Changeover day at Coulscott House and Holiday Cottages. Luke and Alice East, plus their small team, have just a few hours to flip each place, ready for the next set of guests who will be arriving in a few hours’ time. Some previous occupants holidayed in the main house with their six dogs (six!) so the clear-up operation is going to be big.
‘It’s busy but we had busy lives before,’ says Luke, sitting down, briefly. ‘We were always rushing around. Here, it’s not rushing. It’s busy because there’s always stuff to do but we’re around more for the children.’
In 2021, Luke, a former HR director at high-end fashion brand Reiss, and wife Alice, who worked in media marketing and PR, bought a Grade II-listed farmhouse, a Georgian manor house, a five-bedroom barn conversion and three holiday cottages on a site near Combe Martin. Coulscott also came with 20 acres, some alpacas, goats, guinea pigs, chickens and ducks.
It was all part of a plan. Sort of. The couple were originally looking to move near their home in Surrey to a house with an annexe which they could make work as a holiday let. They made an offer on the perfect set-up in Kent before being gazumped during the post-Covid rural boom. Then Luke mentioned this place in North Devon he’d seen online.
‘He’d known about it for a while, but he knew I was never going to be interested,’ says Alice. ‘I’d always thought Devon was too far away – because it is!’
It was worth a look though. Particularly as they would be passing by Coulscott on their way to a family holiday in Cornwall with their two children, then aged 10 and seven.
‘We pulled up outside on the most amazing sunny day and we thought, well, this is it, let’s go!’ says Alice. ‘There was just something magical about it – the setting, the seclusion, the valley, the fact the animals came rushing over to see us. And there’s this view from right up the top of the hill over there that just takes your breath away.’
Good job it’s so lovely here. Luke and Alice had a rough idea of what they were getting into but until they were welly deep in mud trying to organise renovation work using patchy wi-fi coverage while looking after two kids and 27 animals, it was hard to appreciate what was involved.
‘We probably didn’t realise the extent of the work that was needed, but you never do, do you?’ says Alice, before highlighting the major challenges. ‘We didn’t have three-phase electricity [for higher loads] so at any point, things could have gone pop with the load on the system, so we had to bring it all the way up from the village.
‘Then there was the wi-fi. There were six little routers in each property, so we had to put this huge mesh network across the whole site.’
Setting up the infrastructure was done alongside work to get Coulscott’s diverse range of buildings guest-ready. The site was already a well-established holiday complex but needed updating to meet today’s standards. Kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, extra hot tubs and wood burners all had to be installed in time for the first holidaymakers.
‘It was the scale of it,’ says Luke. ‘Until you’re doing it, you don’t really appreciate that it’s multiple houses, so there’s always something that needs doing somewhere.’
The buildings here include the main Coulscott House with its 16th century farmhouse and handsome Georgian manor house, plus a barn conversion and three farmers’ cottages.
The couple recently added another building into the mix – an energy efficient, contemporary barn that sits just behind Coulscott House. It means the whole site can now accommodate more than 40 people. That’s a proper gathering.
‘We’ve always done holidays where we get our family and friends together at real celebration houses,’ says Alice. ‘We’ve been to a lot of nice places and this has got it,’ she adds. ‘There’s just something special.’
‘You see families optimise it,’ says Luke. ‘They’ve often come down from London and the kids are here, running around barefoot, gathering eggs, jumping in the pool or the hot tub. This is the idyll. The parents are sitting back with a glass of rosé while the kids are living the dream.’
Luke and Alice’s children are also enjoying it here. As well as making the most of their surroundings, taking up surfing, coasteering and climbing, their son Daniel, now 12, has proved well suited to hospitality. He has organised regular meet-ups in the soft play area on site for kids holidaying here.
‘He even got tipped once,’ says Luke. ‘He got a little envelope with 20 quid in it with a note saying: “Thank you for looking after our kids all week”. He was absolutely made up. He’d never seen anything like that before. It’s kept him inspired!’
Both Daniel and his sister, Ella, 16, work at Coulscott at weekends. The family divide their time between here and their other holiday let business, based in Chulmleigh. Luke and Alice bought The Lost Manor in 2025, another secluded rural retreat for large gatherings. Alice now has a job working for the National Trust which she started once Coulscott was established. Wow. London must seem like a lifetime ago.
‘I haven’t actually been back,’ says Alice. ‘I’d probably get palpitations if I left here now,’ she adds, laughing. Luke on the other hand was doing the whole hybrid working thing for a while.
‘I used to leave here at the crack of dawn and drive over Exmoor to Taunton station and get the train to Paddington,’ he says. ‘Occasionally on the way to the station you’d have to stop because there were sheep on the loose and you had to get them into a neighbouring field. I’d be in an exec meeting when just a few hours before, I was wrestling sheep on Exmoor.’
Eventually, Luke decided to stay near the sheep. He now oversees the day-to-day running of Coulscott and the Lost Manor. The former fashion HR director has ditched the dry-clean suits and is happy in his hoodies. Alice is the same. Both seem pretty content, even if there is still a lot of vacuuming to do.
‘I just love that affirmation you get when you see the guests having such a lovely time,’ says Alice. ‘They realise it’s so unique and they can see the time and energy you’ve put in. We feel very lucky.’ .
coulscott.co.uk; lostmanor.co.uk; toadhallcottages.co.uk
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