Best Other in Devon, England - Map and Reviews

Acorn Bank Garden and Watermill is a National Trust property tucked into the Eden Valley of Cumbria, near the village of Temple Sowerby, roughly six miles east of Penrith. It is one of the most enchanting and botanically significant gardens in northern England, celebrated above all for its exceptional collection of medicinal and culinary herbs — one of the largest such collections in the country, numbering over 250 species. The site draws garden enthusiasts, historians, and those seeking a quietly beautiful day out in a landscape that feels genuinely removed from the modern world. The combination of a productive walled kitchen garden, ancient orchards, and a working watermill set beside a rushing beckmakes it a place of layered pleasures, rewarding visitors who come with time to wander slowly. The name Acorn Bank derives from the great oak trees that have long defined the property, and the estate has roots stretching back to the twelfth century, when it was held by the Knights Templar — a fact preserved in the name of the adjacent village, Temple Sowerby. After the dissolution of the Templars in the early fourteenth century, the property passed through various hands, including the Knights Hospitaller, before eventually becoming a private country house. The present manor house, a handsome sandstone building of the seventeenth century with some earlier fabric, was home for many years to the writer and diarist Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, a Yorkshire poet and collector of folk material who had a deep attachment to the North of England. She gave the property to the National Trust in 1950, and it has been in Trust care ever since, though the house itself is not open to the general public. The walled herb garden is the heart of the experience and what most visitors come specifically to see. Enclosed within warm sandstone walls that trap and amplify the sun, the beds are arranged methodically and labelled with both common and Latin names, making the garden as educational as it is sensory. The scents on a warm summer afternoon — pennyroyal, lovage, angelica, rue, hyssop, and dozens of less familiar herbs — create an almost overwhelming richness in the air. Many of the plants have been grown here for centuries, used by the monastic and later domestic communities of the house for medicine, cooking, and household purposes, and there is a living continuity to the garden that feels palpable. Alongside the medicinal beds, a productive kitchen garden grows fruit and vegetables in traditional rows, and an orchard of old English apple and pear varieties occupies the outer ground, loud with bees in blossom time. Beyond the walls, a network of woodland walks runs alongside Crowdundle Beck, a clear limestone stream that feeds the restored watermill standing at the foot of the garden. The mill is a working corn mill with its original machinery largely intact, and on days when it is operating, the sound of water rushing through the millrace and the low rumble of the grinding stones adds a whole further dimension to the visit. The beck itself is beautiful — fast and peaty, overhung with old ash and oak, its banks rich with wildflowers in spring including carpets of wood anemone and wild garlic. The woodland path is uneven and can be muddy, making sturdy footwear advisable, but it rewards the effort with a sense of secluded wildness just steps from the cultivated garden. The surrounding landscape is classic Eden Valley countryside: rolling green farmland bounded by drystone walls, with the dark mass of the North Pennines rising to the east and the Lakeland fells visible on clear days to the west. The village of Temple Sowerby itself is an attractive estate village of sandstone cottages arranged around a green, and the broader area offers easy access to Brougham Castle, the market town of Appleby-in-Westmorland, and the ancient stone circle of Long Meg and Her Daughters a few miles to the northwest. This part of Cumbria is quieter and less visited than the central Lake District but arguably just as beautiful, and Acorn Bank sits at its heart in a particularly privileged position. The best time to visit is late spring through early summer, roughly May to July, when both the herb garden and the orchards are at the height of their flowering and the woodland floor is carpeted with bloom. The apple orchard is also spectacular in autumn, when the old varieties ripen and the trees take on their seasonal colour. The site is open during National Trust season, typically from late March to early November, though the watermill has more restricted opening hours and is not always in operation. Parking is available on site and there is a small café serving light refreshments. The terrain of the walled garden is largely accessible, though the woodland walks alongside the beck are rougher. Dogs are welcome on leads in certain areas. One of the more unusual aspects of Acorn Bank is the sheer antiquity of some of its plant knowledge. The herb collection has been carefully built up and documented over decades and represents a living pharmacopoeia of pre-modern medicine, including plants used in treatments dating back to the medieval period. Some herbs grown here, such as mandrake and black henbane, are toxic and would have been handled with great care by the apothecaries and monks who first cultivated them on this same ground. There is something quietly extraordinary about standing among plants whose cultivation on this spot may have begun with the Knights Templar in the thirteenth century — an unbroken thread of botanical practice running through eight hundred years of English history.

