Ashton Gifford House
The house was built during the early 19th century, following the precepts of Georgian architecture, and its estate eventually included all of the hamlet or tithing of Ashton Gifford.
English Heritage, in their Images of England section[20] describe the property as having a limestone ashlar front with side walls of brick.
The main entrance is a distyle in antis Tuscan portico to the centre with inserted double half-glazed doors and flanking tripartite sashes, an inner main door with six fielded panels, fanlights and flanking margin-pane round-arched sashes with interlaced glazing bars.
The interior features of the property that are highlighted by English Heritage include the central entrance hall with an oval open-well staircase (which has a continuous handrail and cast-iron balusters).
On the ground floor, the drawing room has a scrolled plaster ceiling margin and a fireplace, which are singled out for special mention.
[31] His new wife, Albinia, was the daughter of the landowner John Dalton (of Keningford Hall, Yorkshire and Fillingham Castle, Lincolnshire).
[32] Locke was formerly an officer in the first Dragoon Guards, and went on to become High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1847[33] (he was occasionally described as being of "Ashton Giffard", the alternative spelling of the locale).
He was a huntsman, purchasing a "famed" pack of foxhounds known as the Headington Harriers for "two seasons" from a Mr Jem Morrell, before selling them to Sir John Cam Hobhouse (later Lord Broughton).
[39] Locke apparently collected stuffed birds, amassing almost a thousand British and foreign specimens kept in glass cases.
[40] Wadham Locke paid for the construction of the village school at Codford St Peter, and subsequently supported it financially.
[45] He served as the first Chairman of the Warminster Board of Guardians[46] and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 10th company, Wiltshire Volunteer Rifle Corps at the end of May 1860.
The advertisement described "74 acres of rich pasture, sound arable, and productive orchards, plantations, and woods, together with the substantially built and well arranged mansion and offices, capital stabling and coach houses, recently erected, entrance lodges, cottage, dog kennels, etc."
The residence is placed in the centre of a beautifully timbered park, and is approached form either side by a carriage drive through entrance lodges.
Clement had achieved the notable success of the "autumn double" in 1876, when his horse "Rosebery" won the Cambridgeshire and Cesarewitch Handicaps (the first of only three occasions when this has happened).
A newspaper article of the trial gives a sense of the productivity of the walled garden: "Unripe cucumbers had been cut, the onion bed had been knocked about, fruit had been knocked off the trees and the trees pulled from the wall, strawberry plants pulled up and chrysanthemum plants in pots destroyed".
The correspondent reported: At Ashton Gifford House, Mr. Harding’s home, one could hear the chimes or bells of eight churches, all within a radius of five miles.
[69] The same publication reported on Harding's birthday and a meeting of the local foxhunt at Ashton Gifford, two years later: A glorious and typical morning signalised the meet of the South and West Wilts Foxhounds at Ashton Gifford House last December, where they went at the invitation of Mr. T. K. Harding, and in honour of that esteemed gentleman's celebration of his eighty-sixth birthday.
[70] In 1836, along with several other local landowners, the owner of Ashton Gifford House, Wadham Locke, opposed the construction of a railway from Salisbury to Warminster, which would have cut across the estate.
A meeting of the landowners took place: "It was resolved, that the proposed Railroad from Salisbury to Warminster appeared to be wholly uncalled for by the Traffic of either of those places, or of the intermediate district, and that such an undertaking would prove seriously detrimental to the Agricultural Interests of the neighbourhood..."[71] In the face of opposition from the landowners, the London, Exeter, and Falmouth Railway withdrew their plans in June 1836.
[73] The line linking Salisbury and Warminster was built through the estate to the south of Ashton Gifford House, opening on 30 June 1856.
[80] The estate included a bailiff's house, two lodges and two additional cottages and was described as an attractive gentleman's residence.
The proximity of Codford station (on the Great Western Railway line) and the post and telegraph office are highlighted in the advertisement for sale.
[81][82] In 1928 the house was bought by a local farmer, Mr Dowding (of Smallbrook Farm, Warminster) who had speculated in property in the past for £3,100.
The Georgian portion of the house had, at this time, additional chimney stacks: two on the eastern and two on the western outer walls, servicing the upper floors of the property.
[91] The 1933 Wyle Valley Hunt Ball was held at Ashton Gifford House, and was covered by the society papers.
[96] Around 1942 the British artist Keith Vaughan was stationed with the Royal Pioneer Corps in Codford, and painted "The Wall at Ashton Gifford" (now in the possession of Manchester Art Gallery).
Vaughan described the garden as an "oceanic surging of tangled nettles", with "waist high grass", the wall covered in a "jungle of weed and ivy".
[99] There was a fire at Ashton Gifford House during the late 1940s which partially destroyed the Victorian era service wing of the property.
In 1969 planning permission was granted to Harrods Estate Offices to convert the house into three separate flats, which appears not to have been acted upon.
In 1992 Ashton Gifford House was sold, and planning permission was granted to convert it back to a private residence.
