In 1997, Ebberly House became the first country house in Devon to sell for more than £1 million. By the time I visited in 2010, the guide price was £4 million and I was shown around by Martin Lamb, who, in the course of a 40-year career, sold the property three times. Now, the estate is on the market for £6.95 million with Will Matthews of Knight Frank’s country department and Florence Biss in Exeter.

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

The hamlet of Ebberly, some two miles north of the village of Roborough, on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw rivers, sits in a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.

In the early 19th century, Henry Hole, a builder and wood-engraver from Liverpool, inherited the estate from his uncle, whose family lived at near

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