Agatha Christie’s holiday home open to the public
The National Trust is opening up author Agatha Christie’s Greenway House in Devon for the first time
Crime novelist Agatha Christie’s holiday retreat in Devon will be opened to the public for the first time on Saturday, following a £5.4-million restoration by the National Trust.
Christie bought Greenway House, near Dartmouth, in 1938, and it was her holiday home until 1959. The house was then given to the Trust in 2000.
Previously, the house was occupied by Christie’s husband and daughter, with only the estate open to the public, but following their deaths in 2005 and 2004 respectively, the Trust has set about restoring the property to its 1950s heyday, as Christie would have known it. The work is not yet complete, so the public will be able to witness the final stage of the re-creation process.
Christie’s bedroom, dining room and ‘fax room’, displaying her novels, will all be on show, as well as the drawing room in which she spent summer evenings reading her work to family and friends.
Mathew Prichard, Christie’s grandson, hopes that visitors ‘feel some of the magic and sense of place that I felt when my family and I spent so much time there in the 1950s and 1960s. If they do then our gift of Greenway will be worthwhile’.
Robyn Brown, National Trust property manager for Greenway, says: ‘It has been an enormous and expensive task. But I hope that visitors will enjoy [the house] in the way that many of the previous owners have done—as a family holiday home in which parties have congregated and celebrated a combined interest in gardens, a love for travel, literature and music, as well as the beauty and inspiration of Devon.’
Because of traffic restrictions and limited parking, visitors are being encouraged to arrive at Greenway in Green ways. These include a ferry from Dartmouth to the quay below the house, or by cycling or walking. The house also has a ground-source heat pump and humidity control in the showrooms, solar panels to provide hot water and an air-to-water heat pump in the reception area.
Greenway House will be open to the public from Saturday, February 28 on Wednesdays to Sundays, from 10:30am to 5pm. For more information, telephone 01803 842382 or visit Greenway House.
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