Description

Now known as Bovey Castle Hotel, this Grade II* listed building has an interesting history, but is not as old as it looks! It was built in1907by the architect Detmar Blow for the second Viscount Hambledon, son of  W .H. Smith the elder, the bookseller and newsagent. (After a not very successful spell as a government minister, he was enobled with the Viscountcy that “came up with the rations” for retired cabinet members). Blow designed a Jacobean style manor house, built of granite and set on a balustraded terrace.

During the Great War, the Manor became a convalescent home for wounded officers and when te estate was sold to pay death duties in 1929, the Great Western Railway bought 200 acres an the house for use as a hotel. New furniture and bathrooms were provided, and tennis courts and a golf course, It reopened as the Manor House Hotel in 1930.In 195, Blow designed an extension taking the total number of rooms to 66.Because of its location on the edge of Dartmoor, the hotel was chosen as the location of “Baskerville Hall in the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles film starring Basil

Rathbone. In WWII the hotel was used as a military hospital, reopening after nationalisation as part of the British Transport Hotels. During at least one industrial disoute involving British Rail, the negotiations were moved out of London to The Manor house, as being a remote location which journaists were unlikely to find, because more than one of the Trade Union negotiators was a very heavy drinker, and could not be trusted  not to leak information about the progress of talks if approached by a press man.

 The hotel was sold out of public ownership in 1983, and renamed Bovey Castle in 2003,

PREVIEW BELOW – MAY TAKE A WHILE TO LOAD.