Great House, Colyton

[1] It is situated on the south-east side of the town of Colyton, on the road leading to Lyme Regis,[2] today called South Street.

John Swete (d. 1821) who passed through Colyton in 1795 on one of his Picturesque Tours, tradition states that after the Duke of Monmouth landed on Torbay at Lyme Regis on 11 June 1685, at the commencement of his ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion, he proceeded to Colyton and was secreted in Great House, then still occupied by Sir Walter Yonge, 3rd Baronet, whose new house at Escot was not completed until after the Rebellion.

The Yonge and Pole families, closely related through the Peryams, and both resident in the parish of Colyton, had long competed with each other to win one of the two Parliamentary seats of the nearby Rotten Borough of Honiton, an electorate which expected to be bought by generous bribes which over time proved exorbitant to candidates.

[16][17] Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet (1731–1812) stated that "he had inherited £80,000, his wife brought him a like amount, Government had paid him £80,000, but Honiton had swallowed it all".

[19] The Devon historian Polwhele (d. 1838) opined that Great House "seems to be the best building in the place" (i.e. town of Colyton), and continued: "It is something singular that Sir W. Pole who lived in this parish, should have taken no notice of the property of the Yonge family, which was very considerable".