Wylam House — A Romantic Victorian Italianate Villa above Torbay

Christie & Torquay

Within Christie’s
earliest world.

By the closing years of the nineteenth century, Wylam House had been renamed Kya Lami by its owner, Frederick Pine Theophilus Struben, who purchased the property shortly after settling in Torquay in the early 1890s. Kya Lami, a Zulu phrase meaning ‘My Home’, reflected Struben’s South African heritage.

Frederick and his brother, Harry Struben, were among the pioneers of the Central Rand goldfields in South Africa during the early 1880s. Their discoveries and subsequent mining interests brought them considerable wealth, enabling Frederick to establish his new home overlooking Torbay.

By the time Struben arrived in Torquay, the house and its owner became part of the same social and civic world as Frederick Alvah Miller, Agatha Christie’s father. Miller had settled in Torquay in 1878 following his marriage to Clara Boehmer and, by the 1890s, was a respected and well-established figure in the town.

The Miller and Struben families moved within many of the same social circles. They shared membership of prominent local institutions, including the Royal Torquay Yacht Club, attended one another’s ‘At Home’ gatherings and other social entertainments, and participated in the civic and charitable life of Torquay. Both households also had young families, with Agatha Christie having been born in 1890.

The connection between the two families continued to echo many years later. In 1922, while travelling around the British Empire with her husband, Archie Christie, Agatha wrote to her mother describing an unexpected encounter in South Africa — the letter excerpted above. Looking across a hotel lobby, she recognised a woman as a niece of Frederick Struben — a remarkable reminder that the families’ acquaintance in Torquay was still vivid more than thirty years later.

The connection is reinforced by a letter written by Agatha Christie’s father, Frederick Alvah Miller, to her mother Clara in 1901:

“The Strubens gave a large ‘At Home’ yesterday with the string band of the Marines from Plymouth.”

More than a century later, after considering this letter alongside Agatha’s reference to the Strubens during her 1922 Grand Tour, Joe Keogh offered this assessment:

“It’s almost impossible to think that Agatha hadn’t at some point been a guest at Kya Lami, or the Strubens guests of Ashfield.”

Joe Keogh, The Christie Archive Trust, in correspondence with George Berg, January 2025

No surviving record has yet been found that documents a particular visit. Nevertheless, the correspondence places the Miller and Struben families firmly within the same Torquay social world.

The Gardens

Two and a half acres
of formal romance.

Surrounding the house on three sides, the gardens at Wylam are among the most quietly extraordinary in South Devon. Laid out in the Victorian tradition — formal in structure, romantic in planting — they move through a series of distinct spaces: the upper terrace, the walled garden, the long lawn that falls toward the bay.

The position gives them something rare: a garden that looks out to sea. On a clear morning Torbay is visible from the rose walk; in the late afternoon the light comes at an angle across the borders that is particular to this stretch of the Devon coast.

The mild microclimate — sheltered by the house and the hillside — allows planting that would not survive further north. Palms, tree ferns, bougainvillea. A garden that surprises.

2.5

Acres of garden

1860s

Original layout

180°

Sea views

Staying at Wylam

Five days.
Four to six guests.

Between May and September, Wylam House opens for a limited number of privately hosted stays. Not conventional bookings — carefully arranged visits for small groups who value architectural character, literary context, coastal calm, and personal hosting. Each stay takes exclusive use of the three sea-view rooms.

The Wylam Suite — the private roof terrace overlooking Torbay

The Wylam Suite

Four-poster · Bay window · Very large private roof terrace · Panoramic sea views

Bay View Room I

Four-poster & canopy · Crystal chandelier · Period en-suite

Bay View Room II

Four-poster with gold drapes · Panoramic bay views

Days

4–6

Guests per stay

Sea-view rooms

May–Sep

Season

Fully inclusive: airport transfers, breakfasts and selected dinners, a guided literary exploration of Torquay, a privately arranged visit to Greenway, time in the gardens, and evenings hosted by George and Caroline. Everything arranged.

Enquire About a Stay

or call 07836 684595

Five Days at Wylam

Five days shaped
by the house and its coast.

Each stay unfolds at its own pace, but a five-day stay at Wylam typically moves between the house, the town, the water, and the moor beyond. What follows is the shape of it — a fuller day-by-day itinerary is prepared for each visit.

