Ickwell Bury

Ickwell Bury was first built by John Harvey in 1683 near the site of an older manor house. The Harvey family continued to own the house until 1925, although from 1900 it had housed Horton Preparatory School.

In 1898, Ickwell Bury was the property of John Edmund Audley Harvey 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.”

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, and for a number of years the house was rented from the school by the Yoga for Health Foundation.

In 1999, Bedford School sold Ickwell Bury and its garden – it is now a private house.

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