20 Attractions to Explore Near Bowood House and Gardens

The only motor museum in Wiltshire. The majority of the exhibits are cars from the 1920s onwards plus a collection of motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles. There is also interesting memorabilia, the Jack Spittle Model Lorry Collection plus a reconstructed 1930s style garage complete with vehicles.

Lacock Abbey is a country house with monastic roots and Britain's birthplace of photography. It is set in spacious wooded grounds, with plenty of space to picnic, and is now recognizable from films varying from Pride and Prejudice to Harry Potter. It was home to the Fox Talbot family. In the early 19th century, polymath William Henry Fox Talbot invented the photographic negative, a cornerstone in the rise of photography as both an art and a popular hobby.

Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre is a building in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, which serves as a focal point for heritage services relating to Wiltshire and Swindon. It is funded by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. It has purpose-built archive storage and research facilities and incorporates the local studies library, museums service, archaeology service, Wiltshire buildings record and the conservation service. The centre opened to the public on 31 October 2007 and is being

The Cherhill White Horse is the second oldest in Wiltshire and was made under the guidance of Dr Christopher Alsop of Calne in 1780, who gave instructions to a team of workers from a distance, using a megaphone. The Cherhill White Horse is one of eight remaining White Horses in Wiltshire. It is located on the edge of Cherhill Down, near both Oldbury Castle and the Lansdowne Monument, three and a half miles from the historic town of Calne.

Caen Hill , is one of the longest continuous flight of locks in the country - a total of 29 locks with a rise of 237 feet over 2 miles with a 1 in 44 gradient for anyone who's counting. The locks come in three groups: the lower seven locks, Foxhangers Wharf Lock to Foxhangers Bridge Lock, are spread over 3⁄4 mile; the next sixteen locks form a steep flight in a straight line up the hillside and are designated as a scheduled monument.

The Kennet and Avon Canal Trust is a registered charity and waterway society concerned with the protection and maintenance of the Kennet and Avon Canal throughout Wiltshire and Berkshire. To protect the restored Canal from neglect, abuse and inappropriate development. To enhance the Canal, either by the direct application of Trust funds or, more likely, to unlock larger amounts through matched funding.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is a charity based in Devizes, England which owns and manages 40 nature reserves in Wiltshire and Swindon. It is one of 46 Wildlife Trusts across the United Kingdom, which together form the largest voluntary organisation dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places everywhere – at land and at sea.

The Wiltshire Museum, formerly known as Wiltshire Heritage Museum and Devizes Museum, is a museum, archive and library and art gallery in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The museum maintains a collection covering the archaeology, art, history and natural history of Wiltshire. This collection covers periods of history from as far back as the Palaeolithic and also includes Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman, Saxon, Mediaeval and more recent historical artefacts.

Cranborne Chase AONB covers 380 square miles of wonderful countryside overlapping Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset. Its protected sites range from ancient downland, herb-rich fen and river meadow to scattered deciduous woodland which includes remnants of the ancient Cranborne Chase hunting forest and the former Royal Forests of Selwood and Gillingham. This is a deeply rural area with scattered villages and narrow roads. Agriculture, both pastoral and mixed, is the major employer toget

A beautiful museum dedicated to showcasing the heritage of the Corps of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and their contribution to enduring engineering excellence. The Museum’s unique collection includes an extensive weapons display, historic repair and recovery vehicles, uniforms, medals, tools and test equipment.

Corsham Court is a beautiful Elizabethan mansion built in 1582 and much remodelled over the subsequent centuries. It is in the town of Corsham, 3 miles west of Chippenham, Wiltshire and is notable for its fine art collection, based on the nucleus of paintings inherited in 1757 by Paul Methuen from his uncle, Sir Paul Methuen, the diplomat. It is currently the home of the present Baron Methuen, James Methuen-Campbell, the eighth generation of the Methuens to live there.

Windmill Hill is a classic example of a Neolithic 'causewayed enclosure', with three concentric but intermittent ditches. Large quantities of animal bones found here indicate feasting, animal trading or rituals, or perhaps all three. It is part of the Avebury World Heritage Site. The site was designated as a scheduled monument in 1925. It came into the ownership of the National Trust in 1942 and is under the guardianship of English Heritage.

Avebury Manor & Garden is a National Trust property consisting of a Grade I listed early-16th-century manor house and its surrounding garden. It is in Avebury, near Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in the centre of the village next to St James's Church and close to the Avebury neolithic henge monument. The refurbishment of Avebury Manor was designed so that the rooms reflected the period in which the residents of Avebury Manor lived and you can learn about these people as you go around.

Alexander Keiller Museum houses one of the most important prehistoric archaeological collections in Britain, housed in the Stables Gallery, and including many artefacts from the World Heritage Site monuments. The Barn Gallery uses interactive displays to show Avebury in the wider landscape and in time, helping to put the whole of the World Heritage Site Landscape into perspective.

Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the largest artificial prehistoric mound in Europe. Probably built over a short period between about 2470 and 2350 BC, it is one of the most intriguing monuments in the prehistoric landscape of the Avebury World Heritage Site.

The Avebury complex is one of the principal ceremonial sites of Neolithic Britain that we can visit today. It contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans. It was built and altered over many centuries from about 2850 BC until about 2200 BC and is one of the largest, and undoubtedly the most complex, of Britain's surviving Neolithic henge monuments.

An 'avenue', originally of around 100 pairs of prehistoric standing stones, raised to form a winding 1 1/2 mile ritual link between the pre-existing monuments of Avebury and The Sanctuary. Part of the Avebury World Heritage Site. Excavations by Stuart Piggott and Alexander Keiller in the 1930s indicated that around 100 pairs of standing stones had lined the avenue, dated to around 2200 BC from finds of Beaker burials beneath some of them. Many stones have fallen or are missing, however.

One of the largest, most impressive and most accessible Neolithic chambered tombs in Britain. Built in around 3650 BC, it was used for a short time as a burial chamber, nearly 50 people being buried here before the chambers were blocked. Part of the Avebury World Heritage Site. Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe.

Great Chalfield Manor is an English country house at Great Chalfield, about 2.5 miles northeast of the town of Bradford on Avon in the west of the county of Wiltshire. The house consists of a great hall, a panelled dining room, a solar with an oriel window and chambers in each gable. The moated manor house was built around 1465–1480 for Thomas Tropenell, a modest member of the landed gentry who made a fortune as a clothier. It is on the site of an earlier fortified house, of which traces remain: