A gorgeous Devon home owned by a great novelist and a Hollywood star, set in one of Britain's most unusual seaside villages... and it even has a bargain price tag

The Old Rectory at Clovellly, Devon.

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

published 7 November 2024

Devon is a big county, but a small world or, rather, a lot of small worlds where everyone knows everyone else. Just such a world is the 4,600-acre Clovelly estate in north Devon, 11 miles from Bideford and 20 miles from Barnstaple, which has been owned by only three families since the 13th century.

It includes the picturesque seaside village of Clovelly and its surrounding land, comprising some 80 cottages, two chapels, two hotels and a 14th-century harbour, as well as several hundred acres of amenity woodland and five farms, all now owned by John Rous, who inherited the estate, aged 33, in 1983. Historically, among Clovelly’s most influential owners was Mr Rous’s mother’s great-aunt Christine Hamlyn, who owned Clovelly from 1884–1936 and spent her husband’s fortune renovating the estate.

It was a different story on the run-up to the recession of the late 1980s, as Mr Rous revealed in an interview with Country Life in 2021: ‘When I started, it was quite a challenge. The trustees had no option but to sell off outlying farms in order to fund investment in the remaining farms. It was a very difficult time.’ Thereafter, Mr Rous set out to increase the estate’s tourist income by sustained long-term investment in the village, which is now a thriving international tourist destination.

In the late 1980s, the decision was taken to sell The Old Rectory in Higher Clovelly, a handsome Georgian house set in 1¾ acres of gardens in a private woodland setting at the heart of the estate, half a mile inland from the harbour village. The former rectory had been the childhood home of the novelist Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, who lived there as a child from 1831–36 when his father, the Revd Charles Kingsley, served first as senior curate and then as rector. His novel Westward Ho! (1855), set initially in Bideford, is said to have stimulated interest in the area generally, Clovelly in particular, and also inspired the name of the eponymous seaside village.

In 1989, a Country Life advertisement for The Old Rectory caught the eye of the actor Joss Ackland and his wife, Rosemary, who bought it that same year. Already a seasoned Shakespearean actor, Ackland, then aged 61, had recently hit the big time following stellar performances as a Mafia godfather in the 1987 film The Sicilian, as Sir Jock Delves Broughton in White Mischief the same year. By the time he saw Clovelly he had not long finished shooting Lethal Weapon 2 with Mel Gibson and Patsy Kensit, in which he played a corrupt and murderous South African diplomat. How better to relax after that stress than to head for the coast of North Devon?

Not that relaxing was Ackland’s style. A self-confessed workaholic, he took on more than 130 film, radio and television roles in his career, as well as promotional videos for Clovelly, where he was a much-loved local figure. The couple’s 51-year marriage was a happy one despite great personal tragedy, which saw Ackland caring for his wife at home when she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. She died in there in 2002.

Still grieving, he carried on alone at his beloved Old Rectory, which Country Life contributor Rory Knight Bruce, visiting in June 2010, likened to ‘the eyrie of an albatross who has come to rest. He is surrounded by books, several striking John Bratby paintings and his desk, like Balzac’s at his home in Paris, allows him to face outwards with a large garden window behind… even today Ackland never forgets a part, place or person he has known’.

Joss Ackland died at Clovelly, aged 95, on November 19, 2023, surrounded by family members: at that point, they numbered six surviving children and 34 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the family has put the much-loved family home on the market. Florence Biss of Knight Frank in Exeter is handling the sale of a house which needs ‘needs a fair amount of work’.

Looking at the pictures that might be something of an understatement, but it's absolutely liveable, and is priced keenly at £1.4 million to give the buyer plenty of scope to get things done.

Built on three floors over a basement with a white-painted and rendered exterior under a slate roof, the four-square, 5,190sq ft, 19th-century house is arranged on an east-west axis with the rear facing east towards the sea.

The ground floor provides three good-sized reception rooms, with the sitting and dining rooms interconnecting to create one large family room if needed. A large games room in the basement is heated by a wood-burning stove and well lit by natural light flowing in through wide, semi-circular windows.

The house offers eight double bedrooms and two bathrooms laid out over two floors, all of which enjoy views over the grounds, with five looking out towards the coast. An eight-person lift, big enough for a large wheelchair, connects all three floors.

The house sits centrally within its grounds, which consist of level lawns that blend into mature woodland — a rich mix of broadleaf and evergreen native species concealing a charming timber summer house.