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COMBE MEANS WOODED VALLEY – in the Domesday Book you’ll find the Welsh word for the same, “Cwm” – and this leafy part of Devon certainly lives up to the name. This building is probably our “poshest PIG”: a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house, set in 3,500 acres in the Otter Valley, with expansive views towards the Blackdown Hills, and plenty of pheasants pottering about. All sitting on land whose first recorded owner, in 1086, was Bishop Odo – the half-brother of William the Conqueror. We picked up the keys quite some time after that, in October 2015, and worked on restoring, renovating and redesigning the hotel here – Combe House has been a hotel of one kind or another since 1968 – as well as what has become one of the loveliest Kitchen Gardens of all of our PIGs. The terraced garden, set within a mature pinetum, retains original features lovingly renovated by our team, including two Victorian greenhouses. In one, you’ll find a Black Hamburg grape vine that is thought to be more than a century old. We also have a Mushroom House, where we grow and harvest our own mushrooms, and a Smokery for curing and smoking meat and fish. We’ve handled the house and its grounds with great care, breathing new life into the building’s old bones but seeking never to over-restore. We especially love the Folly, our rustic hideaway restaurant that sits in the gardens, and the bedrooms we created in the stable yard behind the main house. We have made the most of other features, such as the original Georgian Kitchen and cavernous cellar where we sometimes host wine tastings – do ask us to show you if you’re curious – and the Elizabethan great hall entrance, dating from 1580, which now holds our lively bar. And while we’ve had plenty of new guests, we’ve also been careful not to bother some of the residents who were already here on-site, including a colony of bats. After all, they found the place before us.
COMBE THE PIG - AT
THE PIG-AT COMBE \ HOGWA SH \ SPRING
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