This breathtakingly beautiful stretch of the River Tamar was chosen by Georgina, Duchess of Bedford, as the setting for a new retreat, Endsleigh House, where she and the 6th Duke played at a bucolic existence (since recently it has become a discreet private hotel). Humphry Repton made one of his famous Red Books for the estate, and between 1810 and 1812 brought its surroundings to a perfection that stands even today as a complete example of that most imaginative and English taste in garden design, the Picturesque. This natural landscape was further embellished with buildings by Jeffrey Wyatville, two of which we have made into Landmarks, both looking out over very different stretches of water.

In 1983 we took on the Dairy, a strongly Picturesque building, and with it Pond Cottage, previously used by visiting fishermen (you too can fly-fish in the pond). Both buildings were designed by Wyatville, but the idea for creating ‘Dairy Dell’, with its streams and cascades, its still dark pond and overhung ancient well, was Repton’s, proposed in his Red Book for Endsleigh. Pond Cottage has a Rustic porch, with tree-trunk columns and honeysuckle, and cosy rooms. The Dairy, which had to be rescued from the undergrowth, is perched on a knoll above, a cool chamber of marble (a local variety) and ivy-leaf tiles. From its verandah, ‘embosomed’, as Repton put it, ‘in all the sublimity of umbrageous majesty’, you may open yourself to those keen responses to the surrounding scene that were so carefully planned by its creators – while contemplating the making of a very superior butter.

View our history sheet for this Landmark.

Sleeps: 5