about Nibley House
The House Today
Nibley House is a Grade II listed manor house lying directly on the Cotswold Way in the quiet village of North Nibley, Gloucestershire: a high position with stunning views across to nearby Stinchcombe Hill, and sky-filling sunsets over Wales.
Surrounding the manor house are 2.5 acres of flower-filled gardens and 200 acres of hilly farmland and woods, liberally scattered with cows, sheep and horses (with many lambs and foals during the year).
Today, it is a working farm, stud, children's nursery and venue for celebrations and conferences; as well as bed-and-breakfast accommodation and camping site. All this is owned and run by the Eley family, who are exemplars of diversification.
For their visitors, though, it is simply a place to unwind: a (reasonably-priced) luxury in a particularly pressured time.
North Nibley is an easy drive for the Badminton Horse Trials, the Cheltenham Festival, Slimbridge Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and Westonbirt Arboretum; a short distance to the shopping centres of Stroud, Thornbury and Cribbs Causeway; and perfectly sited for day trips to the cathedral cities of Bristol, Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester. Wales, too, is just 25 miles away, over the Severn Bridge.
Nibley House History
The House was first built in the early 17th century for John Smythe, who was steward to the Berkeley family of Berkeley Castle, and a prime mover of the Virginia settlement in America.
No-one seems to know why parts of the house were rebuilt in the 18th century, though it may simply have been for reasons of social/architectural vanity. The staircases are still fine examples of Jacobean joinery: both the main staircases and the two back staircases.
In WWII, when John Eley was a boy, Italian prisoners-of-war were housed at Nibley House, much to his fascination: you can ask him about his memories of that time.
Tyndale Monument
Wherever you are on the farm, you can see the Tyndale monument on Nibley Knoll. This was built in 1866 to commemorate William Tyndale, said to have been born in North Nibley.
He was rewarded for translating the New Testament into Early Modern English in the 16th century by being tried for heresy, strangled and burned at the stake in Flanders. I feel there is probably a moral in there somewhere.
by Penelope Else
The Battle of Nibley Green
In 1470 the heirs of the 5th Baron Berkeley (Thomas Talbot and William Berkeley) fought on Nibley Green (on the edges of Nibley House Farm), for the considerable inheritance of Berkeley Castle.
It had been Talbot's challenge, with the rule that they could only fight with soldiers created from their own tenants (Tweedledee and Tweedledum are coming strongly to mind), but Berkeley cheated by immediately employing a great many expert archers from the Forest of Dean. He, not surprisingly, won, and proceeded to sack Talbot's manor in Wotton-under-edge.