petworth house

Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex, United Kingdom, is a late 17th century mansion, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s by Anthony Salvin. The site was previously occupied by a castle founded by Henry de Percy, whose 13th century chapel and undercroft still survive. Todays building houses an important collection of paintings and sculpture, including 19 oil paintings by Turner, paintings by Van Dyck, carvings by Grinling Gibbons and murals by Louis Laguerre. It stands in a 700 acre (2.8 km²) landscaped park, known as Petworth Park, which was designed by 'Capability' Brown, and is inhabited by the largest herd of fallow deer in England. For the past 250 years, the house and the estate have been in the hands of the Wyndham family - currently John Max Henry Scawen Wyndham, Baron Egremont and Baron Leconfield. He and his family live in the south wing, allowing much of the remainder to be open to the public. The estate was handed over to the nation in 1947 and is now managed by the National Trust.

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