Iford Manor facts for kids

Iford Manor with a statue on the River Frome

Iford Manor is a beautiful old house in Wiltshire, England. It's a special building, officially called a Grade II* listed building. It sits on a steep hill overlooking the River Frome, near the village of Westwood. It's about 2 miles (3 km) southwest of Bradford-on-Avon. The amazing gardens at Iford Manor are also very special, listed as Grade I, and you can visit them from April to September each year.

In 2020, a magazine called Condé Nast Traveler even said Iford was one of the "20 most beautiful villages in the UK and Ireland," with the manor house being the main attraction!

A Look Back in Time

People have lived at Iford for a very long time, even before the Domesday Book was written. The first parts of the house we see today were built in the late 1400s or early 1500s. Back then, it was a wool factory and home to the Horton family, who became very successful in the wool business.

Later, the Hungerford family, who lived in nearby Farleigh Hungerford Castle, owned Iford Manor. After that, the house was changed quite a bit. Its front was updated around 1725–1730 to look more like the classical style, which was popular at the time.

Three generations of the Gaisford family lived here during the Georgian period. Thomas Gaisford, a famous scholar from Oxford, was one of them. His father, John, bought the property in 1777. The Gaisfords created lovely "pleasure grounds" with a park and woodlands. They even bought and removed an old house nearby to make their estate bigger. The Gaisford family owned Iford until 1853. They planted many of the trees you see on the hills above the garden today.

After the Gaisfords, the Rooke family lived here until Harold Peto bought the property in 1899. Peto was a famous garden designer. After he passed away, his family owned the estate until 1965. Then, Elizabeth Cartwright (who later became Cartwright-Hignett) bought it. She worked hard to bring the garden back to life in the early 1970s.

As of October 2020, the Cartwright-Hignett family (William and Marianne) still owned the manor. The gardens were usually open to visitors, but they had to close in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A coffee shop was planned to open in April 2021, and the old tea room would also stay open. In 2020, some parts of the manor, like the cloister and a Georgian summer house, were repaired to stop them from falling apart.

Amazing Gardens

The Peto Gardens

Iford is most famous for its incredible gardens. They are so special that they are listed as Grade I on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens by Historic England. This means they are among the most important historic gardens in the country!

The gardens were designed by the talented garden architect Harold Peto in the early 1900s. He lived at Iford from 1899 until he died in 1933. During his time there, he collected many old and interesting items from his travels abroad. Peto loved the Italian garden style, and you can clearly see this at Iford. Instead of lots of flowers, the gardens use more structured elements like cypress trees, statues, hedges, water features, and wide paths.

According to Country Life magazine, Peto was looking for a country home where he could create a magnificent garden. When he found Iford Manor, it reminded him of his favorite Italian villa. He didn't want to change the garden too much. Instead, he wanted to bring out its natural beauty and historic feel.

You can find many interesting plants at Iford. For example, a beautiful Wisteria sinensis vine blooms across the front of the house and up the steps, looking especially lovely in late May. Other plants include Phillyrea latifolia, Buxus sempervirens (boxwood), Cupressus sempervirens (cypress), the scented daylily (Hemerocallis citrina), and the wild Martagon lily.

Besides planting and building structures, Peto also created many architectural features in the garden that are still well-preserved today. Behind the manor house, he added a loggia (a covered walkway) and terraces that lead up to the main lawn. Next to the lawn, he built a lily pool and a long Great Terrace lined with columns. He also created the Cloisters, an Italianate courtyard with an arcade around it. This was his favorite peaceful spot where he displayed many of his treasures. Higher up the hillside, he built more terraces with retaining walls and a small building called the Casita.

After World War II, some parts of the garden were thought to be lost. But the current owners, the Cartwright-Hignett family, who bought the manor in 1965, have worked hard to restore the garden and its structures. They were first helped by a garden expert named Lanning Roper. John Hignett has even made the garden bigger, adding a Japanese Garden. In 2019, they hired Troy Scott Smith, a famous head gardener, to help replant and expand the garden even more.

Iford Manor's garden has won awards too! It received the Historic Houses Association/Christie's Garden of the Year Award in 1998 and the Little Treasure of Britain Award in 2017.

Arts and Filming at Iford

Iford Manor has been a popular spot for filming movies and TV shows. Most recently, it was a key location for the movie The Secret Garden (2020) and the TV series Sanditon (2019). In 2008, the gardens and the Cloisters were used for a wedding scene in a BBC show called Mistresses.

You can often enjoy concerts in the garden on weekends, which are included in your garden visit ticket. Starting in 2021, there will be even more arts events happening at Iford.

From 1983 to 2018, the Iford Arts Festival used to hold a three-month season of opera, jazz, and other concerts in the gardens. They used the Cloisters and the Casita as performance areas. However, because the Cloisters needed urgent repairs and the festival had grown too big for the small venue, it moved to a nearby place called Belcombe Court in 2019.

Iford Manor and Bats

The roof spaces of Iford Mill Barn are a very important summer home for greater horseshoe bats. This is one of only 14 known places where these bats have their babies in England! It's the second largest of these known breeding spots, with over 250 bats recorded there each summer.

Because these bats are so important, the buildings and a small area of land around them (about 0.39 hectares or 1 acre) were officially named a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1996. Even though the manor itself is in Wiltshire, these bat breeding sites are in Bath and North East Somerset. The SSSI also includes an orchard where other types of bats, like Daubenton's bat and Noctule bat, live.

Gallery

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  The bridge at Iford Manor

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  A view from the bridge

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  The entrance gates to Iford Manor