History

The 'Kiftsgate Hundred' was the ancient area surrounding Chipping Campden. Even today the 'Kiftsgate Hundred' stone, where the elders met to administer justice, stands in Weston Park Wood above Chipping Campden. Included in the Hundred was Mickleton called Mycclantune meaning 'big village'.

Portico, pre 1918

In about 1750 the poet and landscape gardener William Shenstone stayed at Mickleton Manor, and it was he who inspired the planting of the elm avenue which used to run between Kiftsgate Court and Mickleton Manor - now alas, destroyed by the elm beetle, along with countless other elms between 1972 and 1976. The line of Scotch firs silhouetted against the sky between Kiftsgate and the Warwickshire boundry was also due to Shenstone's imaginative foresight, as were the limes bordering the front drive - although the house had not been thought of then, During the past fifty years most of these enormous trees have fallen. To replace them for future generations a row of six Tilia petiolaris has been planted.

Kiftsgate Court was built in 1887-91 by Sydney Graves Hamilton who owned the large manor house in Mickleton, An ancestor of his, Walwyn Graves (1744-1813), had built a Georgian front with a high portico on to Mickleton Manor, and it was this facade which was moved bodily up to the new site on Glyde Hill to become Kiftsgate Court. A special light railway was constructed up the elm avenue to do this and the records state that it was 'all to be done in the best manner possible and none but the very best material used'. Unfortunately a large Victorian back was built behind the Georgian facade.

My grandparents Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Muir, bought Kiftsgate in 1918 and at this time considerable internal alterations were made. A large ballroom occupying the entire wing on the first floor behind the portico was divided into bedrooms, Miss Hamilton, who owned Mickleton Manor, told my mother that the sprung floor of the ballroom was one of the most expensive items in the building of Kiftsgate. In 1954 my grandparents moved to the Front Lodge and my parents came to live at Kiftsgate.

They pulled down three sides of a courtyard containing sixteen rooms which is now the gravelled forecourt used for parking coaches. In 1974 my mother moved to the Front Lodge leaving Kiftsgate empty until 1981. My husband and I then undertook major modernisation to the house, making our home in the central part, and a separate flat and tea-room. Kiftsgate remains a family home for us and our children, as originally intended by my grandparents.

Heather Muir

The garden at Kiftsgate up to 1920 consisted of the paved formal garden in front of the portico, beyond which was a grass field with wooded banks. The first thing my grandmother did was to make a lawn with steps leading to it from the formal paved garden, This was quickly followed by taking in what is now the Yellow Border. and the Rose Border; the connecting bridge was built and the yew and copper beech hedges planted. I feel many people would have thought they had achieved enough but in 1930 the steep bank was tackled, and the summer house with steps either side down to the lower garden was built.

The hard tennis court was made in the thirties and the yew hedge was planted around it at the same time. During the war the tennis court, which required continual watering and upkeep, was allowed to become derelict and in 1955 there was a wonderful display of seedling roses, Scotch firs, etc. growing on it, which my grandmother was very grieved to see go, when it was resurfaced.

In making the garden at Kiftsgate there is no doubt that Heather Muir was greatly helped and inspired by her lifelong friend Major Johnson, who created the garden next door at Hidcote Manor. The flower picture in the tea-room at Hidcote was painted directly on the wall at Kiftsgate by Major Johnson and moved to Hidcote in 1981 by the National Trust.

Kiftsgate first became well known to the gardening public after Mr. Graham S. Thomas's article in the RHS journal, May 1951. One of the paragraphs about the garden in this states 'I regard this as the finest piece of skilled colour work that it has been my pleasure to see.'

In April 1954 the magazine Gardening had an illustration of the Yellow Border on its cover and inside an article by A.G.L. Hellyer. I have taken the following quotation from this: 'Each rose bush has grown to its maximum proportions and to the conventional gardener these proportions will come as a revelation. Yet despite the luxuriance of Kiftsgate it is a garden upon which an extremely firm hand and a very discerning eye have been kept. There is nothing of the wilderness here and one is immediately conscious that everything is in its place and is there for a definite purpose. That purpose is to produce a series of pictures in colour that are rich but never glaring. They are the colours I associate with fine tapestry.'

I continue to include these extracts from articles written over forty years ago as the ideas expressed are still those that guide our planting today.