Haldon House

Haldon House (pronounced: "Hall-don") on the eastern side of the Haldon Hills in the parishes of Dunchideock and Kenn, near Exeter in Devon, England, was a large Georgian country house largely demolished in the 1920s. The surviving north wing of the house, comprising the entrance front of the stable block, consists of two cuboid lodges linked by a screen pierced by a Triumphal Arch, with later additions, and serves today as the "Lord Haldon Hotel". The house was originally flanked by two such paired pavilions, as is evident from 19th century engravings.

It was built in about 1735 by Sir George Chudleigh, 4th Baronet (died 1738), and was influenced by Buckingham House in London, built in about 1715. Chudleigh's ancestral seat was at nearby Ashton House, on the west side of Haldon Hill, the residence of his family since about 1320, and which he abandoned to build Haldon House on the east side of the hill. In 1798 Ashton House was in ruins.

In about 1770 it was purchased by Sir Robert Palk, 1st Baronet (1717–1798), a former officer of the East India Company and Governor of Madras Province, who enlarged it. Palk had intended to build a mansion at Torwood in his manor of Tor Mohun, which he had purchased from Lord Donegal in about 1759, but where he had been unable to purchase various surrounding fields which interfered with the estate. The Torwood estate was later developed by his successors into half of the resort of Torquay.

Major-General Stringer Lawrence (1697–1775), the first Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India, spent his retirement at Haldon House as an honoured guest of his friend from Indian days Sir Robert Palk, to whom he bequeathed the huge sum of £50,000 and in whose memory in 1788 Palk erected the "Lawrence Tower" (alias "Haldon Belvedere") on his estate. In 1789 Haldon House was viewed by Rev. John Swete (died 1821) of nearby Oxton House, a connoisseur of the picturesque, and a former protegé of Palk's, who in his journal criticised its design in having two wings which swept forward in curves, which although effective in built-up London for Buckingham House, here resulted in much of the spectacular view of the surrounding countryside being blocked off from the front of the house. Palk removed the formal gardens and replaced them with lawns and clumps of trees in the then fashionable style. The house was visited by several notable people, including King George III (1760–1820), whom Sir Robert Palk escorted to view the Lawrence Tower along a specially made carriage drive.

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