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 1977 we aquired Swiss Cottage, perhaps the most important of Endsleigh’s buildings. It is an early, and wonderfully well-made, example of the nineteenth-century passion for the Alps, designed in about 1815 by Wyatville, complete with an Alpine garden, and Swiss furniture and crockery. We repaired it and reversed some later alterations. In 2007, a chance find in an auction room enabled us to reinstate the original corner cupboard in the main room. Opening on to a verandah, this room was used by the Dukes for picnics and shooting lunches and there, perched high above the steep drop to the river, you have a heady feeling of surveying a world apart.

Sleeps: 2+2