CLIFTON IBBETT
July 1937 — May 2021
Clifton Ibbett, who died on May 6 aged 83, was a former High Sheriff of Bedfordshire (2004), a successful businessman and a modest philanthropist who backed numerous good causes all over the county.
He will be remembered for setting up the Anjulita Court care home in North Bedfordshire and the Kempston based Road Victims Trust – the first named after his two daughters who both died in a motor car accident.
The North Bedfordshire Day Care Hospice Gladys Ibbett House is named after his mother
A devoted Christian, Clifton had strong links to the Kempston East Methodist Church, where his father Claude used to preach, and to All Saints Milton Ernest, the village where he lived for most of his life and where for many years he ran the Bedfordia group of companies, first with his father and then with his son, John.
He was born in Kempston in July 1937 and went to the ‘Inky’ and then onto to Bedford School. He admitted he was no academic and he cut a deal with his father that if he passed five ‘O’ levels he could leave at 16 which he duly did.
It was the first of a number of inspired deals he was to undertake throughout his career.
He always wanted to be a farmer and soon after leaving school he was rearing his own pigs.
Even at agricultural college, he would spend much of his time running one of the farms which his father, originally a builder, had started to buy up. The first of them was at Village Farm in Milton Ernest.
Claude saw farms as an agricultural investment with other benefits. There was often gravel underground and there were often houses to be built on top.
Bedfordia expanded and developed housing in growing areas in the county such as Oakley. The company proved to be ahead of its time in the early 1990s when it consulted on plans to build a new estate on the outskirts of Milton Ernest together with a golf course and railway station.
It was dropped after strong local opposition but would it have been a different story today? More recently the company was behind one of the major bids to develop a new community in the Twinwoods area of Clapham.
It also ventured into a christian travel agency, BMW motor franchises and Biogen.
Even beyond his retirement Clifton like nothing better than driving a combine harvester for Bedfordia.
Clifton along with his second wife Sheila organised the pensioners lunch club in the former sheep shed alongside Milton House.
In 2015 Clifton received an OBE, seen above with his close family, John Ibbett, Margaret Ibbett and Jennifer, daughter of the late Sheila Ibbett.at Buckingham Palace.
Aged 70 he went on the famous coast to coast walk from St Bedes to Robin Hood Bay – 192 miles which he completed with his slightly older cousin Graham Tucker in 19 days.
In recent years and in failing health he moved with his third wife Margaret to a house near Anjulita Court, Bedford.
Clifton was unassuming, generous to a tee and a friend to many in all walks of life.
Commenting on the sad news The Reverend Peter Kay, Vicar at All Saints, Milton Ernest: “We are all going to miss Clifton hugely at All Saints – among his many wonderful qualities he was gracious, kind and inspiring company. The Christian confidence is that death is not the end, so although we’re grieving now we’re doing so with ultimate hope in our hearts.”
