GOLF


Bowood Estate


Three’s company! S


urrounded by glorious


countryside yet close to bustling centres of population, the 4,000 acre Bowood estate in Wiltshire draws thousands of visitors each


year to its historic house, Capability Brown parkland and award-winning gardens. In recent years, a sporting attraction has been added; the 18-hole PGA championship course at Bowood Golf Club, complete with golf academy and country club hotel. Bowood House has been home to the


Lansdowne family since 1754, and opened to the public in 1975. Paintings of the house from 1725 shows that the grounds were laid out in a semi-


22 PC October/November 2019


formal style, but were dramatically reshaped by ‘Capability’ Brown, who was brought in by the 2nd Earl of Shelburne (1st Marquis of Lansdowne) in the 1760s. Brown used all his skills and experience in designing a mile-long lake that dominates the park, draining the land, damming two streams and moving earth without machinery.


An arboretum features more than 700 species and twenty-three Champion trees (the tallest or largest of their kind). Capability Brown supplied the ‘forest trees’, with Lord Shelburne sourcing ‘curious seeds and trees’ including cedar of Lebanon, one of Brown’s signature trees, several of which


can still be seen at Bowood, including the largest cedar in Europe.


The nearby Pinetum was first laid out in


1849, featuring trees planted in a geographical pattern according to their country of origin. Towards the end of the eighteenth


century, following the advice of the Hon. Charles Hamilton of Painshill, a ‘picturesque’ rock landscape, with a cascade, grottoes and a hermit’s cave, was constructed below Brown’s dam at the head of the mile-long lake.


As well as giving pleasure to individual and groups of visitors, the parkland is also in demand as a set for film and TV productions,


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