Bowood House & Gardens — Attraction in Calne Without

The house is amazing, the gardens are beautiful and the adventure playground is brilliant but it isn't properly supervised. The four or so young workers we saw today seemed more interested in standing around chatting to eachother than manning the equipment. Some of the behaviour witnessed today by myself and my family was absolutely appalling - groups of unsupervised children throwing handfuls of bark and stones at others on the jumping pillow, leading to a physical fight between two (understandably) irritated teenagers and a younger child; children hitting eachother with sticks; a bunch of boys, no older than seven or eight, blocking the bottom of the tube slide and shouting foul language and threatening comments up at the other children waiting to come down. This really scared my little girl, who (I later learned) decided to climb back down the the way she had come rather than use the slide, then became worried she wouldn't be able to find me, and had to go back up. In the end I had to reprimand these boys myself and ask them to leave. I understand it shouldn't be the staff's job to discipline other people's children, but neither is it mine, especially when I have paid a considerable amount of money to enjoy the facilities. The sad truth is that these days, many parents have an 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude towards their offspring and simply can't be bothered, preferring instead to turn their backs and sit around chatting or looking at their phones. Since nobody can make these people watch their kids, unfortunately the only other option is for the staff to step up so that the atmosphere isn't ruined for others, and that didn't happen today. This was our first visit, and we do plan to try again. A third visit, however, is entirely dependent on how things go next time. Fingers crossed our second experience...

This is an excellent easy on the eye attraction that makes for a great visit. The house itself is full of character both on the outside and the inside adding to the picturesque scenery of the estate. Inside the house there are many great exhibitions to view the first one being the history of the house and the layout of the garden by Capability Brown, which is very informative and interesting to read about. The other exhibitions are around the Coronation theme and treasues collected from other parts of the world and the treasures are great to look at and again the exhibitions are informative and fascinating to read. There are also many great and detailed portraits to view in the house and view the Chapel and the Library which are stunning and full of more great treasures. The terrace garden offers some stunning and breathtaking towards the lake and also The Doric Temple and there is a great array of flowers and borders to see. The arboretum and the park are breathtaking and beautiful with The Doric Temple and The Cascade the most notable, prominent and stunning features. The Park also offers great views back towards Bowood House and the Lake. The staff at the site are really friendly and helpful upon entry into the house detailing what there is to see and giving some facts about the history of the place. There is a gift shop selling an array of excellent souvenirs at good prices and the cafe offers a nice selection of foods at reasonable prices. Overall this is a stunning place to visit and one...

It's a lovely place with beautiful grounds with grottos, lake and a lovely temple folly which is perfect in its contrast between back and front views. The attendants in the house were so enthusiastic it was infectious. The walled garden is well kept and interesting with fancy flowers and ginormous pumpkins which thrilled one visitor while we were there.

The management of the estate leaves a lot to be desired. We walked to the grounds from Calne - the exit road is signed with no public access and we were stopped from walking out by an estate worker in a car "because it isn't public access". But if you're in a car, public access is just fine - pathetic Bowood Estate, pathetic! We were told that it was dangerous to walk down the access roads and were redirected to a (longer) walking route crossing the golf course, which wasn't signposted and had checkpoints and gates which were mercifully unattended otherwise we thought we'd be charged with trespass. This brought us out onto Old Derry Hill, a 40mph road with no pavements and steep banks or walls on either side - it was pretty clear Bowood Estate didn't care about our safety, just their liability.

I give it 3 stars just because most people will arrive on four wheels and won't experience the sheer lack of integrity of the Estate that we got to see. I certainly won't be...