Lewtrenchard Manor

A ‘stunning Jacobean building’ is, astonishingly, largely the creation of Victorian squire, parson and prolific author the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould. Salvaged Tuscan columns, Renaissance woodwork, rococo plasterwork, a Jacobean ceiling from a demolished house in Exeter, with antiques and Gould ancestral portraits, add to a rich ambience. A four-poster in Melton bedroom, overlooking the sunken garden and fountain, once belonged to Charles I’s wife, Henrietta Maria. Sadly, the view from a ‘huge, comfortable’ annexe room was over a courtyard where the laundry van delivered. In the dining room, David Brown’s menus use produce from the kitchen garden in dishes such as venison loin and braised leek with blue cheese and pear. ‘The food is superb,’ says a very happy reader and ‘the service was exceptional.’ Others report lapses, while a ‘delicious, succulent pork fillet’ had ‘too many fussy extras’ and, in unseasonably cold weather, how much nicer if the fires had been lit. For all that, this is a special place where a ‘forgotten’ Edwardian woodland garden, with waterfall and grotto, awaits discovery. (Lara Osgood)