Fonthill Gifford

Fonthill Gifford is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, to the north of the Nadder valley, 14mi west of Salisbury.HistoryThe name of the village and parish derives from the Giffard family, landowners, beginning with Berenger Giffard who was lord in 1086.The parish had 70 taxpayers in 1377. From the 16th century until the 20th, most of the population were employed by the parish's wealthy households; 493 were recorded at the 1801 census, and numbers declined since then, reaching a new low of 102 in 2011.In 1944, the 55th Armored Infantry Battalion of 11th Armored Division of the United States Army trained for two months on Salisbury Plain and was encamped at Fonthill New Abbey and in Fonthill Park. In 2004 a plaque was added to the war memorial at Tisbury in their memory.In 1952, John Morrison (later Baron Margadale) began to breed racehorses at 19th-century stables to the east of the village. His son James, 2nd Baron took over the Fonthill Stud in 1972, and breeding continues under Alastair, 3rd Baron. The stud has produced winners of several classic races: the Nassau Stakes (Spree, 1963); the Oaks (Juliette Marny, 1975 and Scintillate, 1979); and the St Leger (Julio Mariner, 1978).