The farming method and the Ifold staff
Edge also published practical instructions for the men looking after the pigs. Every animal was to be watched at the trough; sows close to farrowing were separated; feeders had to remain dry; and lameness, coughing, swollen joints, scouring or a poor coat required attention. The method depended on regular inspection and clean sleeping quarters.
At Ifold, company and newspaper records name John Jefferson as manager and Harold Salisbury as a stockman. Advertisements sought experienced agricultural workers for the Ifold Estate at Loxwood. By 1924 buyers representing Ifold Herds and the Ifold Park Estate were attending important pedigree sales in several counties.
1924: pedigree purchases and a Queensland proposal
The 1924 sale reports give the enterprise a more practical face than the prospectus. John Jefferson bought Wessex Saddlebacks and other selected breeding animals, competing with established breeders from Yorkshire, the Midlands and western England. Reports from the Barnwood Lodge dispersal in Gloucestershire and sales in Nottinghamshire named Ifold among the successful purchasers.
The Ifold Herds name also reached Australia. James Walter Potts, formerly principal of Hawkesbury Agricultural College and then living in Brisbane, discussed a settlement scheme with the Queensland government. The proposal was to train young British men before placing them on agricultural holdings, with pedigree stock and organised purchasing and marketing behind them. Australian newspapers reported the negotiations during 1924.
1925: swine fever reaches Ifold
The expansion was followed by a very different series of reports in 1925. Swine fever restrictions applied to Ifold Herds under the Swine Fever Order. On 4 March a sow and ten pigs were found on an adjoining farm about 200 yards from the estate after getting through an open gate.
The case came before Petworth Petty Sessions in April. Police Constable Chesse had seen the animals on the neighbouring holding; Harold Salisbury identified them as Ifold stock; and farm bailiff Walter Nash gave evidence about finding them. Ernest Alfred George Hersey, secretary of Ifold Herds Limited, told the magistrates that the pigs had escaped after a gate was left open.
The court also heard that about 135 pigs had died on the estate within a month. Ifold Herds Limited was fined £4 and ordered to pay £2 16s costs. The Bognor Regis Observer reported the proceedings on 15 April under the headline “Stray Pigs from Prohibited Area”.
1925–26: receivership and bankruptcy
While disease restrictions were affecting the herd, the company was already facing action from one of its investors. On 28 March 1925 Sethna began a debenture-holders’ action against Ifold Herds Limited in the Chancery Division of the High Court, seeking accounts and the appointment of a receiver. Mr Page was appointed receiver on 30 April.
Ralph Montagu Scott filed a bankruptcy petition in December 1925 and a receiving order followed. On 7 January 1926 Richard Tilden Smith wrote from Bombay offering to repay Sethna’s £5,000, less any distribution from the receiver, provided Sethna paid specified costs and sent letters stating that he was satisfied with the company’s conduct.
The bankruptcy proceedings soon reached the estate itself. On 20 July 1926 Winkworth & Company offered Ifold in seven lots, covering about 931 acres. Lot 1 alone contained more than 313 acres around Ifold House, including the mansion, park, pleasure grounds, kitchen garden, farm buildings, woodland, the Lodge and three cottages.
The sale catalogue recorded the agricultural establishment then present at Ifold: cart-horse stabling, cattle yards, a cowhouse for about thirty animals, five brick piggeries, dairy buildings, stores and a concrete silo. A 7,800-gallon tank was supplied by a petrol-paraffin engine and pump.
The London Gazette of 27 July 1926 described Montagu Scott as of 7 Queens Gardens, Hyde Park, and as lately residing at Ifold House and 2 Devonshire Terrace, Hyde Park. His discharge from bankruptcy had been suspended for three years from 29 June.
1927: the receiver leaves Ifold Herds
In January 1927 the court approved the receiver’s final account, discharged Mr Page and ordered the remaining money divided among the debenture holders. The funds were insufficient to repay the debentures in full. Sethna later calculated the distribution attributable to his holding at £781 9s 6d.
The dispute with Tilden Smith continued. Sethna had not carried out the conditions attached to the January 1926 repayment offer, but in December 1927 he issued a further writ claiming £3,508 5s 9d. That litigation would continue after the farming company and the Ifold Estate had begun to separate.
1931: livestock sales and the first building plots
By 1931 the physical dispersal of Ifold was under way. An unreserved sale advertised for 26 June included three cart horses, one hundred Shorthorn and Polled in-calf and bulling heifers, a Shorthorn bull, agricultural machinery, timber and farm equipment. Separate sales continued to dispose of the working contents of the estate.
The same year brought the change that mattered most to the future village. H. W. Brake of Farnborough began marketing former Ifold Estate land as freehold building plots and smallholdings. Parish records describe plots ranging from about one-third of an acre to five acres. The sale layout retained The Drive, The Ride and Chalk Road as principal routes through the divided land.
The ownership pattern was now completely different from that of the country estate. Woodland, former parkland and larger agricultural holdings could be bought separately by families who had no connection with the mansion or its farming businesses.
1933–36: the old estate becomes modern Ifold
After passing through the courts in India, the dispute over Tilden Smith’s repayment offer reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. On 9 October 1933 the committee restored the original judgment dismissing Sethna’s claim because the conditions attached to the offer had not been performed.
By then the transformation at Ifold was visible on the ground. Building materials from Ifold House were advertised for sale in 1933. In January 1934 Connie Bayley first visited after her family saw an advertisement for land. She remembered snow across the former estate and wooden stakes marking individual plots. Woodland plots about seventy-five feet by two hundred feet were offered at around £15, while parkland cost about £50 an acre.
Ifold House still stood while the first plot holders began clearing land and planning weekend buildings. It was demolished in 1936.
This second financial collapse ended differently from the crisis created by the collapse of the Wey and Arun Junction Canal. No new owner restored the whole estate this time. The receivership, bankruptcy and sales broke the land into separate ownership, and the freehold plots offered from 1931 became the starting point for the modern Ifold village.
