IN the late spring of 1796, the Revd John Swete, of Oxton House, near Exeter, set off on a tour of the north coast of Devon. A tireless traveller in the county and an admirer of the Picturesque, the journal of this wealthy clergyman notes his encounter near the village of Hartland with a Gothic lodge ‘at the opening of a narrow valley, surrounded by trees, and overrun with ivy’. Turning into the valley on a newly created drive, he descended through woodland, accompanied by a ‘little gurgling trout stream’, and emerged from the trees to see a full view of the ‘noble seat’ of Hartland Abbey. ‘The pile had an elegant and magnificent appearance, and having assumed to itself the Gothic style of architecture, seemed to be congruous in all its parts.’
He settled down to draw the house from the east and west, views that remain little changed to day. The setting, he enthused, was ‘uncommonly picturesque’ with ‘rising hills, richly overspread with woods’ and the valley between them filled by the house as if ‘absolutely to block it up’. Continuing on: ‘I found that the stream had risen into some importance, and the valley become more beautiful, as in approaching towards the sea, it spread itself out.’ As a crowning flourish, the parish church tower ‘finely ornamented with pinnacles and fretwork’ commanded the whole valley.
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