Fonthill Gifford is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, to the north of the Nadder valley, west of Salisbury.
History
thumb|left|Detail from Andrews’ and Dury's Map of Wiltshire, 1773
The name of the village and parish derives from the Giffard family, landowners, beginning with Berenger Giffard who was lord in 1086. The Marvyn family were lords of the manor from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Among them were Sir John Marvyn (c.1503–1566), MP and High Sheriff, who purchased the adjoining Compton Bassett manor; and his son James (1529–1611), also MP.
Fonthill then passed by marriage to George Tuchet, later Earl of Castlehaven. and in the next year the estate was granted by the king to Baron Cottington, ambassador and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Apart from an interruption during the Civil War the estate continued with the Cottingtons until sold to William Beckford, future Lord Mayor of London, in 1745. His son, also William, built the grandiose Fonthill Abbey but was obliged to sell the estate in 1823, after which it was broken up.
In 1952, John Morrison (later Baron Margadale) began to breed racehorses at 19th-century stables and breeding continues under Alastair, 3rd Baron. The stud has produced winners of several major races: the Nassau Stakes (Spree, 1963); the Oaks (Juliette Marny, 1975 and Scintillate, 1979); and the St Leger (Julio Mariner, 1978).
Geography
Most dwellings, and the parish church, are along or near the minor road between Tisbury and Hindon. Greenwich hamlet lies north of the village. Woodland known as Fonthill Abbey Wood covers much of the south of the parish.
Churches
The Church of England parish church of Holy Trinity was built in 1864–66 to designs by the Gothic Revival architect T.H. Wyatt and is Grade II* listed. Pevsner wrote that the church: "groups extremely picturesquely from the E, with its NE tower with a spire rising between pyramid pinnacles, an apse, and a round turret to its N." Today the church is part of the Nadder Valley Team Ministry.
thumb|The 18th-century church
Wyatt's church replaced a neoclassical church built in 1747–49 for Alderman Beckford, near the parish boundary where the Hindon – Tisbury and Fonthill Bishop – Semley roads cross. and may have used the services of Inigo Jones.
Around 1715, Cottington put a classical façade on the house and removed the formal gardens. Between 1745 and 1753 William Beckford re-aligned the estate, making the main entrances to the north and the south. He added a five-arched bridge over the lake, placed a folly on the high ground to the west of the house and demolished the old parish church. This house was inherited in 1770 by Beckford's son, William Thomas Beckford, who extended the lake and built grottoes on the lakeside.
In the 1790s Beckford began to build Fonthill Abbey, on high ground a mile to the southwest, and he had parts of the house demolished to provide building material. The west portion of the house survived, becoming known as The Pavilion, and was bought around 1829 by James Morrison, the millionaire draper and railway investor, who renamed it as Fonthill House. In 1972 it was replaced by a smaller house, still the seat of the Morrison family. As of 2013 the estate amounted to .
thumb|Fonthill House in 2007
Fonthill Abbey
Fonthill Abbey was an enormous mansion southwest of the village, in the style of a medieval abbey. Built by William Beckford between 1796 and 1813, the rest of the building was damaged by the collapse of the main tower in 1825, and almost wholly demolished by 1845; a habitable fragment remains. The site is marked on maps as Old Fonthill Abbey.
The western part of Beckford's estate was later acquired by the 2nd Marquess of Westminster, who had a new Fonthill Abbey built in 1846-52 (Pevsner) or 1856-59 (VCH),