NOSTALGIA: Bowood House reinvents from 'big' house to 'little' house to survive

Curator, Dr Cathryn Spence, has pulled together an exhibition to mark the occasion.

Bowood Revisited: Decline & Revival was intended to run in 2020, but is now scheduled to open to the public on May 17.

Against the backdrop of how the post-war era brought various economic and social challenges to the doors of stately homes across the land, the exhibition relates how Bowood has faced these and more modern dilemmas to survive.

Bowood House itself is an apt setting for what will now be the exhibition marking the  65th anniversary - of the 1956 demolition of ‘The Big House’.

Bowood was one of 250 country houses of architectural importance demolished in the two decades following the end of World War II, the majority of which faced the bulldozers in the 1950s.

In 1955, at the height of the demolitions, one country house was obliterated every five days.

Despite very few objections at the time, the widespread destruction has led commentators to make comparisons with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

This exhibition will consider which factors forced the 8th Marquis of Lansdowne, and so many of his contemporaries, to sacrifice their family seats.

Alongside eye-catching wall panels and family portraits, that chapter in Bowood’s history is brought to life through showcases containing fascinating archive letters, photographs, mementoes and the like.

Similarly charted, all subsequent challenges faced – from tempests to taxation - across the Bowood Estate have been done for the same purpose: relevance to ensure survival long into the future.

In 1972, the 8th Marquis retired to his Scottish estate, leaving his son, Lord Shelburne, to make the best of a near bankrupt Bowood. Opening Bowood House and its grounds to the public for the first time in 1975, creating new attractions - such as the Adventure Playground and converting farmland into an 18-hole championship golf-course - are all recounted.