Doddiscombsleigh, Devon: 'A happy haven amid tiny twisting lanes'

The picturesque Dartmoor village of Doddiscombsleigh is picked out by Annunciata Elwes.

Mist rising over the Teign Valley at Doddiscombsleigh.
Mist rising over the Teign Valley at Doddiscombsleigh.
(Image credit: Alamy)
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So hard to find you’d be forgiven for calling it Brigadoon, the village of Doddiscombsleigh is a happy haven amid tiny twisting lanes in the Haldon Hills. The 15th-century stained glass in St Michael’s Church is second to none but that at Exeter Cathedral.

A winged angel revealing the secrets of eternal life to John the Divine, Church of St. Michael, Doddiscombsleigh, Devon.

The award-winning NoBody Inn — so-named for its 1950s landlord whose mourners accidentally buried an empty coffin — used to fill the bellies of 18th-century manganese miners.

The NoBody Inn.

It now does the same for locals and visitors lucky enough to find the place among the mists of Dartmoor.

Osea Island.
(Image credit: Alamy)

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The ancient yew trees in Kingley Vale.
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

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Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.

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