A la Ronde, Devon

This unique sixteen-sided house, described by Lucinda Lambton as having 'a magical strangeness that one might dream of only as a child', was built for two spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter, on their return from a grand tour of Europe in the late 18th century. It contains many objects and mementoes of their travels. The extraordinary interior decoration includes a feature frieze and a fragile shell-encrusted gallery, said to contain nearly 25,000 shells, which can be viewed in its entirety on closed-circuit television.