This is the stable block at Knightshayes Court, which now houses the reception area, restaurant and National Trust shop. The main house is around 150 yards away and is most impressive! The house was commissioned by Sir John Heathcoat-Amory in 1867 and the foundation stone laid in 1869. By 1874, the building was complete.

The fortunes of the Heathcoat-Amory family were founded in the early nineteenth century. John Heathcoat was born into a Derbyshire farming family in 1783. An inventor of genius, he designed and patented a machine that revolutionised the production of lace. His factory destroyed in the Luddite revolt of 1816, he moved his basis of manufacture, and a large number of his workers, to Tiverton, Devon and there established a lace-works which, by the later part of the nineteenth century, was the largest lace-producing manufactory in the world. (It was his grandson, John, who 'built' Knightshayes Court.)

(N.B. This image is precisely geotagged for your further enjoyment.)