Ashton Gifford House - Ashton Gifford House As A School

Ashton Gifford House As A School

In 1940 Greenways Preparatory School was evacuated from Bognor Regis, Sussex to Ashton Gifford House, and the property became a school. The poet Adrian Mitchell attending the school (which was run by Vivien Hancock, a friend of his mother) during the 1940s. The poet Siegfried Sassoon's son, George, also attended Greenways in the mid-1940s. The school was a conveniently short distance from Heytesbury, where Sassoon lived. Siegried Sassoon was a close friend of Vivien Hancock (giving her a present of a horse when her own died). Sassoon's wife, Hester, accused Sassoon and Hancock of being "too close" in 1945, and Vivien Hancock eventually threatened legal action against her. Vivien's own son, Anthony, was killed (aged 21) in 1945 on the Western Front in France. When Vivien Hancock needed money to purchase the school outright, it was Sassoon who lent her the £8,000 she required (and who then waived the low rate of interest when Vivien Hancock had difficulty meeting it). The politician and author Ferdinand Mount was briefly a student at Greenways in the 1950s.

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 the Manchester Art Gallery). The walled garden at Ashton Gifford were painted in "The Garden at Ashton Gifford" (1944) and "Tree felling at Ashton Gifford" (1942–43). 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". Keith Vaughan's "The Working Party", drawn in 1942, has also been tentatively set at Ashton Gifford.

There was a fire at Ashton Gifford House during the late 1940s which partially destroyed the Victorian era service wing of the property. Vivien Hancock blamed this on an "electrical fault", though this has been disputed. Greenaways School remained in possession until the late 1960s, when the school closed.

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. By August of the same year the property was acquired by Mr. R. S. Ferrand, who renovated the house as a single family dwelling. The work was completed in 1972. In the late 1970s the house was occupied by S Cardale. In 1982, however, Ashton Gifford House became a school for boys with behavioural problems (trading as Ashton Gifford School in the 1980s). This finally closed in 1989, and ownership was transferred to a charitable trust.