Bowden Hill is a village in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England, in

Lacock Lacock is a village and civil parish in the county of Wiltshire, England, about 3 miles (5 km) south of the town of Chippenham, and about outside the Cotswolds area. The village is owned almost in its entirety by the National Trust a ...

parish about south of

Chippenham Chippenham is a market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village ...

and to the east of Lacock village. Bowden Hill has about 50 houses, a pub, and a small industrial estate.

Origins of the name

Bowden Hill was historically called 'Bowdon Hill' according to early maps. There are a number of theories around why the village got its name. One reason is that the name comes from the old English words 'bow', meaning bow shaped, and 'dun' meaning hill. However, alternative theories suggest the name comes from a corruption of 'bdl' (meaning dwelling) into 'bow' meaning 'hill slope on which are dwellings'. Another theory from 'Wiltshire Collections' by Aubrey and Jackson suggests that the name means 'the winding hill'.

Location

Bowden Hill sits on the side of a hill and rises up from the River Avon, at an elevation of 50m, to its peak at 172m above sea level. The village has views to the south and south-west of the river's flood plain and is surrounded by a mixture of woodlands and agricultural land. Bowden Hill borrows many of its facilities from the nearby village of Lacock and doesn't provide amenities such as a school or post office. The village encompasses the small hamlet of

Bewley Common Bewley Common is a hamlet in Wiltshire, England. It lies in the civil parish of Lacock, west of Bowden Hill and about east of Lacock village. Bewley Court is a Grade I listed manor house from the 14th century or early 15th. The house was rest ...

and enjoys a relatively sparse population density due to its designation as a conservation area.

Landmarks

Parish church

In 1856, John Gladstone, owner of Bowden Park, had the

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

Saint Anne According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come o ...

built to celebrate the birth of a son in the Gladstone family. The architect was S.B. Gabriel of Bristol who designed the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

in the

Early English Gothic English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed ar ...

style but gave the northeast tower

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

details and a

Rhenish helm The Rhenish helm is a type of spire typical of Romanesque church architecture of the historic Rhineland. It is a pyramidal roof on towers of square plan. Each of the four sides of the roof is rhomboid in form, with the long diagonal running fro ...

, a German Romanesque roof. The parish of Lacock was split and the new parish of Bowden Hill served around 300-400 people, but the two parishes were reunited in 1958. Today services are held at St Anne's on the first Sunday of each month.

Conduit House

Sitting in the common land in the village is a small building which was used as a supply of water for the nearby

Lacock Abbey Lacock Abbey in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire, England, was founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, as a nunnery of the Augustinian order. The abbey remained a nunnery until the suppression of Roman Catholic inst ...

. Built in the 16th century, this small 3.7m square building still supplies water to the abbey albeit through a modern water pipe. The original conduit house was built in around 1280 when Willian Bluet of Bewley Court granted Beatrice, Abbess of Lacock, the right to operate a watercourse on his land to serve the

nunnery A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican C ...

. This original building was replaced by the owner of the abbey,

William Sharington Sir William Sharington (born in around 1495, died before 6 July 1553) was an English courtier of the time of Henry VIII, master and embezzler of the Bristol Mint, member of parliament, conspirator, and High Sheriff of Wiltshire. Early life ...

, after its dissolution. The new building is built of limestone and has a steep roof, reaching 4.64m high, constructed of interlocking stone slabs.

Bowden Park

One of largest landmarks in Bowden Hill is the Bowden Park estate with its

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

of 1796, designed by

James Wyatt James Wyatt (3 August 1746 – 4 September 1813) was an English architect, a rival of Robert Adam in the neoclassical and neo-Gothic styles. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1785 and was its president from 1805 to 1806. Early life W ...

for Barnard Dickinson. The Dickinson family had owned plantations in Jamaica since 1655, and were among Wiltshire's biggest users of slave labour. The property had a previous building, built for George Johnson who lived there in the 1600s. The estate was sold in 1751 to Ezekiel Dickinson who modified the house; it was later owned by the Dickinson Harmer family. The house was bought in 1849 and extended by Captain John Gladstone, older brother of Prime Minister William Gladstone. In the 20th century it was the seat of the former chairman of the

General Electric Company The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250 ...

Arnold Weinstock Arnold Weinstock, Baron Weinstock, Kt. OMRI, (29 July 1924 – 23 July 2002) was an English industrialist and businessman known for making General Electric Company one of Britain's most profitable companies. The City criticized Weinstock for ...

. The house was remodelled in the mid 1950s, and the extensions were made smaller by owner K. Peacock who sold Bowden Park in 1967 to Lord Weinstock. A 2020 report summarizes the building as: "Built on two storeys of ashlar under a slate roof, the grand 15,900sq ft house is Classically symmetrical in style, with a central bow front, where the original front door was placed, and finely detailed wings to either side". Bowden Park was designated as

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

in 1960.

Spye Park

Spye Park Spye Park is a former country estate in Bromham parish in Wiltshire, England. It lies north of Chittoe, about north-west of Bromham village and east of Lacock. The historic house which stood there, near the Roman road from London to Bath, h ...

lies on the edge of Bowden Hill to the southeast of the village. Although most of Spye Park is in Bromham parish, the gatelodge at its northwest entrance (originally a 16th-century building) stands on the edge of Bowden Hill village.

References

External links

* {{authority control Villages in Wiltshire