The gardens at Iford Manor, near Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire
The home of the Cartwright-Hignett family
OH, to have been a fly on the wall in 1898 when Henry Avray Tipping first cycled down the steep hill just outside Bradford-on-Avon and saw below him the River Frome, coursing through its pretty Gothic bridge, and, on his right, the buff-stone walls of Iford Manor. He was immediately charmed by ‘its splendid hanging woods, its stately terrace walk, its interesting house with so much history in its medley of styles, its pleasant position near the river with its picturesque bridge’. Was he, perhaps, walking up the garden’s triple flights of stone steps when it first clicked that this was the very same property that his house-hunting friend, architect Harold Peto, had told him about? Worried that the house was too close to the road and river and
