300 years ago, the building of Bowood House was commissioned by Sir Orlando Bridgeman. The property had belonged to the Crown since the Middle Ages as part of Chippenham Forest and had been leased to the Bridgeman family since 1644.
The house was built on or near to the site of a hunting lodge. The house was most likely built of rendered stone and was 2 1/2 stories with a basement. Designed without ostentation it comprised a south facing front, sash windows, a central pedimented doorcase and parapets which hid the roof, east and west wings, both two bays wide. To the north-west, there was a contemporary building of two storeys with attics which was used as a service wing.
Bridgeman led a colourful life. Born in 1678 the son of Sir Orlando Bridgeman of Ridley Cheshire, he was educated at Rugby school and Trinity College Oxford. A year after his father died in 1701, he married Susanna Dashwood, the daughter of Sir Francis Dashwood. They had three sons and two daughters but only a son and a daughter outlived their father. He was elected Member of Parliament for Coventry in 1707 seeing off a petition by his opponents accusing him of bribery. For the next 30 years he remained in Parliament never returning for the same seat twice. He was MP for Calne from 1715 to 1722, for Lostwithiel from 1724 to 1727, for Bletchingley from 1727 to 1734 and for Dunwich from 1734 to 1738. As a friend of King George II, in 1727 he was appointed to the Board of Trade as a Lord of Trade, an office he held until 1738.
Owing to the costs of building the house and the ongoing maintenance of Bowood he had severe financial difficulties. In 1738 proceedings against him were started by the Chancery Courts. Attempting to escape his creditors he faked his own death by drowning in the Thames. When a disfigured body was found at Limehouse it was falsely identified as Bridgeman. Shortly afterwards he was discovered living at an inn at Slough. He was imprisoned and died eight years later at Gloucester gaol aged 68. He was buried in Saint Nicholas’s church, Gloucester.
In 1739 Bridgeman's principal creditor Richard Long acquired ownership of Bowood House and it remained unfinished and uninhabited when John Fitzmaurice, 1st Earl of Shelburne, bought the property in 1754.
