Life works in mysterious ways, especially on Dartmoor. Chrissy Harris settles into the story behind a stylish family home at Haytor
‘These are completely disgraceful; do you want one?’ Christina Clark offers me a posh M&S chocolate cookie before getting into the details of how she ended up living in this magnificent Edwardian house in Haytor Vale. I politely decline her offer but instantly regret doing so. A chocolate cookie would have made this experience even more enjoyable.
Christina – or Chrissy, as she prefers (hurrah!) – is loads of fun. She explains how she moved to Dartmoor from Essex six years ago after she met and fell in love with a guy who was renovating the place next door to her brother’s house that’s on a bit of land that her dad bought off someone he met in a bar on a ski trip in the 1960s.
‘I think dad had been trying to buy a place in Italy and it had kind of gone wrong, but he was looking for a holiday home,’ says Chrissy, fleshing out the details while I attempt to keep up. ‘So, he bought a bit of this estate.’
Chrissy’s dad Tony had bought a small building and some land just below the granite rocks of Haytor. This secluded hamlet in eastern Dartmoor is home to a collection of several grand houses, built in the early 1900s. (Eagle-eyed readers might recall that I was here a few months ago to write about The Shotts, one of those grand Edwardian houses just up the lane.)
‘Anyway,’ Chrissy continues, ‘It was this big estate and my dad bought what was basically the gardener’s tearoom. I used to call it the shack. Mum, dad and my two older brothers used to come down here quite a bit. But by the time they had me and my other brother, they had a place in Menorca, so they sacked it off. We hardly ever came.
‘Then when I was in my early twenties, me and my girlfriends would come down in a big group in our crappy little cars. My mum would pack them all up with wine and a few stews and we’d cram our dogs in and have a little weekend jolly in this shack. It was glamping really. There was a shower in there, but you had to run around to get wet.’
During those fun-filled mini-breaks, Chrissy never imagined that she would end up living nearby. As it was, her brother Matthew got there first. He finished building a house his dad had started constructing on the same site as the original shack. (Before that there had been years of controversy over the site involving a court case).
‘So eventually my brother ended up here and I used to come down and visit him at weekends, house-sit, that kind of thing,’ says Chrissy, a former legal secretary who was enjoying the single life in Brentwood, Essex at the time. ‘That’s when I met Ben.’
Ben Jones, a dentist, had bought Fox Hill House, the property right next door to Matthew’s and was completely renovating the impressive 1920s building. Chrissy’s family had been winding her up about getting together with the boy next door, but she wasn’t interested.
‘I was so against it,’ she says. ‘I had such a good social life at the time and men are a bit of an aggravation, aren’t they?
‘But then it was Christmas Day 2018 and Ben popped in for a drink,’ says Chrissy. ‘I opened the door and he had such a lovely, smiley face that, well, it was love at first sight for me!
‘He was so lovely. He said, hi, I’m Ben. And I said, oh yeah, Ben, we’re going to fall in love, get married and have babies. He was like, yeah, that’s the one. And that was it, really.’
Chrissy moved into Fox Hill House just a few months later after a whirlwind romance. The couple went on to get engaged and now have two children.
‘Well, I don’t like to overthink things!’ says Chrissy. ‘At the time, it felt right and it was a good move, although, on reflection, it was just before winter. We moved in and I think it rained for about 11 weeks. It was miserable, absolutely miserable. And then we had lockdown.’
Living in a half-finished house in these conditions would be enough to test even the most established of partnerships. But this one worked. Chrissy says it was helped by the fact that Ben had done most of the hard graft – and endured some nightmare challenges with tradesmen etc – before she’d even arrived on the scene. When she moved in, the kitchen was picked, the floors were down and the bathrooms sorted.
‘I basically came in time for the soft furnishings,’ she says, laughing. ‘And as we all know, that’s the best bit. Up until then it was very much Ben making all these big decisions, and to be fair, there’s not much I would have done differently. Although, we didn’t speak for three days after a disagreement about a toilet seat.’ (She wanted grey, he’d already picked out walnut.) ‘We did butt heads sometimes,’ she adds. ‘But he’s very, very good at building and DIY. There are some things I said no to that he really wanted and now I regret it. I’d like to say vice versa, but he won’t admit that!’
Whoever did what, Fox Hill House is a superb, functional family home with a dreamy view that goes on and on and on. The glassy, modern side of the house allows all of that outside to pour in, wherever you’re stood. You can see the Dartmoor rain coming in from miles away, watch the wind take hold and then bask in the sunshine – usually within the space of an hour, such is life up here.
The other side of the house is cosy and curvy and more grown-up, especially the lounge area, with its dark and moody tones and floor-to-ceiling bar (handmade by Ben).
‘It’s funny because my previous house was a little two-up, two-down cottage and it basically looked like Laura Ashley had thrown up in there,’ says Chrissy. ‘It’s a little bit more contemporary here. I’m usually a bit more chintzy.’
The compromise works well, especially when there are young kids about. Chrissy says they all love living here and she can’t imagine being anywhere else. Sadly, she lost both of her parents last year and wants to stay where they knew she was happy. It’s difficult to ignore the strong family connection to this little piece of Dartmoor paradise.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to move now,’ says Chrissy. ‘It’s such an amazing place to be.’ .
In good company
According to local historians, some eminent women have lived or holidayed in this unique hamlet at Haytor Vale. One house belonged to wealthy heiress and philanthropist Dame Violet Wills, daughter of Sir Edward Payson Wills of the WH Wills tobacco empire. Dame Violet’s sister, Ella Rowcroft (née Wills) was also thought to have stayed there. Ella Rowcroft helped to fund the building of Torbay Hospital and later, a convalescent home for women and children. It later became Rowcroft Hospice.
Other notable Haytor Vale visitors included suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter Christabel and Catherine Booth-Clibborn, daughter of Salvation Army founder, William Booth.
Photos: Poppy Jakes Photography
