The Barrow Court Sale

Clevedon Salerooms is delighted to announce that it has been entrusted with the sale of the contents of Barrow Court, former home of the late technology entrepreneur Iann Barron C.B.E. The auction will be held at Clevedon Salerooms premises on Thursday 1st June 2023.

Few people looking for the quintessential English manor house would expect to find it barely a mile from Bristol Airport. So secluded is the setting of Barrow Court, that even amongst the locals, its story is barely known. Yet, if the curious traveller ventures down the long leafy lane which bears its name that is precisely the scene with which they are rewarded.

The house – Jacobean in appearance but incorporating earlier and later elements – traces its history to a Benedictine nunnery founded on the site in the early 13th century. Converted to a private house following the dissolution of the monasteries, it passed through several hands before in 1881 being bought by the Gibbs family of nearby Tyntesfield, whose influence in this part of North Somerset was comparable to the Rothschilds, their equally wealthy contemporaries, in Buckinghamshire.

It was Henry Gibbs, at the time High Sheriff of Somerset, who embarked on a comprehensive remodelling of the house and garden at the end of the 19th century, including the much-admired parterre and formal gardens by Francis Inigo Thomas, completed in 1897.

The focus of articles in Country Life in 1902 and 1931, Barrow Court took its place among the rollcall of celebrated West Country historic houses before being converted to institutional use whilst still in the ownership of the Gibbs family. In 1976 the house was sold and divided into seven separate dwellings. Iann Barron purchased two of the seven, and then the interconnecting third. An ardent champion of Barrow Court’s history, over many years he undertook a mission to revive the property, lovingly restoring many of its notable features and creating with curatorial flair a wonderland of period furniture and works of art, all of which exude a depth of history and feeling of having always been there. ■ •