Endsleigh Cottage

The house was built between 1810 and 1816 [2] by John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, as a private family residence, to the designs of Sir Jeffry Wyatville, in the style of the picturesque movement, and is a grand form of the cottage orné.

Hussey described it as "the outstanding and probably most nearly perfect surviving instance of a romantic cottage orné, devised for an aristocratic owner under the influence of the taste for the picturesque".

The buildings in the grounds include the Shell Grotto, a polygonal summer-house and the Swiss Cottage, restored by the Landmark Trust with a thatched roof.

Also, the Dairy Dell, by Repton, Pond Cottages by a pool and the octagonal Dairy surrounded by a loggia, and the Holy Well, part of which is an ancient structure formerly situated at Leigh Barton, and used as the baptismal font of the hunting seat of the Abbots of Tavistock Abbey.

Hastings Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford died in 1953, aged 64, as a result of a gunshot wound in the grounds of Endsleigh.