DESCRIBED by its previous long-time owner Sir Christopher Ondaatje as ‘the most beautiful spot on earth’, magical, Grade II-listed Glenthorne House at Countisbury, near Lynton, Devon, occupies a spectacular coastal location where Exmoor meets the sea on the north Devon/west Somerset border, with panoramic views over the Bristol Channel towards Lynmouth, Porlock Bay and Wales. For sale through the Exeter office of Savills (01392 455743) at a guide price of £7 million, the imposing stone house— an intriguing mix of Georgian and Victorian Gothic with a dash of Tudor—stands in 77 acres of deep combes and ancient woodland that run down to the shore, in sharp contrast to the heather moors of Exmoor at the top of the cliffs and the rocky beaches at the bottom. The site on which the house stands is reputedly the only piece of flat land between Porlock and Lynmouth.
The original Glenthorne estate was created by the Revd Walter Stevenson Halliday, the son of a Scottish naval surgeon and banker who made a fortune during the Napoleonic wars and died in 1829. Having inherited his father’s fortune, he set out to invest in a country estate and eventually settled on Countisbury, where he gradually bought the entire parish, some 7,000 acres in all.
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