The Valley of Rocks Hotel: The Last of the Great Hotels

Apart from the stunning natural beauty of the scenery, one of the things that make Lynton, Lynmouth and Lynbridge exceptional is some amazing Victorian architecture. As tourism grew in the 19th century and the number of wealthy people wished to retire here multiplied, unique buildings were constructed and remain to this day as a memorial to a bygone age of style, grandeur and imagination. Probably the greatest example of these is the Valley of Rocks Hotel.

It was the poet Robert Southey, the friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who first described these villages as being like Switzerland, as a way of helping readers to imagine the surrounding steep rocky crags and hills and the rushing rivers and waterfalls that tumble down the coombes to the sea. The idea took root so that the houses and hotels that were built during the building boom in the latter part of the nineteenth century included many architectural features from Switzerland, Germany and Austria. That is why so many have balconies with ornamental wooden balustrades, eaves are deep and barge boards are richly carved, just like Swiss chalets. Many buildings have ornamented gabled dormer windows poking out of steep roofs, and turrets with pointed tops abound.

The Victorian middle classes loved eccentric buildings that created a fantasy world and thus Little Switzerland became a kind of Victorian stage set. The Lyn & Exmoor Museum has a collection of plans, found in a builder’s workshop, that enable us to study some of these wonderful architectural creations in more detail. In fact I was lucky enough to find my own house’s original plans among them.

Perhaps the most wonderful and most ambitious building of the period was the Valley of Rocks Hotel. In recent times we have lost a number of our great hotels: the great flood of 1952 swept some away; fire accounted for much of the Royal Castle Hotel, which was then rebuilt as flats; the old Imperial and Tors hotels have gone the same way as the Castle and are now also flats. But the Valley of Rocks is still here and still a hotel! 

The original building was constructed in 1807 by William Litson who had previously built The Globe Inn. It was sited at the top of the village, next to St Mary’s Church, and commanded a magnificent view over Lynmouth Bay. In those early days it was not much more than a comfortable inn for the wealthy early tourists who struggled across Exmoor on horseback and coach, or arrived by sea. As time went by, the hotel was extended and then in 1889 the oldest section (that closest to the church) was pulled down and replaced by the marvellous fantasy building which in outward appearance was part French chateau, part Swiss castle and even had a small steeple on top such as one sees on Tyrolean churches. Outside, formal gardens stretched down the hill to the North Walk and grass tennis courts were laid out so that visitors could play sport against a magnificent scenic backdrop.