Born and raised in Torquay in Devon, the legendary crime writer Dame Agatha Christie never lost her love for the area, and it provided her with almost endless inspiration.
2026 marks 50 years since her death, from which vantage point is it clear to see how her life story and inspirations were influenced by Devon in innumerable ways. The connection is indelibly made with many evocative Devonshire buildings and places, not least her abiding holiday home of Greenway House near Brixham (listed at Grade II*).
Early life around Torquay and Paignton
Agatha May Clarissa Miller was born at Ashfield in Torquay on 15 September 1890. The house was demolished in the 1960s, but the Church of All Saints, Torre (listed at Grade II) where she was christened, and which her father Fred Miller had helped pay for, still stands and boasts a blue plaque in her honour.
Agatha Miller enjoyed a privileged and happy childhood, and explored the surrounding area including Kents Cavern (a Scheduled Monument and part of the English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark), which proved an inspiration in the early novel ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’ (1924).
Torquay and Paignton were booming seaside resorts during Christie’s young adulthood and she is known to have enjoyed the entertainments at the concert hall, cinema and theatre at Torquay Pavilion (Grade II), which opened in 1912 and at Paignton Picturehouse (Grade II*), opened in 1914. Both buildings are undergoing extensive repair and restoration in 2026, part-funded through public grants, including from Historic England.
Nearby Cockington Village (a conservation area designated by Torbay Council) is credited with being, at least in part, the fictional village of St Mary’s Mead in all 12 of her famous Miss Marple novels. Christie was a friend of the Mallock family of Cockington Court (Grade II*) and took enthusiastic part in amateur theatrics there, as recounted with affection in her autobiography. Two of her most famous novels are dedicated to members of the Mallock family.
Inspiration from Devon’s beaches and islands
A slightly curious, but much recounted, fact was that Agatha Christie was bitten by the surfing bug at a relatively early stage in the sport’s history, while on travels in South Africa in 1922. However, while she regularly swam off the local beaches around Torquay, she is not known to have actually surfed the relatively low waves along the Devon south coast. The beaches did provide the locale for many adventures and misfortunes in her novels, though, notably in ‘Why Didn’t They ask Evans?’ (1934), which begins with the discovery of a corpse at the bottom of a cliff.
The island setting of ‘And Then There Were None’ (1939) and the Hercule Poirot mystery ‘Evil Under the Sun’ (1941) was based on Burgh Island in the South Hams to the west of Torquay. The resplendent Art Deco Burgh Island Hotel is listed at Grade II and its owner in the 1920s and 30s was Archie Nettlefold, a film and theatre impresario who became a friend of Christie. She stayed on the island and wrote some of her novels in a hut there, hence the island’s special place in her novels.
Greenway House
It was in this period that she found, and fell in love with, Greenway House and its estate. It is, perhaps, the most significant place in Devon for Christie and her dramas. However, during the Second World War it was given up, first as a home for children evacuees, and then as barracks for the US Coastguard. The latter use resulted in a splendid narrative frieze that was painted in the library by Lieutenant Marshall Lee, and which is now included in a refreshed List entry for the building in recognition of this historically significant phase in the building’s history. Christie would call the library frieze her “living war memorial”.
The site of Greenway House was an important historic location long before 1938, when Christie chose it for her country retreat. The estate is first recorded as “La Grenewey” in 1328, and a Tudor court building was constructed in around 1530 by Otho Gilbert of Compton Castle (Grade I) on his marriage to Katharine Champernowne.
The Gilberts and Champernownes were high ranking Devonshire families who became influential in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Some of them became significant members of the ‘West Country Men’, who grew their fortunes in notorious endeavours in Ireland and overseas that would establish colonial trading systems, including enslavement, that endured for the centuries to come. One of their number, Humphrey Gilbert, was likely born at Greenway Court and made the first land claim in North America for England, at Newfoundland in 1583.
Greenway Court was replaced with the current house in 1780-90 by new owner Roope Harris Roope. However, one remaining feature of the older building at Greenway is an early 17th century overmantel in the Winter Dining Room. This was found at a nearby auction in 1964 by Christie’s husband Max Mallowan and her son-in-law Anthony Hicks. It shows a scene from the Book of Daniel in the Bible: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. It is a rare surviving example of what would have been a popular decorative item in prestigious country houses of the day.
Agatha Christie bought Greenway under the name “Mrs Max Mallowan”, presumably to retain some privacy from her fandom: she actively avoided publicity throughout her life. This was to be her family ‘home from home’ and although Greenway appears in two of her novels, ‘Five ‘Little Pigs’ (1943) and ‘Dead Man’s Folly’ (1956), she did not write books there. Perhaps that would have tainted the domestic harmony that she enjoyed in the house and its opulent grounds, overlooking the scenic River Dart. Instead, she reserved her meditations on crime for her hut at Burgh Island, and at her other house in Oxfordshire.
At Greenway, Christie and (Prof Sir) Max Mallowan, who was an influential archaeologist, restored the Georgian character of the house with the help of architect Guilford Bell and furnished it in a suitable country house style. An inventory of the furniture was taken when the Admiralty took over those during the Second World War, and this record has helped the National Trust ensure that the house today remains an accurate representation of the Christie and Mallowan home for visitors to enjoy.
The fittings and fixtures are the centrepiece of the Greenway Collection, which includes many artefacts and treasures that Mallowan brought back from his digs in Iraq and Syria. Christie accompanied him on numerous visits, herself becoming a knowledgeable and experienced archaeologist. Her travels to what was then known as ‘the Near East’ was rich source material for her books. Using her artistic licence her depictions of ‘locals’ in far off hot, bustling marketplaces seem quite severe to the modern reader, but helped to create a menacing atmosphere populated by ‘suspicious’ minor characters in her thrillers.
The view that her attitude to other cultures and peoples was negative could be at odds with the delight with which she and her husband curated the Greenway Collection, which is representative of an emerging modern post-colonial world view that contrasts with the late medieval privateering and courtly intrigues of the Gilberts and Champernownes of Greenway Court.
The grounds
Beyond the house are beautiful grounds (on the Register of Parks and Gardens at Grade II) containing many hidden delights that were curated and adapted by Christie and Mallowan, including a coach house, walled gardens, a boathouse and a gun battery, interspersed with delightful smaller structures and planting that combine to offer some Devon heaven that feels a world away from the devilish deeds usually associated with Agatha Christie.
Conservation and legacy of Greenway House
In the 21st century, the National Trust has lovingly conserved and presented Greenway House and Estate to the public as a handsome and evocative country house ensemble that can be viewed through the prism of many cultures, periods and people, as with so many of our national treasures. Its history and significance are akin to Christie’s complex plotlines; layered and offering a collection of meanings and surprises to each of us who venture there. To many it remains as she christened it: “the loveliest place in the world”.
If you would like to know more about any of the listed buildings, or other protected historic places mentioned in this blog, there are links in the text. Also, why not consider adding your own photos as part of our ‘Missing Pieces’ project.
Further reading
- National Trust: Visit Greenway
- Visit Kents Cavern
- Paignton Picturehouse website
- Burgh Island website: History of Agatha Christie and Burgh Island
- Devon Historic Environment Record information on Greenway House
Worth linking to the List entry for Abney Hall, Cheadle (Stockport); https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1241730. Links between Christie and the house are explained here: https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/Abney_Hall.