Day I

Arrival at Wylam

Airport collection and a first afternoon at the house. Tea on the terrace, a walk through the gardens as the light shifts across the bay, and dinner at Wylam with George and Caroline.

Day II

Christie’s Torquay

A guided walk through the town Agatha grew up in — Ashfield and the Miller world, the Grand Hotel, the harbour, the Royal Torquay Yacht Club that both families knew. Lunch in Torquay; return to Wylam for the afternoon.

Day III

Greenway & the Dart

A privately arranged visit to Greenway, Christie’s summer home on the Dart, and the river itself — boat down to Dartmouth, lunch on the water, and the slow way back.

Day IV

South Devon & the Steam Railway

A journey on the Dartmouth Steam Railway along the coast between Paignton and Kingswear, with time in the South Devon countryside. An unhurried afternoon at the house before a literary evening at Wylam.

Day V

A Last Day on the Bay

A morning shaped to the guests — the coast path, the gardens, or simply the terrace and the sea. A farewell lunch at Wylam before onward travel.

Every itinerary is arranged privately for each stay. Meals, drives, boats and evenings are shaped to the interests of the guests in the house during the stay.

Literary Evenings at Wylam

An intimate
private salon.

Some evenings at Wylam are unlike any other. Inspired by the literary gatherings and elegant salons of late Victorian Torquay, guests may be invited to an intimate black-tie evening within the house. Champagne is served on the terrace overlooking Torbay as the sun sets, before the company gathers in the drawing room by candlelight.

These are not appearances or public events, but private evenings shared with a small circle of invited local historians, authors, artists, collectors and friends connected with the cultural life of the English Riviera. Conversation flows as naturally as the wine — from Agatha Christie and her family, to the pioneering story of Frederick P. T. Struben and the South African goldfields, to the architecture and personalities that shaped Edwardian Torquay.

Selected evenings feature readings from Agatha Christie’s letters and memoirs, together with extracts from contemporary diaries, newspapers and private correspondence that illuminate the social world shared by the Miller and Struben families. On other evenings, a guest speaker may offer an insight into literature, history or the heritage of Devon.

Recent guests have included Andrew Wilson, author of the acclaimed Agatha Christie mystery series, and Rachel Trethewey, biographer of Clara Miller, Agatha Christie’s mother. Selected local writers, historians and friends are also welcomed, and the character of each evening is shaped as much by the company in the room as by any programme.

With only a handful of guests gathered around the fire or beneath the stars on the terrace, these evenings are deliberately intimate. Not lectures — conversations. An opportunity to meet fascinating people, exchange ideas and experience Wylam as a living house rather than simply a place to stay.

In many respects, they continue the atmosphere that once characterised Kya Lami, when Frederick Struben welcomed guests from Torquay society into his home. More than a century later, that tradition of hospitality, conversation and friendship continues.

Select Weeks May through September

A Literary Evening at Wylam

Champagne on the terrace at sunset
Black-tie dinner in the drawing room
Readings and conversation by candlelight
An intimate circle of writers, historians and friends
A living tradition of hospitality at Wylam

Enquire About a Stay

Your Hosts

George and
Caroline.

Wylam House is our home. We have spent years restoring its proportions and looking after its gardens, and we open it now — for a small handful of weeks each summer — to guests who care about the kind of thing it is.

A stay at Wylam is hosted by us personally, from the moment you step out of the car. We arrange the days, cook some of the meals, walk the gardens with you, and quietly hand you the keys to the kind of literary Torquay that doesn’t exist in guidebooks.

“For five days, you are our house guests rather than hotel guests.”

If that sounds like the kind of stay you’re looking for, please do write.

— George & Caroline

Plan a Stay

By enquiry
only.

Wylam House remains a private residence. Stays are offered on a limited and enquiry-only basis during the summer months.

Please write below to express interest in a forthcoming visit. All enquiries are handled personally by George and Caroline.

✆

07836 684595

◎

@wylamhouse on Instagram

Thank you. George and Caroline will be in touch shortly.

An unaltered villa,
perched above the bay.

Within Christie’s
earliest world.

Two and a half acres
of formal romance.

Where the garden
comes inside.