Rivals manor owner: My great-great-grandfather’s portrait was replaced with a nude

Rivals Disney+
Aiden Turner and Luke Pasqualino in Rivals - Robert Viglasky

The Cotswold manor house at the centre of TV shows Rivals and Poldark will be familiar to even a casual fan of the hit programmes.

But the 1980s version of the house depicted in Disney+’s Rivals, which is home to the family of Aidan Turner’s character Declan O’Hara, is a shabbier, more outlandish iteration than the real-life stately home.

Oil paintings of distant ancestors hanging on the oak panelled walls were replaced with nude images and explicit permission was required to bring a camel into the Grade I listed building, its inhabitants have revealed.

Caroline Lowsley-Williams told the BBC: “One of the first questions was would I mind if there was a camel in the house?”

After initial incredulity, she received assurances from the filming company that the camel would “have its own bathroom attendant”.

She revealed a portrait of her great-great-grandfather that hangs in her home was replaced “with a nude”.

The Elizabethan Chavenage House, in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, is a popular TV set and is almost 450 years old. It has been a genuine family home since it was built in 1576.

Chavenage House, Tetbury, Gloucestershire
Chavenage House has only ever had two owners - Jane Tregelles/Alamy

Only two families have ever lived there. Its first owner, Edward Stevens, purchased it in the 16th century from the Crown and it was handed down the generations and not purchased again until 1903.

The Lowsley-Williams family inherited a nearby estate. However, they preferred Chavenage, which was for sale.

Ms Lowsley-Williams is the great-granddaughter of George Williams Lowsley-Hoole, the man who bought it more than 120 years ago and has run the business side of the property for several years. Three generations currently live in the house.

In Rivals it was the site of fights, sexual degeneracy and lavish parties. In Poldark, set in the late 18th and early 19th century, the home is more gentle, candle-lit and traditional. The house is open to the public a couple of days a week to help make money after it became a popular destination for fans of the BBC show.

But it is also a wedding venue and while it is normally in pristine condition, the Disney crew’s desire for the house to appear slightly neglected posed some issues.

Forgotten how raunchy story was

“We have very neat edges around our lawns and we were told to make it look old. I had prospective brides coming and slightly saying ‘Oh gosh, don’t they look after the house?’

“You had to explain it was for televisual purposes,” Ms Lowsly-Williams said.

She said that while she had read Rivals by Dame Jilly Cooper in her youth she had forgotten how raunchy the storyline was.

“But I signed it off on behalf of the rest of the family saying we didn’t mind what happened in the house,” she added.

In 2026 Ms Lowsley-Williams’ nephew James and his partner Emma Frampton will take over the running of the house.

He called his aunt “the brains of the operation” in a previous interview with The Telegraph.

“Chavenage is Caroline, and Caroline is Chavenage,” he added.

Mr Lowsley-Williams and his partner, who live in the old butler’s hut on the estate, plan to film their wedding at Chavenage this winter as well as the renovation of the big house when the time comes.

He is a cycling YouTuber with more than 73,000 followers and hopes to document the transformation on social media.

He said: “We don’t know how it’s going to go. We might only get a few people watching it. I’m not entirely ready for thousands of people to watch and then turn up to the cafe. I haven’t prepared myself for that yet.”