Stowe Gardens, formerly Stowe Landscape Gardens, are extensive Grade I listed gardens and parkland in Buckinghamshire, England. Largely created in the 18th century, the gardens at Stowe are arguably the most significant example of the English landscape garden. Designed by Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown, the gardens changed from a baroque park to a natural landscape garden, commissioned by the estate's owners, in particular by Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, his nephew Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple, and his nephew George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham.
The gardens are notable for the scale, design, size and the number of monuments set across the landscape, as well as for the fact they have been a tourist attraction for over 300 years. Many of the monuments in the property have their own additional Grade I listing along with the park. These include: the Corinthian Arch, the Temple of Venus, the Palladian Bridge, the Gothic Temple, the Temple of Ancient Virtue, the Temple of British Worthies, the Temple of Concord and Victory, the Queen's Temple, Doric Arch, the Oxford Bridge, amongst others.
The gardens passed into the ownership of the National Trust in 1989, whilst Stowe House, the home of Stowe School, is under the care of the Stowe House Preservation Trust. The parkland surrounding the gardens is open 365 days a year.
History The Stowe gardens and estate are located close to the village of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, England. John Temple, a wealthy wool farmer, purchased the manor and estate in 1589. Subsequent generations of Temples inherited the estate, but it was with the succession of Sir Richard Temple that the gardens began to be developed, after the completion of a new house in 1683.
Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, inherited the estate in 1697, and in 1713 was given the title Baron Cobham. During this period, both the house and the garden were redesigned and expanded, with leading architects, designers and gardeners employed to enhance the property. The installation of a variety of temples and classical features was illustrated the Temple family's wealth and status. The temples are also considered as a humorous reference to the family motto: TEMPLA QUAM DILECTA ('How beautiful are the Temples').
1690s to 1740s
In the 1690s, Stowe had a modest early Baroque parterre garden, but it has not survived, as it was altered and adapted as the gardens were progressively remodelled. Within a relatively short time, Stowe became widely renowned for its magnificent gardens created by Lord Cobham. Created in three main phases, the gardens at Stowe show the development of garden design in 18th-century England. They are also the only gardens where Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown all made significant contributions to the character and design.
From 1711 to 1735, Charles Bridgeman was the garden designer, whilst John Vanbrugh was the architect from 1720 until his death in 1726. They designed an English Baroque park, inspired by the work of George London, Henry Wise and Stephen Switzer. After Vanbrugh's death in 1726, James Gibbs took over as garden architect. He also worked in the English Baroque style. Bridgeman was notable for the use of canalised water at Stowe.
In 1731, William Kent was appointed to work with Bridgeman, whose last designs are dated 1735. After Bridgeman, Kent took over as the garden designer. Kent had already created the noted garden at Rousham House, and he and Gibbs built temples, bridges, and other garden structures, creating a less formal style of garden. Kent's masterpiece at Stowe is the innovative Elysian Fields, which were "laid out on the latest principles of following natural lines and contours". With its Temple of Ancient Virtue that looks across to his Temple of British Worthies, Kent's architectural work was in the newly fashionable Palladian style.
In March 1741, Capability Brown was appointed head gardener and he lived in the East Boycott Pavilion. He had first been employed at Stowe in 1740, to support work on the water schemes on site. Brown worked with Gibbs until 1749 and with Kent until the latter's death in 1748. Brown departed in the autumn of 1751 to start his independent career as a garden designer. At that time, Bridgeman's octagonal pond and lake were extended and given a "naturalistic" shape. A Palladian bridge was added in 1744, probably to Gibbs's design. Brown also reputedly contrived a Grecian Valley which, despite its name, was an abstract composition of landform and woodland. He also developed the Hawkwell Field, with Gibbs's most notable building, the Gothic Temple, within. The Temple is one of the properties leased from the National Trust by the Landmark Trust, who maintain it as a holiday home. As John Claudius Loudon remarked in 1831, "nature has done little or nothing; man a great deal, and time has improved his labours".
1740s to 1760s
Earl Temple, who had inherited Stowe from his uncle Lord Cobham, turned to a garden designer called Richard Woodward after Brown left. Woodward had worked at Wotton House, the Earl's previous home. The work of naturalising the landscape started by Brown was continued under Woodward and was accomplished by the mid-1750s.
At the same time, Earl Temple turned his attention to the various temples and monuments. He altered several temples designed by Vanburgh and Gibbs to make them conform to his taste for Neoclassical architecture. To accomplish this, he employed Giovanni Battista Borra from July 1750 to c. 1760. Also at this time, several statues and temples were relocated within the garden, including the Fane of Pastoral Poetry.
Earl Temple made further alterations in the gardens from the early 1760s, with alteration to both planting and structure. Several older structures were removed, including the Witch House. Several designs for this period are attributed to his cousin Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford. Camelford's most notable design was the Corinthian Arch.
