A fine monument to Joan Wadham (1533–1603) with her recumbent effigy lies at the west entrance to nearby Bristol Cathedral.

Robert quickly spent his inheritance and had to convey the Red Lodge to his half-brother Nicholas Strangways to avoid seizure.

[12] In the 1730s, John and Mary Henley bought the Red Lodge and started major extension work on the north side,[13] doubling the footprint of the building, fitting large Georgian windows, and rebuilding with hipped roofs and eaves, and cornices replacing gables, giving a full-height second floor.

[15] After the Henleys died the Red Lodge was leased to tenants practising medicine working at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, including James Cowles Pritchard who wrote Researches into the Physical History of Man, and Francis Cheyne Bowles and Richard Smith, who used the Great Oak Room as a dissection theatre.

[17] Mary Carpenter was a zealous reformer and founded the first ever Girls' Reformatory at the Red Lodge to encapsulate her radical and progressive ideas of improvement and nurture for the nation's poor,[18] in contrast to the harsh workhouses and prisons which were the common solution in the Victorian era.

[19] The Red Lodge was used as a reform school until 1917, during which time Carpenter used her standing as Superintendent to lobby parliamentary and travel the world researching the plight of 'pauper children'.

The next stages of development at the Red Lodge Museum are reinstating the fixtures of the New Oak Room and including interpretation for the well which was discovered; and re-ordering the garden paving to make it safe for visitors.

[24] Records of the Red Lodge and Mary Carpenter including journals, accounts, correspondence, reports and published material are held at Bristol Archives.

The only features which have changed since the room was built are the enlarged Georgian windows, giving a view onto the knot garden.

The collection of tiles around the fireplace, examples of marquetry and parquetry in the furniture and the ‘japanned’ grandfather clock represent the fashion of the early eighteenth century.

The staircase was designed with as many windows as possible and nobly proportioned, with a grand chandelier to illuminate Mary Henley and her guests as they processed into the Reception Room.

[14] The panelling is pre-18th century, bought from the Refectory of St Michael-on-the-Mount,[14] and the mantelpiece and fire surround from Ashley Down House.

[40] The story told in the relief is that of Actaeon the Hunter who angered Artemis and was punished by being turned into a deer and attacked by his own hunting party.

Responding to the building, the selected artists take on board sensitivities of politics past, ongoing preservation, and today's nervy ambiguities.

The works contrast and compliment [sic] the architecture and decoration of the Red Lodge but none sit too comfortably, and the friction they create subtly transforms this Elizabethan house.

[44]The Ithaca Axis performed a roaming piece of theatre, parts of which were set in the Great Oak Room and the Garden.