A pavilion, pool and pleasure gardens at this Devon country house 'with not another building in sight'

In 1997, Ebberly House became the first country house in Devon to sell for more than £1 million. By the time I visited in 2010, the guide price was £4 million and I was shown around by Martin Lamb, who, in the course of a 40-year career, sold the property three times. Now, the estate is on the market for £6.95 million with Will Matthews of Knight Frank’s country department and Florence Biss in Exeter.

The hamlet of Ebberly, some two miles north of the village of Roborough, on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw rivers, sits in a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.

In the early 19th century, Henry Hole, a builder and wood-engraver from Liverpool, inherited the estate from his uncle, whose family lived at nearby Combe. In about 1816, Hole rebuilt Ebberly House on the site of an earlier manor house, reputedly to the designs of Thomas Lee of Barnstaple, a pupil of Sir John Soane.

Pevsner’s Devon describes it as an ‘unusual and attractive house’ with distinctive rounded ends that ‘hint at the variety of room shapes inside; a provisional echo of the interest of contemporary architects such as Nash and Soane’. In fact, the quality of the interior design, plasterwork, joinery and intricate architectural detail — all original and unaltered, as its Grade II* listing confirms — is of a standard usually only found in much larger historic houses.

The setting is quite magnificent, with views to the south across Dartmoor and no other building in sight; the darkness at night is total, with not a gleam of light to dull the clear skies.

Mr Lamb’s first sale was in 1991, when, having just joined Knight Frank, he sold it on behalf of John Arkwright, who had lived at Ebberly with his wife and children. The Arkwrights sold to Mr and Mrs Kit Pemberton, who carried out much-needed restoration and, in turn, sold to Henry and Serena Whitbread in 1997. The Whitbread family lived there until 2010, when Mr Lamb, by then with Savills, handled its sale to the present owners.

The Whitbreads carried on where the Pembertons left off, installing a modern heating and electrical system, rebuilding the roof and generally overhauling the house, the Victorian pleasure gardens, the lakes and the woodland.

Image 1 of 3

They also built a heated swimming pool, pavilion and tennis court within the Grade II-listed former walled garden.

The house is immaculate, with Soane’s influence evident in the elegant octagonal entrance hall, the top-lit oval stair hall, with its fine wooden staircase and curved doors, and the pretty, oval drawing room divided into three parts by shallow arches.

Another Soane device is the use of a window placed above an open fireplace, notably in the library and the kitchen.

Image 1 of 5

The main house offers some 11,000sq ft of living space on two main floors, with three additional loft rooms on the second floor.

There are four fine reception rooms, a well-equipped kitchen/breakfast room, domestic offices and wine cellars, a splendid principal bedroom suite, eight further bedrooms and five further bathrooms.

The gardens, originally laid out by Lee, have been significantly improved by the present owners, with a profusion of snowdrops, bluebells and rhododendrons providing early and late spring colour. They blend into the woodland and lead to the Victorian pleasure garden, where a stream runs down to two lakes.

Formal gardens around the house are a mix of pristine lawns, planted beds, shrubs and hedging surrounding the former walled garden, swimming pool and pool house.

Ebberly House is more than just the main residence, though: it also comes with seven cottages, rich partureland and farm buildings, which at the time of the Whitbreads produced an estate income of some £50,000 a year. Today, significant income is still generated by the seven cottages, with the biomass boiler also contributing.

Ebberly is for sale at £6.95 million via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.