasure of Britain Award in the 2017 Group Travel Awards.


Arts and filming

Iford Manor has been used for filming on a number of occasions. Most recently it was used as a key location for ''The Secret Garden'' (2020) and in
Sanditon ''Sanditon'' is an 1817 unfinished novel by the English writer Jane Austen. In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel she called ''The Brothers'', later titled ''Sanditon'', and completed twelve chapters before stopping work in mid-Ma ...
(ITV 2019). In 2008 the gardens and the cloisters were used as the venue for the wedding sequence in Episode 1 of the second series of the BBC's ''
Mistresses Mistress is the feminine form of the English word "master" (''master'' + ''-ess'') and may refer to: Romance and relationships * Mistress (lover), a female lover of a married man ** Royal mistress * Maîtresse-en-titre, official mistress of a ...
''. Regular concerts take place at weekends in the garden at no extra charge for garden visitors, and from 2021 a new season of arts events will take place. From 1983 until 2018, the Iford Arts Festival held a three-month season of opera,
jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and other concerts in the gardens, making use of the Cloisters and the Casita as performance spaces. With urgent repair work needed to the cloisters following subsidence, and the festival having outgrown the relatively small venue, the festival was moved to nearby Belcombe Court from 2019.


Iford Manor SSSI

The roof spaces of Iford Mill Barn are used as a summer breeding roost by greater horseshoe bats, one of only 14 known roosts for this species in England. This is the second largest of the known English breeding roosts, with over 250 individuals recorded each summer. Because of this, the buildings and a small area of land surrounding them, , were notified as a
biological Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...
in 1996. Although the manor itself is in Wiltshire, both bat breeding sites are in Bath and Northeast Somerset, and so fall within English Nature's Avon
Area of Search Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in the United Kingdom are areas of conservation (ethic), conservation, consisting of protected areas, recognised for their biological or geological significance. In Northern Ireland an SSSI is called an ...
. The SSSI includes an orchard, where
Daubenton's bat Daubenton's bat or Daubenton's myotis (''Myotis daubentonii'') is a Eurasian bat with rather short ears. It occurs across Eurasia, from Ireland in the west to Hokkaido in the east, and is believed to be increasing its numbers in many areas of it ...
and
Noctule bat ''Nyctalus'' is a genus of vespertilionid bats commonly known as the noctule bats. They are distributed in the temperate and subtropical areas of Europe, Asia and North Africa. There are eight species within this genus: * Birdlike noctule, ''N ...
roost.English Nature SSSI citation sheet
(accessed on 30 July 2006)


Gallery

File:Iford Manor bridge, Wiltshire, UK - Diliff.jpg, The bridge File:Iford_Manor2.JPG, View from the bridge File:Iford_Manor3.JPG, Entrance gates


Sources


External links

*
Iford Manor entry from The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses
archived in 2012
English Nature
(SSSI information) {{coord, 51.32885, N, 2.28556, W, type:landmark_region:GB-WIL_source:enwiki-osgb36(ST802589), display=title Country houses in Wiltshire Gardens by Harold Peto Georgian architecture in Wiltshire Grade I listed parks and gardens in Wiltshire Grade II* listed buildings in Wiltshire Grade II* listed houses Manor houses in England Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Avon Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1996 Tourist attractions in Wiltshire