Ickwell Bury

[1] In 1898, Ickwell Bury was the property of John Edmund Audley Harvey DL JP and was described as "a mansion of red brick, in the Queen Anne style, standing in a park and woodlands of about five hundred acres, approached by an avenue of trees about a mile in length".

[2] The school closed in 1937, and soon afterwards most of the empty house was destroyed in a fire, though a 17th-century wing with its Thomas Tompion clock were saved.

The property was then bought by Colonel George Hayward Wells, chairman of the brewery Charles Wells, who rebuilt the house on a smaller scale and on his death left the Ickwell Bury estate to the Bedford Charity to be used by Bedford School, his own old school.

It was especially busy during the summer months where all the rooms were open and tents covered the grounds around the main house.

In a wood between Ickwell Bury and Northill church is an ancient earthwork, with a high bank on the east side, enclosing long pools which are thought to have been fish ponds for the monks of a college at Northill or for the priory of Ickwell Bury.