A new exhibition tells the story of the famous Rosalind Howard whom history has dismissed as the archetypal Victorian ‘battle-axe’, a phrase she even used herself.

Rosalind’s life was devoted to duty and work, both at home and in the public sphere. Mother of eleven children, campaigner for votes for women, and temperance crusader, she also took on the management of the Howard estates, thereby freeing her husband to pursue his passion for painting. She was a hugely contradictory figure, capable of great generosity and fun, but equally she could be intolerant, vindictive and autocratic; she was, in the words of her daughter, a “two-sided personality”.

This exhibition will chronicle these twin aspects of her life, uncovering all manner of new material, including the slow decline of her marriage from its romantic and intimate early days (as captured in small nude drawings made by her husband), to setting the record straight on the most famous tale associated with her: pouring the wine from the Castle Howard cellars into the lake. 

‘Sex and Suffrage’ - the Life and Times of Rosalind Howard is now on display inside the House until Sunday 31st October 2010.  Access to the exhibition is included the House & Gardens admission price.