Polli began as an outlying farm of Karksi manor and became an estate in its own right in the 1720s–1730s. In 1744 Empress Elizabeth granted it to her chancellor, Aleksey Bestuzhev-Ryumin. In the late 1700s the Duntens built a one-story brick house on a high basement with a taller center section. In 1887 Edgar von Stryk had it remodeled with a semicircular wing, a Neo-Gothic stepped gable and lacy wooden canopies. The writer August Kitzberg, who worked as a clerk at the Polli parish office, portrayed the Stryks in his works.
