Bowood was built by Sir Orlando Bridgeman in about 1725 and bought by the 1st Earl of Shelburne in 1754. From the following year until 1760 Henry Keene enlarged and remodelled the house (the Great House) adding stables and offices built around two courts to the northwest, with their east range (the Little House) for domestic use. Keene's Doric portico was altered and his two courtyards closed by a south range, the entrance hall, drawing room, Cube Room and King's Room decorated and a link wing connecting the Great House to the Little House carried out by Robert Adam, 1761-5 and 1768-71. C. R. Cockerell added a chapel north of the centre of Adam's south range (the 'Diocletian wing') in 1821 and Charles Barry carried out general alterations between 1833 and 1860 including the addition of the gallery between the south range and the Great House. In 1955-6, the Bridgeman-Keene-Adam house (the Great House) was demolished leaving the courtyards with Adam's south range and Cockerell's chapel.

In about 1794, Dance was called in by the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne to solve the problem of access to the supper room. Placed at the east end of Adam's south range, it was flanked by the library to the west and the drawing room to the east. To reach it without going through these rooms Dance proposed two additions: a very small link in the southeast corner of the east court, and a two-storey 'tower' in the corner between the south range and link wing. The insertion of a gallery in the Octagon Staircase of the link wing was also explored.

It is not clear which of Dance's proposals for minor alterations were carried out. Stroud (pp.164-5) wrote that 'the extensive remodelling of Bowood by Sir Charles Barry in the 1830s makes it difficult to access [sic] whether Dance's proposals were carried out in full or in part, but the former seems probable. Certainly the new gallery linking the hall with the supper room was built, and formed a basis for that remodelled by Barry. Probably changes in the Octagon, with its flight of steps up to the apsidal vestibule to the drawing room were also carried out, but of this, and the rooms below for the staff, there is no trace, nor is there anything left of the timber belfry which he proposed.' A. T. Bolton (Soane Museum curator 1917-45) made abstracts of the building accounts in the Bowood Archive as part of his research on the Adam brothers. He noted (SM Archive, Bolton Papers) of an entry for 15 December 1804. 'Plans sent to Dance. Memo / Large Plan of House / 3 plans proposed Alterations / Section octagon stairs / old plan ditto'. This seems to refer to some of the drawings catalogued above and their return might imply that Dance's work was not executed. Dance also made designs for a library at Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, 1788-91 for the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne.

LITERATURE. A. T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, vol.I, 1922 reprinted 1984, p.215, n.10 (Bolton re-drew Dance's survey plan [SM D3/4/10] on p.198, adding a note '1794-8 minor work at Bowood by Dance to whom plans of proposed alterations returned Dec.15 1804. Ld Shelburne died May 7, 1805'); N Pevsner, Wiltshire, 1963, pp.109-10; E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam: his interiors, 2001, pp.104-11.

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