Abbey House Gardens

Abbey House dates from the 16th century, built on 13th century foundations, with some evidence of a substantial house on the site as early as the 11th century. It has been extensively renovated and extended since, particularly in Tudor times.

The site is adjacent to Malmesbury Abbey, which was founded in the 7th century and completed in its present form by the 12th century. The house was possibly begun in the 13th century as the dorter (domitory) and reredorter (latrine) of the abbey. In 1539, the abbey was sold by Henry VIII to a local clothier, William Stumpe, who also bought the site and lived in it himself. In 1542, Stumpe or his son James rebuilt the home in the Tudor style; the old section of the house remains mostly unchanged since then. The lower parts of the 13th-century building survive in the undercroft.[1]

The house and its grounds were handed down through the Stumpe family, which by the time of the English Civil War had married into the Ivey family. The house remained in private hands and in the 1920s was bought by Captain Elliot Scott McKirdy, who (with architect Harold Brakspear) enlarged the house to its current size of 12,637 square feet (1,174.0 m²) by adding a nursery wing and servants' quarters, keeping the same exterior style. The building was recorded as Grade I listed in 1949.[1] The house was bought in 1968 by the Deaconess Community of St Andrew, who ran it as a base for parish ministry and as a home for its elderly sisters and guests until 1990.

Walls and arches in the garden incorporate fragments of 12th-century carved stone, re-used from the abbey.[2]

In 1994, Abbey House was bought by Ian and Barbara Pollard, who had previously owned and run Hazelbury Manor, another mansion near Box in Wiltshire. They set about transforming the 5 acres (2.0 ha), and opened the gardens to the public in 1996.

In 1998, a large skeleton was unearthed in the gardens, close to the site of the ruined Lady Chapel of Malmesbury Abbey. The find was featured in the TV archaeology show Meet the Ancestors, whose experts recreated the skeleton and speculated that it was probably a 13th-century monk or abbot who walked with a limp and had a toothache.

In 2001 and increasingly in 2002, the gardens were brought to wider public attention, particularly through the acclamation of Alan Titchmarsh, who devoted an episode of the BBC TV programme Gardeners' World to Abbey House Gardens, broadcast in June 2002. On the week of transmission, the Pollards were featured in that week's edition of Radio Times.

As well as the gardens, the Pollards also became known as 'The Naked Gardeners'. Both Ian and Barbara, particularly Ian, spoke freely of their love of naturism, and were often featured in newspapers and magazines, pictured naked among the foliage of Abbey House.

The couple became, for a short time, the resident gardening experts on ITV's This Morning, but the timing was not good: within a few weeks the show was struck by the sex scandal that engulfed presenter John Leslie.

In August 2005, and again in 2006, Abbey House Gardens hosted what were thought to be the first 'Clothes Optional Days' at a major inland British tourist attraction. Naturists from all over the country flocked to the gardens, and as many as two-thirds of the visitors on those day enjoyed the gardens in the nude. Similar clothing-optional days are held regularly a few times a year. The gardens include over 10,000 different plants.

After Ian Pollard's death in April 2019,[3] Abbey House Gardens was taken over by Ian's son Rufus and his wife Kristen, and so the house and gardens remain in the Pollard family.

• World Naked Gardening Day

• Abbey House Gardens
• Gardens opening for naked walks – BBC News, 19 August 2005