The Latticework Viaducts of Castlefield stand as one of Manchester's most striking industrial monuments, a layered tangle of Victorian iron and brick that arches over the Bridgewater Canal basin and the surrounding streets of this ancient urban quarter. The viaducts are not a single structure but a remarkable accumulation of railway infrastructure built across several decades of the nineteenth century, creating an almost cathedral-like effect as multiple elevated rail lines cross and intersect above the historic canal terminus. What makes this place especially distinctive is the sheer density of ironwork, with lattice girder spans supported on ornate cast iron columns and brick piers, casting dappled light and geometric shadow patterns onto the water below. For anyone interested in industrial heritage, urban history, or simply dramatic architectural spectacle, the viaducts of Castlefield are among the most rewarding sites in the north of England. The story of these structures is inseparable from Manchester's transformation into the world's first industrial city. Castlefield itself occupies the site of a Roman fort, Mamucium, established around 79 AD at the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell, but it was the opening of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761 that gave the area its modern identity as a hub of commercial movement. The railway age arrived with the opening of Liverpool Road Station in 1830, the world's first inter-city passenger terminus, which still stands nearby. The latticework viaducts came later, as competing railway companies — including the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway and the Midland Railway — drove their lines through the neighbourhood. The Great Northern Railway and later the Cheshire Lines Committee added their own elevated routes, resulting in the extraordinary layered skyscape visible today. Each new line required its own viaduct, and the engineers of the era were obliged to build over, under and alongside earlier structures rather than demolishing them. Physically, the viaducts create an atmosphere unlike almost anywhere else in Britain. Standing beside the Bridgewater Canal basin on a grey Manchester morning, you are enclosed on multiple sides by towering arches and iron grids, the brickwork stained dark with more than a century of grime and weathering. The lattice girder sections, painted in dark green or black, have a muscular delicacy to them — enormously heavy structures that nonetheless appear almost lace-like when seen from certain angles. The sound environment is theatrical: trains still use some of the elevated lines overhead, sending low rumbles and rhythmic clatter echoing off the brick and water. Canal boats sit moored in the basin beneath, and the reflections of the ironwork shimmer in the still water on calm days. In wet weather the whole complex darkens and drips, taking on a brooding, atmospheric quality that appealed strongly to the urban explorers and artists who rediscovered Castlefield in the 1980s. Castlefield was declared Britain's first Urban Heritage Park in 1982, a designation that helped arrest decades of post-industrial decay and set in motion a remarkable regeneration. The viaducts themselves were central to this story: their sheer scale meant demolition was impractical and prohibitively expensive, so they were instead incorporated into the revived landscape. Some arches were converted into bar and restaurant spaces, others into commercial units, and the spaces beneath became an outdoor events arena. The surrounding area now contains some of the finest examples of converted Victorian warehouse architecture in the country, with the Castlefield basin itself a popular destination for narrowboat holidaymakers and visitors exploring the towpath network. The Museum of Science and Industry, occupying the original Liverpool Road Station complex, is a short walk away and provides essential context for the railway structures above. Visiting the viaducts is straightforward and costs nothing — this is a public landscape accessible at all hours, and the best experience is simply to walk through it, tracing the towpath along the canal and pausing to look upward at the overlapping spans. Deansgate and Manchester Piccadilly stations are both within comfortable walking distance, and the Deansgate-Castlefield Metrolink tram stop places you almost immediately beneath the ironwork. The area rewards exploration at various times of day: early morning visits offer quiet reflection by the water with the industrial structures at their most atmospheric, while evenings bring the bars and restaurants under the arches to life, with outdoor seating beside the canal in warmer months. The Castlefield Bowl, an outdoor events arena partly framed by the viaduct structure, hosts summer concerts and events that make extraordinary use of the acoustic and visual drama of the surroundings. One of the more fascinating and rarely remarked-upon aspects of the Castlefield viaducts is the way they illustrate the fierce commercial competition between Victorian railway companies. Because each operator wanted its own direct route into central Manchester, the district became a testing ground for engineering ingenuity, with designers forced to create ever more elaborate solutions for threading new lines between, over and through existing ones. Some spans were built to remarkably tight tolerances above canal boats and road traffic. The iron columns that support certain sections rest on foundations driven through earlier canal construction, an archaeological layering that continues underground as well as above. Today the viaducts carry Metrolink tram services on some alignments and mainline freight on others, meaning these Victorian structures remain genuinely functional parts of a living transport network, not merely picturesque relics. That combination of historical resonance, engineering drama, and ongoing utility makes them one of Manchester's most rewarding and underappreciated treasures.

