Our House!

A Memory of Ottery St Mary.

How funny! We now own and live in this house. It has barely changed since this photograph, although it is no longer a guest house and its name is different. There are some barns and a coach house in the background which have been partly demolished; a small conservatory has been added to the left of the porch. We believe the people who ran it as a guest house were called Haywood, his first name being Cecil. He had been a manager at the factory in Ottery (since closed). Mrs Haywood was famous for her cooking. They rented it from Lord Coleridge (known as "Lordy"). It was called "The Cottage" because it had been Lady Devon's Cottage, a dower house for the Courtenay family. It was originally built in the 17th Century as a Huguenot weaver's dwelling. This part of Ottery is known as Dunkirk, because of that French connection. The house then comprised only the left hand section and there are four other cottages nearby that share the same origin and design.  The larger central section of this house was added in the 18th Century and the grand drawing room with Gothic windows on the right is Victorian. A number of people have lived here since, including a well-known still-working High Court Judge. For many years it was lived in by a Miss St Quintin, known as Quinnie, who used to have a pet monkey which lived on her shoulder. She used to play croquet on the lawn in the foreground. At some point it must have been bought from the Coleridge Estate because it is no longer rented. It has also belonged to a sculptress, a dentist, another descendant of the Dukes of Devon, a writer and a retired navy captain. We believe at least one owner - possibly Cecil Haywood - died in the house. One of the bedroom windows has an ancient etching on the outside, possibly from the ring of a builder or decorator, called "Govier", which is a well-known local name. We have some images of the house taken from the other side, which is the lane leading to Cadhay House; as well as an aerial photo taken in 1967. If anyone else has any memories of this house we would love to hear them.

Since writing this Celia Heywood contacted us; she lived in the house in the late 1940s to the early 60s and was the daughter of the Heywoods who ran it as a guest house. One of her work colleagues had seen this image and text on the Francis Frith website and pointed it out to her. We invited her to afternoon tea and also asked our neighbours, who remembered her. Some of them had not seen her for 50 years and she had not set foot in the house for the same length of time; it was a pleasure to hear them reminiscing. She remembered many things about the house. She remembered it belonging to a Major Banton and thinks that must have been just after the war, because she saw his sons' RAF leather flying jackets and boots hanging over a chair in the drawing room. By coincidence, my own father had been stationed with the RAF at Honiton Clyst, now Exeter Airport. She remembers there being up to 20 guests in the house and when it was full the family had to sleep on mattresses balanced on corn bins in the Granary (now our utility room). Each of the bedrooms she associated with a particular long-term guest; they all seemed to be vicars' widows, writers or retired military, a bit like the Cluedo board! I was pleased to have picked up some more history of the house and to have met a very pleasant lady through the Frith catalogue.