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Brympton d'Evercy (also known as Brympton House) is a manor house near Yeovil in the county of Somerset, England. It has been described as the most beautiful house in England, in a country of architecturally pleasing country houses; whatever the truth of that statement, in 1927 the British magazine ''Country Life'' published a set of three articles on the house, in which Christopher Hussey, near the start of his 50-year career as a notable architectural authority and documentor of British country houses, described Brympton d'Evercy as "The most incomparable house in Britain, the one which created the greatest impression and summarises so exquisitely English country life qualities".〔Country Life, Saturday, 7 May 1927.〕 Hussey's articles remain the only detailed account of the mansion. During its long history Brympton d'Evercy has belonged to just five families, the d'Evercys, the Sydenhams, the Fanes, the Weeks (from 1992 to 2007) and the most recent owner who purchased the property in 2007. Brympton D'Evercy's was not built in a single campaign as an entirety; instead, it was slowly expanded between about 1220, when it was begun by the D'Evercy family, and the 18th century. During three quarters of a millennium it has remained little known, and little recorded. For a few years following World War II Brympton d'Evercy was a boys' school, before being reclaimed by its owners as a private house. Today occasionally hired out as a location for filming, or a hospitality event, it remains essentially a private residence. ==History== The house is part of a complex consisting of the mansion, its stables and other outbuildings, the parish church and a curious building today known as the "priest house". Little remains of the original D'Evercy manor built between 1220 and 1325, for on its site the present house has evolved. Brympton d'Evercy was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Brunetone'', meaning 'The brown enclosure' from the Old English ''brun'' and ''tun''. The village of Brympton is larger today than at any time in its history. Until the last century the village barely qualified for the title, having been deserted in the 14th century. Since then the village has consisted merely a few cottages scattered along the long drive to the mansion's secluded site, a few of these cottages can be discerned in the view by Knyff (''illustrated right'') Today a new area known as Brympton is a suburb of Yeovil which encroaches on the secluded house at an alarming pace. In Somerset and the adjoining county of Dorset, such houses as Brympton d'Evercy containing wings in an assortment of architectural styles by unrecorded local architects and builders are numerous. The owners of these houses were nearly all related to each other in some way, and competition among them was great. As a result, one often finds in various houses wings that are almost identical, having been constructed by the same builder, rather than an architect using drawings based on the works of the master architects from as far afield as Rome. This is particularly true from the 17th century onwards. The owners of Brympton d'Evercy at various times were related to the Stourtons of Preston Plucknett, the Pouletts of Hinton House, the Phelips of Montacute House, and the Strangways of Melbury House. Those "County" families that were not actually related were usually close friends, so in the frequent visits between the great houses of the county architectural ideas could be exchanged along with the local gossip. Before the 17th century the profession of "architect" was unknown, Sir John Summerson has observed, and all houses were built by local builders according to the ideas of their patrons. Inigo Jones, perhaps the first widely notable English architect, introduced Palladian ideals to English architecture: his Banqueting House at Whitehall of 1619 set a standard, and was much copied; by the 1630s his ideas permeated as far as Somerset. Among the grander families, there was generally a Member of Parliament, or as in the case of the earls of Ilchester, the head of the family kept a London house. These more travelled members of this provincial society would return to their Somerset estates and country houses with the latest architectural ideas. Occasionally one of the richer county families would employ a renowned architect, such as John Webb, Jones's son-in-law. Born in Somerset, Webb moved to London, but following his cosmopolitan success later worked in Dorset at Kingston Lacy—a new mansion, built by the Banks family to replace Corfe Castle destroyed by Cromwellian troops in the Civil War— and at Wilton House 〔Inigo Jones himself is believed to have had a large input in the design of Wilton House.〕 in the adjacent county of Wiltshire. Once introduced to Somerset practice, the new genres of architecture were interpreted by the local draughtsmen and masons, and then applied, often haphazardly, to the old houses of the local gentry, and what one cousin had in one part of Somerset the next cousin soon had in another. In this way Brympton d'Evercy and its neighbours slowly evolved. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brympton d'Evercy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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