Dunsland is a historic estate and former country house located in the rural parish of Bradford, in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The site is perhaps best known today for the tragic loss of Dunsland House, a remarkable seventeenth-century mansion that stood here for centuries before its destruction by fire in 1967. The estate had been in the care of the National Trust at the time of the fire, making the event a particularly painful episode in the history of English heritage conservation. What remains is a quiet, atmospheric corner of mid-Devon farmland, haunted in a gentle sense by the memory of the great house that once presided over it. The origins of Dunsland as a settled estate stretch back to medieval times. The land passed through several prominent Devon families over the centuries, most notably the Arscott family, who rebuilt and expanded the house in the mid-seventeenth century into the distinguished baroque-influenced structure that would later catch the attention of preservationists. The house was noted for its fine plasterwork ceilings and panelling, features considered among the best examples of their period in Devon. By the twentieth century the property had fallen into decline, and it was acquired by the National Trust in the mid-1950s partly to preserve exactly those interior features. The catastrophic fire of 1967, which gutted the structure, meant that most of those treasures were lost, though some salvaged elements were relocated to other properties and museums. The physical landscape around the former house is quietly beautiful in the way that much of inland Devon is — a gently undulating terrain of hedgerow-lined fields, ancient lanes, and mixed woodland. The area sits in the upper reaches of the Tamar and Torridge watershed country, where the land rolls in long slow waves and the sky tends to feel wide and unhurried. Without the great house, the site has reverted largely to agricultural use, and visitors who come seeking dramatic ruins will find instead a pastoral scene where the absence of the house is itself a kind of presence — a negative space in the landscape. The surrounding area belongs to that deeply rural stretch of Devon north of Hatherleigh and south of Holsworthy, a part of the county that sees relatively few tourists compared to the coast or Dartmoor. The village of Bradford is very small, and the lanes connecting it to nearby market towns like Holsworthy to the north or Hatherleigh to the south are narrow and hedge-bound in the classic Devon fashion. The countryside here has a timeless, slightly secretive quality, with farms and hamlets connected by a web of sunken lanes that have changed little in centuries. Access to the Dunsland area is entirely by car or on foot along public footpaths, as there is no public transport serving this isolated location. The nearest significant towns are Holsworthy, roughly five miles to the north, and Hatherleigh about seven miles to the southeast. Those with an interest in architectural history or the story of lost country houses may find it worthwhile to visit simply to stand in the landscape and reflect on what once existed here. The site itself is on private land, and there is no formal visitor access to the former house site, though public rights of way cross the surrounding countryside. One of the more poignant footnotes to the history of Dunsland is that the National Trust had been in the process of restoring and opening the house to the public when the fire occurred. The loss galvanised debates within the heritage sector about fire protection in historic buildings and contributed to changes in how such properties were managed. Some of the surviving fixtures from Dunsland House — fragments of that celebrated plasterwork and panelling — were carefully preserved and can be traced through the records of the Victoria and Albert Museum and other collections. The name Dunsland thus carries a particular resonance in the history of English country house preservation, as a symbol of irreplaceable loss.

