8 bedroom house

Built in 1830 and an elegant example of a former rectory of the late Georgian period, Heddon Hall is set amidst delightful grounds in a beautiful setting in the Exmoor National Park. The property has been the much-loved home for three generations of the same family and architecturally is little changed since it was built.

The house, which is Grade II listed, is built of stuccoed stone under a Welsh slate roof with deep eaves and has accommodation on two floors with good-sized rooms with tall ceilings throughout and a suite of cellars. It has retained a wealth of Palladian-style features such as sash windows, cornicing, fireplaces and a fine front staircase lit by a round arched stair window.

As was typical of the period for a house of this size, the three principal reception rooms are positioned in a line off the central hall and all face south with views across the garden to the hillside on the far side of the valley. These rooms are complimented by a sympathetically designed, single storey ballroom with 18th century interior fittings and a sprung timber floor that was added in the 1960s to celebrate a son's 18th birthday.

Two former service wings extend out from the northern side of the house and provide plentiful rooms for modern day living, including a walk-in larder and a charming, west facing
kitchen fitted with a 4-oven electric AGA and a door leading directly out to the parking area beside the house.

On the first floor is a central galleried landing with doors off to five of the house's seven bedrooms. The principal bedroom has a wide bay window with wonderful countryside views from east through to west with a walk-through dressing room (currently used as a separate double bedroom) to the en-suite bathroom. The fifth bedroom is used as an ironing room and leads through to two double, former staff bedrooms and the back staircase.

Set well back behind the house is the former coach house, which has its own driveway, parking and garden and is mutually very private from the main house. It has been sympathetically converted into a self-contained cottage with three bedrooms, bath and shower rooms, kitchen and first floor living room with views out across the valley. Adjacent to it are a good-sized greenhouse and machinery store with lean-to potting shed. Set apart about 60 yards from the main house and connected by a track is a stable yard arranged around a cobbled yard with three loose boxes and a traditional stone barn.

Heddon Hall is approached by a long driveway to a sizeable, circular parking area on its western side. The house is set amidst about four acres of formal gardens and grounds that blend perfectly into the surrounding landscape and were formerly open to the public under the National Garden Scheme, and featured in The English Garden and Country Life Magazines. Skirting the south side of the house is a terrace with a flight of steps down to the croquet lawn below. To the east between the house and the stable yard is a magnificent walled, formal garden that is laid out with herbaceous flowers, roses, cordoned fruit trees and vegetables. Below is a further area of formal herbaceous borders and beyond that and below the bothy is the “Himalayan Bank”, so-called because of the rich variety of plants, both species and cultivars, emanating originally from China. Below the house is a gently sloping lawn
bounded to the south by the brook, which flows down through three inter-connected stew ponds.

Adjacent to the drive are two small arboreta, one containing a hard tennis court. 1,600 native trees have been recently planted, sponsored by the Woodland Trust. Beyond the immediate grounds are seven enclosures of permanent pasture.

Heddon Hall is situated just outside the small village of Parracombe and within the Exmoor National Park. Set amidst the beautiful, unspoilt hilly countryside of the Heddon Valley, the village has a population of about 300 and despite its small size has excellent amenities with a pretty

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