Newark, a former Tudor hunting lodge, was built around 1550 by Sir Nicholas Poyntz (1510–1557), a close adherent of Henry VIII whose portrait after Holbein is at Ickworth, Suffolk and intended as a pleasure dome. The magnificent views from the terrace towards Bristol were originally intended to provide a means of following the hunt in the valley below. It was converted to fashionable home and the architect James Wyatt (1746–1813) created the elegant simplicity in neo-classical style of the Hall whilst William Morris wallpaper shows the Victorian taste of the nineteenth century. It was acquired by the National Trust in 1949 and at one time thought best to leave it as a romantic ruin but in recent times the tenants have transformed it, John Workman in the 1950s and from 1970, Robert Parsons (1920–2000) and his outgoing partner Michael Claydon, to whom the presence of the few paintings there is largely due.