According to the Devon historian Pole (d.1635) it was originally a priory,[3] however research from 1840[4] onwards has suggested it was more likely merely a grange farm, a possession of St John’s Hospital, Bridgwater, Somerset, from 1216.

[8] The earliest recorded secular inhabitant of Indio was John Southcott (d.1556), who in the words of the Devon historian Pole (d.1635): "Bwilded a fayre howse & dwelled theire".

[28] Nicholas Crisp arrived in Bovey Tracey in 1767 intending to produce porcelain[28] to rival the output of the well-established Staffordshire Potteries.

[28] the next manager was William Ellis, and it was his operation at Indio which was visited by the great Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood in 1775, on his way to inspect the potteries in Cornwall.

In his diary he recorded his unflattering opinion of the factory: "It is a poor trifling concern & conducted in a wretched slovenly manner".

[28] In 1785 Indio Pottery was insolvent and unable to pay wages, and was in a "reduced and declining state suffering continual loss".

Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland had accompanied William Henry, Prince of Orange to England during the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

George William Pierrepont Bentinck (1803-1886), son, of Terrington St Clement in Norfolk, a Member of Parliament, died unmarried aged 82.

The resultant house, which survives today, was described by Pevsner as "Austere Tudor relieved by romantic crenellated chimney-stacks".

[34] Above the front door is a datestone inscribed "1850" with the initials "CAB", with the arms of Bentinck and the family's motto Craignez Honte ("fear disgrace"[35]).

[5] His first wife died in 1853, aged 35, only 4 years after their marriage, and is commemorated by a mural monument in Bovey Tracey Church.

His grandson, Nicholas Chulapat Nakorn (born 1956), whose father originated in Thailand, is the author of Blood in the River, which relates his experiences growing up as a mixed-race child in rural England, and describes his childhood holidays at Indio.