Here at Lodge Park, uniquely, the three requirements for the ancient pastime of deer-coursing survive in one place: a park for corralling deer; a mile-long walled-in enclosure for the chase; and, overlooking its conclusion, a grandstand.

All three were created from scratch in the 1630s by John 'Crump' Dutton, a wealthy, hard-living squire with a passion for gambling. The point of deer-coursing was to provide an opportunity for betting, and to display the abilities of different dogs.

Indeed, the Sherborne course was a public amenity, which Dutton hired out to those wanting to run their own dogs. Today's grandstands are in the forefront of contemporary architecture, and Lodge Park was no different.

Dutton was often in London as MP for Gloucestershire and was familiar with the latest trends in court architecture, modelling his grandstand on Inigo Jones's new Banqueting House.

The Lodge Park course was fully in operation by 1634, when Lieutenant Hammond 'spent a full houre, with the good favour of the Keeper, in viewing that neat, rare Building, the rich furnish'd rooms, the hansome contriv'd Pens and Places, where the Deere are kept, and turn'd out for the Course.'

It continued in use for more than a century until deer-coursing was superseded by racing and fox-hunting. From the mid-1720s the landscape gardener Charles Bridgeman began remodelling the park in his angular, baroque manner for 'Crump' Dutton's great-nephew, Sir John Dutton.

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At the same time the grandstand was grandly modernised, apparently by William Kent. He certainly designed furniture for the Great Room, delivered in 1730. This beautiful building, whose face is its fortune, survived neglect in the later 18th century, perhaps helped by its traditional attribution to Inigo Jones.

It was disembowelled no fewer than three times during the following century: first, to make a conventional small two-storey house; then a row of three-storey cottages; and finally, in 1898, a well-designed dower-house.

Unfortunately, the interior was radically simplified in 1938 by tenants and again about 1960 by Charles Dutton, 7th Lord Sherborne, and by the time he died in 1982, it was utterly plain and devoid of architectural interest.

He left the estate to the National Trust with the wish that his housekeeper, Betty Hall, should have the use of the house.

Encouraged by Mrs Hall, in 1991 the National Trust began to gather detailed archaeological evidence to return the grandstand to its former internal layout.

For the first time in two centuries, you can now understand the original purpose and use of the building by progressing through the Hall, up the monumental staircase to the Great Room, and then again on up to the viewing platform on the roof.