Poundisford Park

Poundisford Park is a manor house with associated buildings, including a former detached kitchen now incorporated into a service courtyard and a stable range. The main house was built around 1550 for William Hill, with a dining room wing added around 1693. A stable, coach house, and barn date to 1717, and a service wing was added in 1825.

The house is constructed with roughcast over rubble, a rubble plinth, exposed quoins, and slate roofs with coped verges. Ashlar stone stacks are located on the gable ends and centre of the building. The layout follows an H-plan, with the main entrance now on the south front. The north-east wing serves as the dining room, while the south-east wing extends east to form the south side of the service courtyard. The stable range sits to the east, and the former kitchen is to the west.

The south front is two and a half storeys high, featuring Tudor arch head, hollow chamfered mullioned windows under hoodmoulds, with irregular 19th-century fenestration. The left gable end has two single-light windows under hoodmoulds, with one blocked. The centre has three gabled windows flanking a rebuilt wall stack with a quatrefoil pierced parapet. The first floor features three-light windows, a lancet window, and a stair light, set irregularly. Crested lead guttering incorporates a fine rainwater head dated 1671, connected to a lead rainwater cistern, and a gargoyle. A Tudor arch head doorway with decorative spandrels leads to an internal porch. The north front has diagonal buttresses and a three-bay dining room with 12-pane sash windows.

The interior of the house contains a remarkable collection of original features and fittings. A screens passage features unusual turned baluster columns, reminiscent of those at Cothelstone. A hexagonal lantern has been inserted, and there are 17th-century doorways with a coved cornice leading to a closed gallery above, which has mullioned windows. The hall has a ribbed plasterwork ceiling with pendants and a frieze, along with a plasterwork Royal Coat of Arms at the dais end. Fine late 16th and mid- to late 17th-century plasterwork ceilings and cornices are found throughout the house. The hall also features 16th-century panelling, moulded surrounds to a fireplace and the stair turret adjoining, and oriels. The dining room has 18th-century panelling, cornice, and chimney piece. The former detached kitchen, later used as a laundry and now a restaurant, has a large bressumer beam to the fireplace, partially cut and containing an inserted bread oven. The barn, now converted to a dwelling, abuts the stable and coach house range, which dates to 1717, as indicated by the inscription on the south gable end. The Hill family, builders of this house, were also responsible for Poundisford Lodge to the north, both situated within the confines of Poundisford deer park, formerly belonging to the episcopal castle of Taunton until the Dissolution.