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Tapeley Park, North Devon

It seems there has been a house at Tapeley Park since the Domesday survey. During Tudor times the property belonged to the Giffard family. Then early in the eighteenth century it passed into the hands of Captain William Clevland. Clevland had married into money, and used this to buy Tapeley.

Tapeley stayed in the Clevland family into the nineteenth century. Archibald Clevland was to be one of only three officers who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 during the Crimean War. Archibald wrote a letter home about the charge which apparently still survives in the Tapeley archives. Archibald was killed only a month later at the Battle of Inkerman. The sad statue of his mother can still be seen by the lake at Tapeley.

Archibald's sister Agnes then married William Langham Christie, the Christie family owning the estate ever since. At this point Tapeley was given a stern Victorian facade. The Victorian age was a contradictory one. In many respects people were reacting to industrial and scientific change by searching for lost ideals of romance. Tennyson revived Arthurian romance, fairytale castles were being created at Cardiff, or Dunster; villages were turning into icons of lost innocence. But at Tapeley the other side of the Victorian era resulted in a drab and functional building. This look was reversed by the wife of William and Agnes' eldest son Augustus. Lady Rosamund, daughter of the Earl of Portsmouth married Augustus and moved to Tapeley at the end of the nineteenth century. She hired an architect who specialised in the Queen Anne style, and remodelled the house on gentler and more romantic lines. She also created the garden.

Straw Bale Demonstration Building

The house is still owned by the Christie family today. Great interest in ecological issues is taken at the property, and the estate hopes to be "grid free" by 2008. They feel that fuel shortages will begin by then (?) There is an experimental house in the grounds, demonstrating possible methods for the building of cheap environmentally friendly housing. The Straw Bale Demonstration House is built from bales of straw and old car tyres stuffed with soil, and then rendered.

During my own visit to Tapeley in 2007 I found that in most respects it was very attractive, and most areas of the garden were well maintained. The kitchen garden, supplying the tea shop obviously had a huge amount of care devoted to it. But there were areas that didn't look so good. It is interesting that the toilets are supplied with hot water from solar panels, but those toilets were a bit dingy. I'm one of those people who think you can be interested in environmental issues, and still have nice toilets. There is a certain air of eccentricity about the place. Lady Rosamund was well known, so I have read, for walking around with a parrot on her head. I think the spirit of Lady Rosamund lives on at Tapeley.

Opening Times: 26th March to 31st October 10am - 5pm, Sunday to Friday

Directions: The entrance to the park is just off the B3233, between Bideford and Instow in north Devon. Click here for an interactive map centred on Tapeley Park.

Access: I didn't see any guidance at the property, and there is none that I can find on the leaflet or web site. The grounds have many steps, and the surfaces of paths can be uneven and rough, it would therefore be a difficult property to view should you experience mobility problems.

Contact:

telephone: 01271 860897

web site: http://www.tapeley-park.co.uk/index.html