The West on a roll

Three separate homes offer endless opportunities to make the West Country dream come true

- Penny Churchill

IT’S been a very good year for sales of country houses and estates in the West Country and, according to Oliver Custance Baker of Strutt & Parker in Exeter (01392 215631), it’s not finished yet, as he kicks off his autumn campaign with the launch onto the market of two exceptional, but quite different country properties.

For sale at a guide price of £3 million, Plymtree Manor is an elegant, Grade II*listed, William and Mary house set in just over 8½ acres of formal and informal gardens, orchard and paddocks on the edge of the rural village of Plymtree, 3½ miles south of Cullompton and 12 miles north-east of Exeter. According to its listing, the house, then known as Hayne House, was built in the early 18th century for the Harward family, partly rebuilt and enlarged ‘in the same style’ in the late 19th century by its then owner, Mr Leon, and renovated in 1987 by its current owners, who bought it in 1985. Its early-18thcentury frontage is deemed ‘very impressive and most unusual for Devon’.

For more than 300 years, Hayne House was the family seat of the Harwards, the best-known member of which was the Revd Charles Harward, an Anglican priest who was born there in August 1723 and died there, aged 78, in July 1802. Harward was a sporting parson and a keen farmer, although much of his time was spent at the Court of George III, where he acted as chaplain to the Princess of Wales and tutor to the children of many important courtiers.