The Peters family were successful Liverpool merchants who, in the nineteenth century, served their country as soldiers, sailors and landowners. William Peters, who built this clock tower in 1885 as a memorial to his wife Mary Jane, was in the 7th Dragoons and lived in a sizable classical house nearby. His son was a General and his grandson an Admiral. On the latter’s death in 1979 the Trustees of his estate offered us the Tower as a gift.

It is no great work of architecture – a very distant and poor relation of St Mark’s in Venice – but it is part of the history of Lympstone, and it does stand, at the end of an alley, actually on the water’s edge in this large and pleasant village, looking across the broad estuary of the Exe to the green fields beyond. Moreover, it is only a short walk from a railway station, so there is no need for those who stay here to have a car.

Accordingly we took it on, repaired the polychrome brick, restored the clock with its daytime chimes, and made the tower habitable again – it had been a refuge for fishermen stranded here by the weather. Every inch of space inside its tiny rooms is valuable, so our architect, having spent some time at a boatyard, fitted it out with teak and brass and varnish. The views from all the windows are interesting and some spectacular, and you will find yourself surveying and participating in the daily bustle of life on the foreshore.

View our history sheet for this Landmark

Sleeps: 2