MDE21072 - Holiday or Hollerday Hill House, Lynton (Monument)

The site is clear on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map. [1] The 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map and the 6 inch 1903 map show Holiday Hill House. [2,3] On the 6 inch (1962) map this area is shown as grassland. [4] An image available online shows the house as ruinous in 1932. [5] However, one man more than any other had a major influence on Lynton. This was George Newnes, the publisher, a pioneer of popular journalism who established the Strand Magazine which first published, in instalments, many of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. George Newnes had a large house built above Lynton on Hollerday Hill in 1893… He died somewhat prematurely in 1910, having given away much of his fortune, and is buried at Lynton. Hollerday House was mysteriously destroyed by fire in 1913 and the grounds subsequently presented by JW Holman for public use. On the slope of Hollerday Hill, a prominent feature from within Lynton, there is a wider mix of species, including several types of conifer. Some of these would have been planted within the grounds of Hollerday House, built for George Newnes in the 1880s, but destroyed by fire in 1913 and never rebuilt. [6] In 1991, the terrace of Hollerday House was dedicated to the people of Benouville, a town twinned with Lynton. A small section of dry stone walling surmounted with a slate slab and dedication board was erected to commemorate this. [7] To the east of the Town Hall a drive leds up to the site of Newnes own house on Hollerday Hill. Following the fire of 1913, the house was levelled and all that remains now is a pile of rubble in the woodland. [8]