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Agatha Christie's Greenway

Greenway House

Greenway, now owned by the National Trust, was the holiday home for Agatha Christie and her family. She said it was 'the loveliest place in the world'. It was filled with items brought from Ashfield, Agatha's childhood home, and from their travels and extensive collections.

Greenway was used as the setting for her novels Five Little Pigs (1942) and Dead Man's Folly (1956). It was also used as the location for the TV version of Dead Man's Folly starring David Suchet as the private investigator, Hercule Poirot.

Some of my descriptions of scenes in these books might be considered as spoilers so I have shown them as block quotes.

In Dead Man's Folly, Ariadne Oliver (Agatha Christie's representation of herself) is asked to devise a murder hunt for a Devon féte, but her sense of foreboding makes her ask for Hercule Poirot's help.

After you enter Greenway and on your way to the drawing room, you will notice two portraits of Agatha Christie. One, painted when she was very young...

Young Agatha

...and another as a young woman.

Agatha Christie

From there, you enter the drawing room.

Drawing room

The dining room is at the back of the house.

Dining room

A footpath leads down from the house towards the River Dart. As you descend you will pass a statue of the Buddha.

Statue of the Buddha

When you reach the bottom of the footpath, you start to get views across the River Dart.

View across the River Dart

As you approach the boathouse, you pass the battery where the murder occurs in Five Little Pigs.

The Battery

The boathouse is where a body is found in Dead Man's Folly.

The Boathouse

In Dead Man's Folly, the owners of the house are concerned about trespassers.

Don't Land or Trespass

I didn't find a 'folly' anywhere when I visited Greenway.


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