THE early spring campaign in the West Country kicks off in style next week, with the launch onto the market of one of Dartmoor’s most historic and picturesque demesnes, the 783-acre Leighon estate at Manaton, on the eastern edge of the Dartmoor National Park, which comes with a guide price of £4.5 million through the Exeter office of Knight Frank (01362 423111). The estate stands in a magical wooded valley traversed by the Becka Brook, in the lee of one of Dartmoor’s most striking landmarks, the great granite mass of Hound Tor.
People have lived and worked in this part of Devon since at least the 1st century BC, when the Romans founded tin mines on the high moor around North Bovey and Manaton. During the Middle Ages, a combination of population growth and mild weather encouraged livestock farmers to move higher up onto the moor. With wild animals roaming the open tops, precious farm animals were housed indoors, livestock at one end of the dwelling and families at the other. This led to the creation of the Devon longhouse, at least four of which were found in the remains of a medieval village excavated at Hound Tor in the 1960s.
The once much larger Leighon estate is steeped in history, and local records trace the occupancy of the estate and its now-ruined Greator Farm from at least the 13th century. The Norsworthy family are believed to have lived at Leighon from the 1500s until the late 1800s, when the Revd R. R. Wolfe bought the estate and transformed a former Devon longhouse into the substantial manor farmhouse seen today.
Denne historien er fra March 17, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 17, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
