Poundley was baptized at
Montgomery, 27 April 1807. Following the death of his father, he was taken into the guardianship of William Pugh of
Caerhowel and in 1827 he was apprenticed to the
Oswestry architect
Thomas Penson. He never qualified as an architect. In 1857 Poundley published ''Poundley's Cottage Architecture''. Poundley had close connections with Naylor family who, in 1835, had acquired the Brynllywarch estates at
Kerry from William Pugh, the son of his guardian. They were also to acquire other estates at
Leighton and
Nantcribba. He was employed to undertake survey work of these acquisitions, now bound in two atlas volumes in the
National Library of Wales. The Leighton Estate was purchased in 1847 and Poundley was employed on the construction of the monumental model farm from about 1849 to 1860. Apart from the farm itself, some of the more important structures are the Poultry House and the "cottage orneé", Poultry Cottage, the Cable House of the Railway and the massive stone built slurry tank, for the effluent from the farm. About 1850, Poundley moved from Brook Cottage in Kerry to Black Hall. In the 1860s until the partnership with David Walker was dissolved, their output was prodigious and included considerable quantities of estate housing. The work extended to
David Davies's Llandinam estate, the
Abbeycwmhir estate in Radnorshire and model farms for the
Earl of Cawdor in
Carmarthenshire and
Pembrokeshire. It is difficult to judge to what extent Poundley actually designed buildings, but the decorative
bargeboards on
cottage orneé buildings as at Glanmule seems to represent his work, as well as the use of red brick with
rusticated stone
quoining. Poundley was the main promoter of the
Abermule to Kerry Railway, which had been authorized as part of the
Oswestry and Newtown Railway Act 1855. This came into effect in May 1861 following the opening of Abermule Station. The construction of the railway and the building of Kerry Station at Glanmule appears to have been supervised by Poundley, opening on 2 May 1864. The railway amalgamated with others to form the
Cambrian Railways in July 1864. Poundley was also a sheep farmer and it was largely through his efforts the
Kerry Sheep breed came to be recognized
Poundley’s Cottage Architecture 1857 This was produced for a group of Denbighshire Gentlemen under the sponsorship of
Lord Bagot, of Pool Park near Denbigh and of Blithfield in Staffordshire. The double cottage design produced by Poundley is very plain and lacks the decorative features seen on his work for the Naylor's Montgomeryshire estates. Poundley states that he had built 25 of these cottages in the past year and the cost would have been £250 for a double cottage. The plans for the farm buildings for a 200-acre farm are similar to the farm buildings he erected for the Naylors at
Leighton and Kerry, but on a smaller scale. The farm buildings would have cost £1000. For a farm of 100 acres the cost would have been £790. He also published plans for a simple double cottage of
Bungalow form which would have cost £180 and the walls of which were supported on an iron framing. ==David Walker (1840–1892)==