Rowena Cade was born on 2 January 1893 in Kensington, London, the daughter of a wealthy mill owner.
Rowena Cade was born on 2 January 1893 in Kensington, London, England, into a comfortable and cultured upper-middle-class family. Her father, Rev. Walter Cade (a former army officer turned clergyman background in family accounts), and her mother Elizabeth (née Robinson), were part of a family that had made its fortune in the textile industry in the East Midlands.
Little in Rowena's early life foreshadowed the extraordinary role she would play in British cultural history. She grew up in a privileged environment, receiving a private education typical for a young woman of her class in Edwardian England, which included exposure to music, literature, needlework and amateur theatricals — pursuits that would prove crucial when, decades later, she conceived and built one of the world's most remarkable open-air theatres.
The family's wealth allowed Rowena, along with her mother and sister, to relocate to Cornwall after the First World War, eventually purchasing cliffside land near Porthcurno. This move set in motion the chain of events leading to the creation of the Minack Theatre, for which she is remembered as a pioneering, self-taught engineer, builder, and patron of the arts, defying conventional expectations of women of her era.
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