'A turning point in the history of country houses': Bowood's trailblazing days as a safe refuge for wounded soldiers

'A turning point in the history of country houses': Bowood's trailblazing days as a safe refuge for wounded soldiers

The Earl of Kerry, 11th-generation custodian of Bowood, holds a framed certificate in the Diocletian Wing. The text begins: ‘During the Great War of 1914–1919 this building was maintained as a hospital for British sick and wounded.’ Its ornamented borders feature the arms and floral emblems of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Dominions, as well as the initials of the unidentified artist ‘F. R.’. Those words commemorate an extraordinary …