Cadhay Manor

A Tudor manor house one mile northwest of Ottery St Mary, built in 1546 and notable for its remarkable Court of Monarchs — a courtyard with stone portrait heads of Henry VIII and his three children who became English monarchs, carved in the 1580s and still in situ. The house itself is one of the finest examples of Tudor domestic architecture in Devon, built of the warm red sandstone typical of the county.

Cadhay is open to the public on summer weekends and Bank Holidays, with guided tours of the principal rooms and the gardens. The great hall, with its original 16th-century roof timbers, is particularly impressive. The gardens are informal and include a kitchen garden and a short woodland walk. The house gives a more intimate experience of Tudor domestic life than the grander stately homes because it has been continuously owned and maintained by private families rather than the National Trust.

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A story
Cadhay was built by John Haydon in 1546, the year he married Joan Cadhay, and the courtyard he added in the 1580s contains a remarkable series of sculptures: the heads of Henry VIII and his three children who became monarchs — Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I — carved in stone and set into niches above the four doors of the courtyard. The court of Monarchs, as it is now called, is unusual not only for its completeness but for its political audacity — having Henry VIII and all three of his successive royal children represented together in stone was an assertion of dynastic loyalty that required careful timing in the volatile politics of the 16th century.