The canal brings opportunity and pressure
The Wey and Arun Junction Canal opened in 1816 along the eastern side of the estate. It carried coal, grain, timber and building materials through the district. Ifold adjoined the waterway for about three miles, and John Napper became chairman and principal shareholder of the canal company.
The Guildford to Horsham railway opened in 1865 and offered faster transport. Canal traffic fell, John Napper applied to wind up the company in 1867, and the waterway closed officially in 1871. The decline reduced expected income and increased financial pressure on the estate. Yet life at Ifold still drew the workforce together. At the 1874 harvest festival John and Anne Napper entertained tenants, servants and labourers with dinner, sports, music and dancing in the park.
John died in 1879 and Anne in 1880. Trustees then managed the indebted estate through Chancery proceedings, the legal process needed to settle its ownership and finances. Plaistow School was protected from the sale by a court order in 1884.
The Constables renew the estate
Lionel Leslie Constable and his wife Emily arrived as tenants around 1887 or 1888 and purchased Ifold in 1898. Family life and estate work returned to the house. Garden parties and sporting events brought neighbours into the park, while gardeners, gamekeepers and farm workers maintained the grounds.
Emily’s family friendship with the architect Rowland Plumbe explains his involvement in nearby Loxwood. Lionel donated a site from the Ifold Estate for Loxwood’s new church, a grand bazaar at Ifold helped raise funds, Plumbe designed the building and local builder Henry Spooner led the work. The church opened in 1901. During the First World War Basil Constable was killed, his brother Lionel George was badly wounded and their sister Olivia served with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, providing wartime nursing support.
Irish Wolfhounds make Ifold famous
Ralph and Madeline Montagu Scott acquired Ifold in 1920 and turned its park and woods into the setting for one of the best-known Irish Wolfhound kennels of the decade. Grass runs, brick kennels and stables housed the hounds, while the estate gave them room for sustained exercise. Between thirty and fifty dogs were often kept, with as many as sixty-nine recorded.
The “of Ifold” name soon appeared in show reports and pedigrees. Patrick of Ifold became a champion and featured in the Kennel Gazette in 1924, while Torna, Lupin and other hounds won at leading shows. Dogs from the kennel contributed to breeding lines in Britain and overseas, making Ifold known far beyond Sussex.
The estate also joined an ambitious pig-breeding venture promoted by the motor-industry entrepreneur S. F. Edge, who advocated large-scale open-air farming. Ifold Herds bought valuable stock, won awards and planned overseas expansion. Swine fever reached the herd in March 1925, killing 134 pigs within a month and affecting the remaining animals. Ralph Montagu Scott filed for bankruptcy later that year. Livestock and equipment were dispersed, and an auction in 1931 marked the end of Ifold as a single country estate.
The estate becomes a plotland village
Land agents divided the estate into woodland plots, parkland acres and larger smallholdings during the early 1930s. This began Ifold’s plotland period: many London families bought affordable land by instalments and created rural retreats. The estate roads supplied the framework. The Drive remained the main approach, Pine Walk became The Ride, and Chalk Road preserved the service entrance.
The experience of these first settlers was later recorded by C. H. Bayley in his local history Ifold, Loxwood & Plaistow: Forgotten Border Villages. Bayley’s family first visited in January 1934 after seeing a newspaper advertisement. They arrived from south-west London to find snow across the park and great oaks rising among the plots. Woodland plots cost about £15, while parkland was advertised at around £50 an acre. Purchasers brought sheds, tools and salvaged materials, drew water from wells and used paraffin while building bungalows at weekends.
Ifold House was demolished in 1936. Its doors, bricks, timber and fittings were sold and reused in new homes, so parts of the mansion survived within the settlement replacing it. The park, walled garden, pond and estate cottages remained around the new plots. Shared work on roads, drainage and water began to turn separate purchases into a community.
War makes the settlement permanent
The Second World War accelerated the move from weekend retreat to permanent home. Petrol rationing and bombing brought evacuees and plot owners into the countryside for longer periods. Bayley later remembered the wooded walk from Loxwood as a welcome release from wartime London. Sheds, garages, chalets and early bungalows became year-round dwellings.
Land near Loxwoodhills Pond produced linseed, the Women’s Land Army supported local farming and gardens supplied food. A manned searchlight battery stood near Plaistow Road. Military vehicles used the private roads, and army explosives practice damaged a canal lock near Devil’s Hole Bridge. By 1945 Ifold had a larger settled population ready to organise the next stage of village life.
Residents build the modern village
After the war the Ifold Freeholders Residents Association coordinated subscriptions, road repairs and negotiations with public authorities. Residents filled potholes with hoggin, a compacted mixture of gravel, sand and clay, and secured £1,900 compensation for damage caused by wartime military traffic. Weekly whist drives, gardening events and fêtes raised money for the community centre later known as Kelsey Hall. It became the setting for meetings, worship, flower shows, classes, plays and village celebrations.
Mains water reached Ifold around 1953, followed by electricity, telephones and sewerage. Neighbours and local craftsmen helped replace temporary buildings with permanent houses. A new Kelsey Hall opened in 1978, expressing decades of collective effort.
Modern Ifold still follows the country estate beneath it. The Drive, The Ride and Chalk Road preserve old approaches; Loxwoodhills Pond recalls the lake; mature oaks retain the parkland character; and the Lodge, Gatehouse, Keepers Cottage, Ifold Cottage and the walled garden preserve the working world of the mansion. Ifold’s development forms one continuous story: a medieval farmstead became a manor, the manor grew into a great estate, and the estate became a woodland village built through the work of its residents.
