Vineyards and wineries in Bedfordshire

A Cistercian abbey’s vineyard, replanted and tended by volunteers.

Warden Abbey was one of seven Cistercian monasteries to cultivate vines in England and Wales. Its monks, whose order sought a return to manual labour and especially to farm work, planted a Great Vineyard and an adjoining Little Vineyard near Old Warden, probably before the end of the 12th century, among holdings that also took in orchards, fishponds and beehives.

There was no evidence of grape-growing on the site after the abbey was surrendered to the Crown in 1537 until Lady Whitbread replanted part of the Little Vineyard in 1986, and the Whitbread family made wine there until their final vintage in 2008. Since 2010 Warden Abbey has been leased by Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity and run as a not-for-profit community project: volunteers tend the vines all year, and the wine is made off-site, at Halfpenny Green near Stourbridge.

Hungerhill Farm took its label’s name from the ground. Planting the first vines in 2020, on a steep, south-facing hill of clay-rich soil, the grower turned up seashells, ammonites and oyster shells — evidence, the vineyard says, of a warm, shallow sea 150 million years ago. The find named its label, Merstone: the French mer, and the old name for the nearby village of Marston.

Warden Abbey lies between Old Warden and Cardington, south-east of Bedford; Hungerhill is near Marston Moretaine, to the south-west.