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Poundisford Park north of Pitminster, Somerset, England is an English country house that typifies progressive house-building on the part of the West Country gentry in the mid-16th century. The main house was built for William Hill around 1550 and has been designated as a Grade I listed building. In addition to several buildings the park contains formal gardens which were originally laid out in the 17th century set within a medieval deer park.〔 ==History== Poundisford was an appendage of the episcopal Taunton Deane estate, belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. The enclosure of the park is variously attributed to Bishop Henry de Blois (died 1171) or Bishop Peter des Roches (died 1238). In 1534 the park was divided into two by Bishop Stephen Gardiner. The northern section of the park, including the original lodge, was leased to Roger Hill, whose son rebuilt the lodge. The southern area, as yet without a house, was leased to John Soper, who sold it to Hill’s son, William, who built the present Poundisford Park shortly after his return to England. The entrance front is an outstanding example of the approach towards symmetry of the English country house from its former expression of the hierarchy of its interior spaces.〔Cooper 1999 p. 75.〕 At Poundisford the great hall rises in the traditional way through two storeys and occupies its traditional place in the central bar of the H-plan. Its entrance porch rises through the facade to a gable that is matched on the opposite side with an oriel similarly rising through both floors to a matching gable. A central gable in the recessed central bay reinforces the symmetry of the entrance front. The two linked properties were passed down in the Hill family until the late 17th century, when the Lodge passed out of the family by marriage.〔 In 1673 the Park was inherited by Sir Roger Hill, who already owned Denham Place in Buckinghamshire. In 1704 he sold the Park to Dr Simon Welman, a retired physician who died in 1708. Though before he died Welman also bought the Lodge, reuniting the two parts of the estate, when he died the Park passed to his elder son, Simon, and the Lodge to his younger son, Thomas. The park was held by Simon Welman's descendants until 1869, when it was sold to the Helyers who owned the Lodge, once again uniting the two parts; the estate remained intact until 1928,〔 when the Park was sold to Arthur Vivian-Neal. Vivian-Neal, a JP and alderman, and a keen antiquarian and archaeologist, paid £10,000 for the estate in 1928 and spent even more repairing and modernising the property, employing Anthony Methuen as the architect. The Vivian-Neals lived at Poundisford until 1994, when it was offered for sale at £600,000. 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「Poundisford Park」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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