Stowe House
Stowe House is a Grade I listed country house in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of the private Stowe School and is owned by the Stowe House Preservation Trust. Over the years, it has been restored and maintained as one of the finest country houses in the UK. Stowe House is regularly open to the public.
The gardens are a significant example of the English landscape garden and, along with the parkland, passed into the ownership of the National Trust in 1989. Members of the National Trust have free access to the gardens, but there is a charge for all visitors to the house, which goes toward the costs of restoration. The gardens and most of the parkland are listed Grade I separately from the house. The park and gardens saw 213,721 visitors during 2020/21.
History
The medieval settlement of Stowe clustered around the parish church of St Mary's, Stowe. From 1330, Osney Abbey maintained a manor house at Stowe occupied by a steward. Osney Abbey retained Stowe until it was forced to surrender its estates to the Crown in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.Sir George Gifford owned Stowe Manor and Rectory. He willed it to his son Thomas Gifford. The Stowe estate was leased from Thomas Gifford in 1571 by Peter Temple whose son, John Temple, bought the manor and estate of Stowe in 1589 and it eventually became the home of the Temple family. Their family fortune was based on sheep farming, at Witney in Oxfordshire, and in 1546 they rented a sheep farm in Burton Dassett in Warwickshire. In the late 17th century, the house was completely rebuilt by Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet, on the present site. This house is now the core of the mansion known today.
House
Architectural history
The house is the result of four main periods of development. Between 1677 and 1683, the architect William Cleare was commissioned by Sir Richard Temple to build the central block of the house. This building was four floors high, including the basement and attics and thirteen bays in length. Cleare had worked as Christopher Wren's chief joiner and based the design of the house on that of Coleshill.From the 1720s to 1733, under Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, additions to the house included the Ionic north tetrastyle portico by John Vanbrugh, as well as the re-building of the north, east and west fronts. After Vanburgh's death in 1726, work continued under William Kent, and it was probably he who designed the now-demolished two-tier south portico, which consisted of four Tuscan columns with four Ionic or Composite columns above.
From the 1740s to 1760, under Viscount Cobham, the western and the eastern state apartments were expanded.
From 1770 to 1779, Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple obtained a first design from Jacques-François Blondel for the new south front of the house. However this design did not meet with the Earl's approval, in 1771 Robert Adam produced a new design for the south front; this design was adapted and made more uniform by Thomas Pitt assisted by Giovanni Battista Borra and was finished in 1779. The interiors of the new state apartments were not completed until 1788, much of the interior work being by an Italian, Vincenzo Valdrè.
At the same time, the final remodelling of the North Front was taking place: this involved the erection in 1770–1772 of the two twin quadrant colonnades of Ionic columns that flank the façade. These may be to Adam's design. The northern ends of the colonnades are linked to screen-walls containing gateways by William Kent which were moved from the forecourt to this position and heightened in 1775 by Valdrè. The east gateway leads to the stable court the west to the kitchen court. At right angles to these walls stand the arches designed by Giacomo Leoni c. 1740; these were formal entrances to the gardens, they now lead to various buildings put up by the school.
The exterior of the house has not been significantly changed since 1779, although in the first decade of the 19th century, the Egyptian Hall was added beneath the North Portico as a secondary entrance.
The south façade
The showpiece of the House is the south façade overlooking the gardens. This is one of the finest examples of neoclassical architecture in Britain. The main front stretches over. Divided into five major sections, these are: the central block around in width, the lower linking sections wide that contain on the west the State Dining Room and on the east The Large Library, then at the ends the two pavilions the same height as the central block about in width. The central block and the end pavilions are articulated at piano nobile level with unfluted Corinthian pilasters over tall which becomes a hexastyle portico supporting a pediment in the middle of the façade, there is a minor order of 48 Ionic columns over high that runs the length of the façade. The portico fronts a loggia that contains the doorway to the Marble Saloon, this is flanked by large niches that used to contain ancient Roman statues, between the columns of the portico used to be the marble sculpture of Vertumnus and Pomona by Laurent Delvaux now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Above the niches is a large frieze on a Bacchic theme, this is based on an engraving in James Stuart's and Nicholas Revett's Antiquities of Athens of the frieze on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates.There is a flight of thirty-three steps the full width of the portico which descends to the South Lawn. The staircase has solid parapets either side that end in sculptures of Medici lions standing and resting a paw on a ball. These are the original lions dating from the late 1700s. They were sold in 1921 to Blackpool Corporation and had been standing in Stanley Park in Blackpool but were reinstated in 2013 in a swap deal that saw copies going to Blackpool. Either side of the portico are two tripartite windows separated and flanked by Ionic columns. These are enclosed with an arch that contains a carved Portland stone tondo in the tympanum with carvings of the four seasons, and is in turn flanked by twin Corinthian pilasters the same size as the columns of the portico. The façade is surmounted by a balustraded parapet, in the centre of the parapet of the east pavilion is a sculpture of two reclining figures of Ceres and Flora the corresponding figures on the west pavilion are of Liberty and Religion. The end pavilions each have three tripartite windows matching those on the central block, the tondos of which are each carved with a sacrificial scene.
The ground floor is lower than the floor above, about in height and visually acts as a base to the façade, it is of banded rustication with simple arched windows beneath each window on the upper floor. In 1790 a balustrade was added parallel to the façade that ran from the bottom of the steps the full length of the house and then returned at both ends, there are a series of 30 pedestals along the balustrade, that until their sale in 1921 were topped by bronze urns. These were replaced by replicas in 2013. This was probably added to keep visitors from the lower windows of the house, and formal flower beds were laid out in the area.
Stowe Library
In 1793 George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham, converted The East Gallery into The Large Library and, in the first decade of the 19th century, on the ground floor created the Gothic Library to the designs of Sir John Soane. This is a rare example of Soane using the Gothic style.In 1834, Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, inherited the library of Lord Grenville, his uncle, of which in 1824 The Times had claimed
Following the bankruptcy of Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1847, much of the valuable collection was sold. The library has provided provenance to many valued manuscripts including the Stowe 2 Psalter, Stowe 54, the Stowe Breviary and the "Stowe manuscripts".
The major interiors
Several owners of Stowe undertook the Grand Tour, Earl Temple spent 1729–1733 in France, Switzerland & Italy, the 1st Marquess in 1774 visited Italy, the 2nd Duke before he inherited his title in 1817, and the 1st Duke in 1827–1829 toured the Mediterranean aboard his yacht the Anna Eliza named after his wife. Many of the art works that adorned the house were acquired both during these trips and through the 1st Duke inheriting his father-in-law's art collection. The 1st Duke, before he inherited Stowe, also bought paintings at the sale of the Orleans Collection in 1798 and continued to buy paintings for another twenty years as well as books, engravings and the Stowe Service of Worcester Porcelain, as well as archaeological specimens. The main rooms are mainly located on the 1st floor Piano nobile, a few are on the ground floor.During the sales of 1921 and 1922, all the remaining furnishings and art works not sold in 1848 were auctioned, as were several fittings, including chimneypieces. Some of the family portraits and other items associated with the house have since been bought back and are now on display in the house.
File:Caractacus Pleading Before the Emperor Claudius in Rome, by Thomas Banks, 1774-1777, marble - Stowe House - Buckinghamshire, England - DSC07090.jpg|thumb|left|Caractacus Pleading Before the Emperor Claudius, The North Hall