Cool Place of the Day: Greenway House and Gardens, Devon

Every day, a new place to discover or explore from coolplaces.co.uk

Greenway House and Gardens

15 September is the birthday of maybe the most successful and most prolific novelist of all time, Agatha Christie; and fittingly there are all sort of events going on to commemorate this, including a mini-festival in Torquay and various events at nearby Greenway, which was the author’s holiday home for 20 years until her death in 1976. It was gifted to the National Trust by Christie’s daughter in 2004, and has since been given the full treatment, spruced up with an introductory film and a café and shop, converted out of the old stables.

Although it’s a fairly ordinary (if extremely grand) Georgian house, it is without question one of the most beautifully situated homes you will ever visit, perched above the wooded slopes that tumble down the deep-sided Dart estuary.

Inside, the house is presented much as it would have been in the 1950s, with many of the family’s collections of books, china, silverware and other memorabilia, and lots of attendants on hand to give you the dope on Christie’s massively successful writing career.

Don’t miss the wild and romantic garden, which is a stunner, rolling down the hillside towards the river where you can step inside the Christies’ romantic boathouse and sunken pool (which were the inspiration for a scene in “Dead Man’s Folly”). Indeed by far the nicest way to arrive is to take the Greenway ferry from Dartmouth or Dittisham.

Cool Places is a website from the creators of Rough Guides and Cool Camping, suggesting the best places to stay, eat, drink and shop in Britain (coolplaces.co.uk)