A dazzling partridge day on Exmoor

The landscape at Molland would still be familiar to Lorna Doone, though now lively partridges soar over its V-shaped valleys

- RORY KNIGHT BRUCE

When 20th-century literary critic John Gross, once described as ‘The best read man in Britain’, was asked towards the end of his life where the hero of Lorna Doone went to school, he fell uncustomarily silent. The answer, of course, known to every West Country schoolboy and girl, was Blundell’s in Tiverton, and nowhere would RD Blackmore’s epic Exmoor landscape be so little changed in 150 years than on the Molland estate, just north of South Molton.

Renowned over the years as a destination high-bird shoot, Molland, with more than 6,000 acres and a welcoming pub, the London Inn, a short walk from the main house, has long appealed to serious sportsmen. Part of the attraction is the unique stillness and landscape of the place, the privacy and majestic sighting of stags and hinds, and the small market towns of Dulverton, Dunster and seaside Porlock, where Coleridge wrote The Ancient Mariner.

To this may now be added the top class accommodation and hospitality of Molland House, now under the umbrella of Angus Barnes’s well-regarded Loyton Sporting portfolio. This has come about chiefly through Barnes’s fellow director, Piers Vaux – another hunting man steeped in Exmoor lore – who has long looked after Molland’s sporting interests.