Lympstone Manor, Exmouth

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Lympstone Manor, Exmouth, is a Grade II listed building that sits on the coast of Devon. It was built mainly in the 1760s around an older farmhouse, when it was owned by Charles Baring, a wealthy banker who had just married. He turned the place from a farmhouse into a grand mansion, and for the next two centuries it was home to a string of notable people.

Since 2016 the house has operated as Lympstone Manor, a hotel, restaurant and vineyard run by chef and owner Michael Caines. The site’s history as the Manorship of Lympstone never applied to this house; that title is traditionally linked with Nutwell Court.

Key points in its history:
- Charles Baring (1741–1829) and his wife Margaret Gould transformed Courtlands House into a mansion. They had nine children, and Margaret is commemorated in Lympstone Church.
- After the Baring family, the house passed to a sequence of owners, including Lambert Blair, Sir Walter Roberts, and William Francis Spicer.
- The property later came into the Browne family, then to the wealthy barrister William Lethbridge, and subsequently to Mary Bridget Johnston.
- In the early 20th century, it was owned by General Sir George Luck and rented to tenants, including the Thornycroft family, Commander Henry Adams and his wife Charlotte, and finally Sir Thomas Garbutt Knott, who owned it for about 25 years until his death in 1949.

Today, Lympstone Manor is a hotel, restaurant and vineyard, continuing a long history at this historic Exmouth address.