Overbeck's is a captivating National Trust property perched on a steep hillside above the village of Salcombe in the South Hams district of Devon, England. It is one of the more unusual and intimate properties in the National Trust's portfolio, combining a handsome Edwardian house with a subtropical garden that tumbles dramatically down terraces toward one of the most breathtaking coastal views in southern England. The property takes its name from Otto Overbeck, the eccentric scientist and inventor who bequeathed it to the National Trust in 1937, and his personality still permeates every corner of the place. It draws visitors who want to combine the pleasures of a historic house museum with the sensory delight of a garden filled with plants that have no business surviving in the British climate. The house itself is a cream-painted, early twentieth century building of modest scale but considerable charm, sitting within grounds that slope steeply toward the Salcombe estuary and Kingsbridge estuary beyond. What makes the garden so remarkable is the sheer improbability of what grows here. Thanks to the exceptionally mild microclimate created by the south-facing slope, the shelter of surrounding hills, and the tempering influence of the sea, plants from New Zealand, South America, the Mediterranean, and the Canary Islands thrive in the open air. Palms, agaves, camphor trees, banana plants, and towering echiums all flourish in a setting that feels more like Madeira or the Algarve than Devon. The garden is arranged across a series of terraces connected by stone steps and winding paths, and it rewards slow exploration at every level. Otto Overbeck was a figure of real curiosity. Born in 1860 of Dutch and German heritage, he worked as a chemist and became convinced he had invented a rejuvenating electrical device he called the Overbeck Rejuvenator, which he believed could cure disease and restore youth by passing mild electrical currents through the body. He was earnest in his belief in the device and marketed it with enthusiasm, though it was regarded with deep skepticism by the medical establishment. He amassed an eclectic collection of objects throughout his life, and the museum inside the house reflects this magpie sensibility: ship models, natural history specimens, local maritime artefacts, toys, and curiosities of all kinds fill the rooms in a way that feels more like a Victorian collector's cabinet than a conventional heritage display. His portrait hangs in the house and conveys a man of genuine warmth and idiosyncrasy. Before Overbeck's ownership the property was known as Sharpitor, a name still applied to the nearby rocky headland, and the house was built around 1913. Overbeck purchased it in 1928 and lived there until his death in 1937, leaving the property to the National Trust on the condition that it be maintained as a museum and garden for public enjoyment. He was insistent that his name, rather than the older name of the house, should be used, and the National Trust has honoured that wish ever since. His collection forms the core of the museum as it exists today, supplemented by additional material relating to Salcombe and the surrounding area. The views from the garden terraces are among the finest aspects of the visit. The Salcombe estuary opens out beneath the garden, its water glittering with the boats that fill it in summer, with the green hills of the South Devon coast rolling away on both sides. On a clear day the sense of elevation and openness is exhilarating, and the layering of subtropical planting in the foreground against the coastal panorama beyond creates a visual effect that is genuinely singular. The sounds of the place are characteristic of this stretch of Devon coastline — gulls, the distant clink of rigging, the occasional buzz of a small motor boat far below, and the wind moving through exotic foliage. The surrounding landscape is exceptionally beautiful. Salcombe itself, the small and famously affluent sailing town, sits just below and is well worth exploring before or after a visit. The South West Coast Path passes close by, and the rocky promontory of Sharpitor and the neighbouring headland of Bolt Head are within easy walking distance, offering some of the most dramatic cliff scenery in Devon. The nearby Starehole Bay and the wreck-scattered waters around the estuary entrance have a long seafaring history. The whole area falls within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Getting to Overbeck's requires some effort, which only adds to its sense of being a rewarding discovery. The property is accessed by a very narrow lane descending from the Salcombe to Marlborough road, and the lane is too narrow and steep for most large vehicles. The National Trust operates a timed ticketing system in peak season and strongly encourages visitors to arrive on foot, by bicycle, or using the seasonal ferry service from Salcombe, which lands at the bottom of the hill below the garden. There is very limited parking nearby. Salcombe itself can be reached by bus from Kingsbridge, and water taxis operate during the season. The garden is at its most spectacular in spring and early summer when the echiums flower in dramatic purple spires, but it has interest throughout the year. The house museum opens seasonally; visitors should check National Trust timings before making a special journey. One particularly charming and little-known detail about Overbeck's concerns its ghost. Local tradition holds that Otto Overbeck himself never entirely left the place, and staff at the property have over the years reported unexplained occurrences in the house. Whether or not one believes in such things, there is an undeniable quality to the interior of the house — an accumulated strangeness from the objects, the inventor's legacy, and the subtropical garden pressing in at every window — that makes it easy to understand why the imagination runs in that direction. Overbeck was clearly a man who loved this place with unusual intensity, and something of that feeling clings to every corner of this singular property.