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Arlington Court is a neoclassical style country house built 1820-23,〔Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, p.129〕 situated in the parish of Arlington, next to the parish church of St James, 5 1/4 miles NE of Barnstaple, north Devon, England. The house was commissioned by Colonel John Palmer Chichester (1769-1823) to the design of the North Devon architect Thomas Lee, replacing the earlier Georgian house of about 1790, built on a different site and demolished, designed by John Meadows.〔Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, p.129〕 Arlington Court was considerably expanded in 1865 by John Palmer Chichester's grandson, Sir Sir Alexander Palmer Bruce Chichester, 2nd Baronet (1842-1881), son of Sir John Palmer Bruce Chichester, 1st Baronet (d.1851). In 1873 according to the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 the Arlington estate comprised about 5,300 acres.〔1873 Return's data revised by ''The Acre-ocracy of England'' 1876 John Bateman〕 Sir Bruce's unmarried daughter and heiress, Rosalie Chichester (d.1949), donated the mansion to the National Trust together with two years before her death in 1949. Today, the house, together with the Chichester family's collection of antique furniture and an eclectic collection of family memorabilia, is fully open to the public. ==Architecture== The architecture of the house, a severe neoclassical style, which in many ways resembles the architecture made popular in the early 19th century by Sir John Soane, under whom Arlington's architect Thomas Lee trained.〔Hugh Meller; Arlington Court, published by the National Trust 1988. p11.H〕 Often mistakenly likened to the slightly more flamboyant Greek Revival architecture, the style confines most ornament to the interior of the house, leaving the symmetrical exterior almost unadorned and chaste, relying only on window and door apertures and shallow recesses and apses and the occasional pilaster to relieve the austerity of the facade; at Arlington, this is seen in the shallow twin pilasters terminating the two principal façades, the lack of either aprons or pediments to the windows and, in place of the near conventional classical entrance portico of the era, is a single-story, semi-circular pillared porch. The simplicity of the design is further accentuated by a low, unpierced parapet concealing the roof-line from view; thus giving the building a low, box-like appearance. From completion, the house remained largely unaltered until the 1860s, when the house was almost doubled in size by Sir Alexander Bruce Chichester, who added the large domestic wing (''rooms 9 to 16 on plan'') in which to house the servants and provide the extended domestic offices which were considered necessary during the Victorian era. Following the invention of the bell pull, a convenient device which negated the need for servants to be constantly within calling distance of the main house, servants began to be housed in a designated wing; thus affording their employers greater privacy. Sir Alexander (a man of extravagant tastes, whose expenditure was to ultimately bring the family to the point of financial ruin 〔Mellor, p 8.〕) also created the large, central staircase hall (''marked 1 on the plan''); this was achieved by combining several smaller rooms on the ground and upper floors.〔Mellor, p 8.〕 The style of the hall, that of a Renaissance courtyard, overlooked by a gallery reached from an imposing staircase was a fashionable country house feature of the time – providing a common assembly area for house-guests and a convenient space to display works of art and curiosities; similar halls can be seen at Highclere Castle, Mentmore Towers and Halton House. Often known as lounge halls, they were usually furnished as with comfortable chairs and sofas and often a grand piano. Contemporary pictures show that this was the case at Arlington too.〔Mellor, p 8.〕 The hall is dominated by an enormous imperial staircase rising to the gallery above. The stairs are lit by an internal window displaying the various Chichester arms from 1505 to 1865.〔Mellor, p 8.〕 The principal reception rooms of the house are arranged as an enfilade; folding screens concealed by scagliola ionic columns permits the enfilade to be transformed into a tripartite gallery seventy feet long. Originally conceived as a drawing room (5), ante room (4) and dining room (3), the dining room was transformed into a morning room during the alterations of the 1860s. Architecturally, the most interesting of the rooms is the ante room. A cube room, it has a saucer dome, segmental arches and inset pier glasses, all in the style of Soane, whose pupil, Lee, was responsible for the house. Also of note is the boudoir (6); this small room conceived a sitting room for the ladies of the house retains much of its original plasterwork and decoration in the style of Soane. Later additions include the marble fireplace, and mirrored alcoves and pilasters to the corners, creating an elongated hexagonal shape also in the style of Soane. Other rooms are now much altered, the dining room (8) was created from the former library in the 1860s, while the music room’s once ornate and painted papier mache ceiling is now lost due to the building deprivations following World War II. At the time, the National Trust, permitted to carry out only limited work, prioritised the creation of staff flats on the upper floor, over the conservation of the house.〔Meller, p17.〕 In Britain, by the beginning of the 19th century, the Baroque convention of placing the grandest reception rooms on the upper floor or piano nobile had been discontinued; therefore, the upper floor at Arlington contains only bedrooms, dressing rooms and nurseries; many of these have now been transformed into accommodation for National Trust staff. Among the few upper rooms open to the public are Miss Chichester’s Bedroom, the former day nursery, the Blue Bedroom and the Portico Bedroom . The latter, sited over the Entrance hall, was traditionally the bedroom of the master of the house; it is distinguished by its vaulted ceiling. 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「Arlington Court」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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