In Good Company

The picturesque houses of the First Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Kingsley and Sir Stanley Spencer still hold strong appeal

MYSTERY abounds on Dartmoor, where Richard Addington of Jackson-Stops (01392 214222) is handling the sale of picturesque Burrator House at Sheepstor, near Yelverton, Devon, which sits in 34 acres of gardens, grounds and woodland among the iconic tors of west Dartmoor, 9½ miles from Tavistock and 12½ miles from Plymouth city centre.

He quotes a guide price of £2 million for the solid, 19th-century main house, built of rendered-stone walls under a pitched slate roof, and its surrounding farmstead, comprising three holiday lets, traditional farm buildings and a patchwork of small hedge- and wall-bound fields running up to the Burrator Reservoir.

Once part of the historic Roborough estate, Burrator House has been carefully maintained by its present owners, whose family home it has been for some 25 years. The interior is light and bright, with three main reception rooms boasting impressive fireplaces, bay windows with shutters,high ceilings, wood-burning stoves and views over the delightful grounds. A pleasant farmhouse kitchen, floored with slate flagstones, links to a secondary sitting room with doors leading to a walled courtyard. A dog-leg staircase leads to a galleried landing and eight bedrooms in all.

The holiday lets have not been intensively managed and offer the potential to generate a useful income. What mystery there is at Burrator surrounds the commemorative plaque on the outer wall of the house, which reads ‘Sir James Brooke KCB LLD The First Rajah of Sarawak retired to this house in 1861 which became his home until he died 11th June 1868’. What, I wondered, brought Sir James Brooke—the soldier and adventurer who was born in India, founded the Kingdom of Sarawak in Borneo and ruled as the first White Rajah of Sarawak from 1841 until his death in 1868—to this remote part of Devon?