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Coworth House, currently known as Coworth Park Hotel, is a late 18th-century country house situated at Sunningdale, near Ascot, in the English county of Berkshire. It is one of the ten hotel operated by the Dorchester Collection, a group of luxury hotels in Europe and the United states that is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. In 2008, its interiors were rebuilt to facilitate the house's new use as a hotel.〔Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley & Nikolaus Pevsner, p 543〕 Coworth Park opened as a luxury resort in September 2010. It also includes an eco-spa and is the only hotel in the United Kingdom that has its own polo grounds. ==History== Coworth House dates in its oldest form from 1776. It takes its name from the surrounding hamlet of Coworth, which until a reorganisation in 1894, lay in the parish and manor of Old Windsor. The land that Coworth Park now stands on was granted in 1066 by the saintly Edward the Confessor to Westminster Abbey. William the Conqueror regained possession of it from the Abbey in exchange for lands in Essex. Theoretically, the manor of Old Windsor still remains with the Crown. In 1606 it was leased by James I to Richard Powney, whose great grandson, Penyston Powney, was administering it in 1737. After his death in 1757, his son and heir, Penyston Porlock Powney, became the Crown lessee, and was still appearing as such in records when Coworth House was constructed in 1776. The land was conveyed in 1770 by William Hatch and Elizabeth his wife, who were presumably Powney's agents or sub-tenants, to one William Shepheard. No records survive to confirm as much, but in all likelihood it was William Shepheard who six years later constructed the dwelling seen today.〔 Shepheard was a prosperous East India merchant with offices in London.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Coworth Park )〕 He was the first of two men associated with British India to own the property.When Shepheard died about 1810, Coworth House passed to his son, also called William, whose executors sold it before 1836 to George Arbuthnot (1772–1843), a Scottish colonel who served in Madras. The 1841 census finds Arbuthnot sharing the house, perhaps as two distinct entities perhaps not, with the family of his nephew and son-in-law, John Alves Arbuthnot (1802–1875), a director of the London Assurance Company and of the London and Colonial Bank. John Alves Arbuthnot was a son of Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet. He married his cousin, Mary (1812–1859), with whom he had eleven children. He was the founding partner of the firm of Messrs, Arbuthnot Latham & Co. and was High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1873. He inherited Coworth House from his uncle and died there 20 August 1875 aged seventy-three, leaving a personal estate 's worn under £400,000. He gave Coworth House – then called Coworth Park – to his daughters, 'for as long as more than two shall remain unmarried', then to his eldest son, William Arbuthnot (1833–1896) who at the time of his father’s death was living on the estate with his family at Park Lodge.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=History of Coworth Park )〕 William Arbuthnot spent his formative years in India where in 1858 he married Adolphine, the second daughter of Edward Lecot, the French Consul at Madras. Adolphine died in the year of her marriage. Seven years later, William married (Margaret) Rosa, the eldest daughter of John Campbell of Kilberry, Argyll, with whom he had three daughters, Mary, Alice and Rosa, but no son.〔 In 1883, William Arbuthnot sold Coworth House to William (Sir William ) Farmer (1832-1908), chairman of Messrs. Farmer & Co. Ltd., Australia merchants, of No 48 Aldermanbury in the City of London. Framer, who was Sheriff of London 1890–1891, and High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1895, was Master of the Gardeners' Company in 1898. About 1899 he sold Coworth House to Edward George Villers Stanley (1865-1948), Lord Stanley, who in 1908 succeeded his father as 17th Earl of Derby.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Sunningdale Local History )〕 Coworth House continued with Lord Derby until his death in 1948. It then became the home of his widow, Alice Stanley, Countess of Derby, the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Manchester, and a lady-in-waiting to her friend, Queen Alexandra. Lady Derby died there 24 July 1957, aged ninety-four. A month later her former home was advertised for sale in The Times; and at this or a subsequent date was converted to use as a Roman Catholic convent school. The entrepreneur Harold Bamberg converted the house to multi-occupation use as offices.〔 Bamberg was a director of the travel agency Sir Henry Simpson Lunn Limited (later to become Lunn Poly travel, then become part of Thomson Holidays) and chairman of British Eagle Airways. In the mid1980s, Coworth Park was acquired by Galen Weston, founder of Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason, who developed the property’s first polo field. Coworth Park was purchased by the Dorchester Collection, owned by the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA), in 2001. Dorchester closed the establishment for several years beginning in 2008 to refurbish original Coworth House and surrounding buildings to become a five star resort.〔 Coworth Park reopened and began operating on September 25, 2010. The official launch was held in April 2011 and was attended by Prince Azim of Brunei. 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「Coworth House」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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