Berry Head House (now used as the Berry Head Hotel) is a large detached house in

Brixham Brixham is a coastal town and civil parish, the smallest and southernmost of the three main population centres (the others being Paignton and Torquay) on the coast of Torbay in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. Commercial fish ...

, England. It is

listed Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

on the National Heritage List for England. Berry Head Hotel (from water)

History

The building was originally built in 1809 by the Board of Ordinance as a military hospital in support of the three Napoleonic war forts on

Berry Head Berry Head is a coastal headland that forms the southern boundary of Tor Bay in Devon, England. Lying to the east of the town of Brixham, it is a national nature reserve and a local nature reserve. Berry Head To Sharkham Point is a Site of Sp ...

. Later it became the home of the hymnist and poet

Henry Francis Lyte Henry Francis Lyte (1 June 1793 – 20 November 1847) was an Anglican divine, hymnodist, and poet. Biography Youth and education Henry Francis Lyte was the second son of Thomas and Anna Maria (née Oliver) Lyte, whose family came originally fr ...

who turned the building into a country house and bought the surrounding lands.

Library

In the ground of the property, Lyte wrote the words to the Hymn "

Abide with Me "Abide with Me" is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican cleric Henry Francis Lyte. A prayer for God to stay with the speaker throughout life and in death, it was written by Lyte in 1847 as he was dying from tuberculosis. It is most often sung ...

" and " Praise, my soul, the King of heaven". Lyte built up a library in the house which was described as "one of the most valuable libraries in the Southwest of England". The library took 17 days of auctions to sell in London.

Ownership

The building was also the home to the photographer

Farnham Maxwell-Lyte Farnham Maxwell-Lyte FRSC (sometimes Farnham Maxwell Lyte) (10 January 1828 – 4 March 1906) was an English chemist and the pioneer of a number of techniques in photographic processing. As a photographer he is known for his views of the Frenc ...

and was linked to Sir Henry Churchill Maxwell-Lyte.

Evelyn George Martin Commander Evelyn George Martin (22 March 1881 – 27 April 1945) was a British sailor, writer and cricketer. He was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he was awarded a cricket Blue, and served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve ...

a guest of Lyte family, and lived at Berry Head between his school terms at Eton College. A plaque was unveiled in May 2013 to commemorate Martin's time spend at the house. The house remained with Lyte's descendants until 1949 when it was turned into the Berry Head Hotel. The house was sold by James Arthur Palmes, only surviving son of Arthur Lindsay Palmes and Alice Massingberd Maxwell Hogg (granddaughter of HF Lyte) but other parts of the estate were sold off later, including the Berry Head Forts and Headland. Berry Head Farmhouse was sold by the family in the 1990s.

Hotel

The hotel is currently run by a company called the Berry Head Hotel Limited and owned by the Bence Family.

References

{{coord, 50, 24, 2.9, N, 3, 29, 40.7, W, type:landmark, display=title Brixham Grade II listed buildings in Devon Grade II listed houses Defunct hospitals in England 1803 establishments in England