Longleat World War I exhibition

Commencing in August 2014, Longleat will present a parallel tour in the form of a room-by-room trail providing images and text exploring the use of the House as a relief hospital. Visitors will be able to compare then and now and may even bump into one of the nurses or a soldier patient dressed in official uniform of hospital ‘blues’. Also displayed will be original archives and artefacts – including items of uniform worn at the Front by the young heir to the Longleat estate, John Alexander Thynne, 9th Viscount Weymouth, reflecting the sometimes dramatic, sometimes funny and sometimes tragic experiences of the patients, nurses, family and servants at Longleat during the war years. (Hospital trail and costumed guides: daily during open season August 2014-November 1918; exhibition: August 2014-November 2015).

Reviews in the small ‘in-hospital’ magazine, The Longleat Lyre, have made it possible to reconstruct the large repertoire of plays, recitations, instrumental music and popular (predominantly music hall) songs performed by patients, nurses and the Thynne family at the hospital concert parties.