1770s To Present
Famed as a highly fashionable garden, by 1777 some visitors, such as Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston, complained that the gardens were "much behind the best modern ones in points of good taste".
The next owner of Stowe, the Marquess of Buckingham, made relatively few changes to the gardens, as his main contribution to the Stowe scheme was the completion of Stowe House's interior. Vincenzo Valdrè was his architect and built a few new structures such as The Menagerie, with its formal garden and the Buckingham Lodges at the southern end of the Grand Avenue, and most notably the Queen's Temple.
19th-century Stowe
The last significant changes to the gardens were made by the next two owners of Stowe, the 1st and 2nd Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos. The former succeeded in buying the Lamport Estate in 1826, which was immediately to the east of the gardens, adding to the south-east of the gardens to form the Lamport Gardens.
From 1840 the 2nd Duke's gardener Mr Ferguson created rock structures and water features in the new Lamport Gardens. The architect Edward Blore was also employed to build the Lamport Lodge and Gates as a carriage entrance, and also remodelled the Water Stratford Lodge at the start of the Oxford Avenue.
In 1848 the 2nd Duke was forced to sell the contents of the house and a large part of the estate in order to begin to pay off his debts. The auction by Christie's made the name of the auction house. In 1862, Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos returned to Stowe and began to repair several areas of the gardens, including planting avenues of trees. In 1868 the garden was re-opened to the public.
20th century
The remaining estate was sold in 1921 and 1922. In 1923, Stowe School was founded, which saved the house and garden from destruction. Until 1989, the landscape garden was owned by Stowe School, who undertook some restoration work. This included the development of a restoration plan in the 1930s. The first building to be restored was the Queen's Temple, repairs to which were funded by a public appeal launched by the future Edward VIII. In the 1950s, repairs were made to the Temple of Venus, the Corinthian Arch and the Rotondo. Stowe Avenue was replanted in 1960. In the 1960s, significant repairs were made to buildings such as the Lake Pavilions and the Pebble Alcove. Other works included replanting several avenues, repairs to two-thirds of the buildings, and the reclamation of six of the lakes (only the Eleven Acre Lake was not tackled). As a result of this, the school was recognised for its contribution to conservation and heritage with awards in 1974 and 1975.
The National Trust first became significantly involved in Stowe in 1965, when John Workman was invited to compile a plan for restoration. In 1967, 221 acres were covenanted to the National Trust and in 1985 the trust purchased Oxford Avenue, the first time it had bought land to enhance a site not under its ownership. In 1989, much of the garden and the park was donated to the National Trust, after generous donations from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and an anonymous benefactor, which enabled an endowment for repairs to be created. In 1993, the National Trust successfully completed an appeal for £1 million, with the aim of having the garden restored by 2000. Parallel to fund-raising, extensive garden, archaeological and biological surveys were undertaken. Further repairs were undertaken to many monuments in the 1990s. The Stowe Papers, some 350,000 documents relating to the estate, are in the collection of the Huntington Library.
21st century
In 2012 the restoration of the historic New Inn was finished, providing enhanced visitor services. In 2015, the National Trust began a further programme of restoration, which included the recreation of the Queens Theatre, the return of many statues to former locations in the Grecian Valley, and the return of the Temple of Modern Virtue to the Elysian Fields.
Accommodating the requirements of a 21st-century school within a historic landscape continues to create challenges. In the revised Buckinghamshire, in the Pevsner Buildings of England series published in 2003, Elizabeth Williamson wrote of areas of the garden being "disastrously invaded by school buildings". In 2021, plans for a new Design, Technology and Engineering block in Pyramid Wood provoked controversy. The school's plans were supported by the National Trust but opposed by Buckinghamshire County Council's own planning advisors, as well as a range of interest groups including The Gardens Trust. Despite objections from the council's independent advisor, and an appeal to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the plans were approved in 2022.
Layout
Approaching Stowe Gardens
In 2012, with the renovation and re-opening of the New Inn, visitors to Stowe Gardens have returned to using the historic entrance route to the site which was used by tourists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most will drive between the Buckingham Lodges, before approaching the site along the Grand Avenue and turning right in front of the Corinthian Arch.
Significant monuments on the route in, include:
The Buckingham Lodges
The Buckingham Lodges are 2.25 miles south-southeast of the centre of the House. Probably designed by Vincenzo Valdrè and dated 1805, they flank the southern entrance to the Grand Avenue.
The Grand Avenue
The Grand Avenue, from Buckingham to the south and the Oxford Avenue from the south-west, which leads to the forecourt of the house. The Grand Avenue was created in the 1770s; it is in width and one and half miles in length, and was lined originally with elm trees. The elms succumbed in the 1970s to Dutch elm disease and were replaced with alternate beech & chestnut trees.
The Corinthian Arch