Short answer: Two different things get called Christmas lunch, and the gap between them is enormous. A <strong>festive lunch</strong> any day in December is around <strong>£34 a head</strong>. <strong>Christmas Day itself</strong> in Devon runs from about <strong>£79 to £175 a head</strong>, with children charged in age bands. Deposits are usually taken at booking and most kitchens want your pre-order weeks ahead. If you have not booked by the end of November you are choosing from what is left.
This is the whole page, really, and almost nobody says it plainly.
A festive lunch is the Christmas menu served on ordinary days through December. Three courses, crackers, a turkey option. Elfordleigh near Plymouth does theirs daily through December, 12 to 5pm, at £33.95 a head with a £10 deposit and a pre-order. That is the typical shape and the typical price across the county.
Christmas Day lunch is the 25th itself, and it is a different product at a different price. The kitchen is open on the one day of the year everyone else is shut, staff are on premium pay, and it is a single sitting window rather than a service. You are not paying four times as much for a better turkey.
If you have searched "Christmas lunch Devon", seen £35 and budgeted for that, the bill on the day will be a shock. Check which one you are booking.
Three real Devon examples, checked on 9 November 2026 against each venue’s own page. They bracket the market fairly.
The Dartmouth Hotel, Golf & Spa — £79 per adult, £39.50 for under-12s. Three courses, served between 12.30pm and 3pm, pre-booking required.
The Devon Hotel, Exeter — £175 per adult. Children are banded by age: 0 to 2 years £35, 3 to 7 years £55, 8 to 12 years £87.50.
Elfordleigh, near Plymouth — the £33.95 figure above is their festive lunch, not Christmas Day; their Christmas Day menu is priced separately.
So the honest range for Christmas Day in Devon is roughly £79 to £175 a head, with most hotels sitting between £95 and £130. A family of four with two primary-school children is realistically £250 to £450 depending where you go.
Worth its own heading, because it is where the budget goes wrong. Venues band children by age rather than charging a flat child rate, and the top band is close to adult money. At the Devon Hotel an eight-year-old is £87.50 — half the adult price, but more than the entire adult price at the Dartmouth Hotel.
If you have children of mixed ages, get the bands in writing before you pay a deposit. Two venues at the same headline adult price can differ by a hundred pounds once the children are counted.
Nearly every Devon venue takes a deposit at the point of booking, commonly £10 to £25 a head and often non-refundable. Expect to pay the balance in early December.
Most kitchens want a pre-order — every person’s three courses chosen in advance, typically two to four weeks ahead. That is the deadline people miss: the table is booked, the pre-order form is not returned, and the booking is released.
By the second week of December the good sittings have gone. The 12.30pm and 1pm slots go first, and what is left late is the 3pm sitting, which with small children is not the same day out.
Check the page is for this year. All three venues above publish a Christmas page with no year on it. One of them had a 2026-labelled brochure attached to undated prices. If the year is not stated, ring and ask rather than assuming the price you can see is the price you will pay.
Check the venue still exists. Future Inn Plymouth appears on Christmas Day lunch roundups and has been sold and closed; it is reopening as a Premier Inn. Listings sites lag by a season or more.
Ask what happens if you cancel, and whether the deposit moves to another date. Most are non-refundable.
Ask about the sitting, not just the time. A single sitting means the table is yours for the afternoon. Two sittings means you have about two hours.
Very little else is open on Christmas Day in Devon, so eating out is close to the only option if you are not cooking. Supermarkets shut, almost all attractions shut, and so do the pubs that are not doing a booked lunch.
Boxing Day is the easier day to eat out: far more pubs open, no deposits, no pre-orders, and roughly normal prices. If the point is a meal out over Christmas rather than on the day itself, the 26th is better value by a wide margin.
The Bay of Lights at Torquay is the one free thing running on Christmas Day, because it is a public seafront that nobody has to open.
National Trust Christmas at eight Devon properties, the carol services and cathedral concerts (most of them free), every December date week by week, and what actually happens on New Year’s Eve. Christmas and New Year town by town has what each place we cover does.
What else is open in Devon on Christmas Day — not much, but the walks and the Bay of Lights are free.
Prices came from each venue’s own website on 9 November 2026, not from a listings site. We have deliberately not published a long directory of venues and prices: Christmas menus change, venues close, and a list built in November is wrong by the following autumn. Ring the venue and confirm the year before you pay anything.
Pick a town and plan the day around who's with you.
Browse all Devon town guides →