Restoring Stowe.

In the eighteenth century, Stowe was often called the finest seat in England. House and garden are an amazing collage created by almost all the best architects and garden designers (particularly those with Whig connections): Vanbrugh, Bridgeman, Gibbs, Kent, Lancelot Brown, Robert Adam, even Soane all contributed ideas, parts of the palace, and the park's temples and pavilions. The family who owned the place started as lawyers in the 1600s but (assisted by well-timed bribes to the monarchy and judiciously organised marriages) successive heirs climbed implacably through the social hierarchy and increasing riches to become Dukes of Buckingham in 1822.

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But as reform began to change the nature of politics (and sinecures) in the nineteenth century, the dukes continued to spend on a semi-royal scale. In 1848, there was a sale of the palace contents, yet both house and gardens continued to decay. Stowe was finally sold up in 1921, the building saved from destruction by being converted into a school. But while grounds and their temples have largely been restored by the National Trust, the great palace itself, though watertight, was slowly being eroded by time and schoolboys. In 1997, the Stowe House Preservation Trust was set up and initiated a six-phase restoration scheme. The giant north front with its colonnaded wings was the first to be completed. Now, the south portico and the magnificent elliptical Marble Saloon, the spatial focus of the composition, have been renewed by Purcell Miller Tritton. The saloon, probably by G. B. Borra, has a triumphal frieze probably by J.-F. Blondel (attributions are difficult in mid-eighteenth century Stowe, where the client Earl Temple was the mastermind). But after the cornice had been the target for a species of initiation ceremony by generations of boys, many of the 300 frieze figures had become badly eroded. Now, they are all restored, as is the coffered plaster ceiling and the marble floor. The splendid scagliola columns are repaired and polished to their eighteenth-century condition. It is again one of the finest and most powerful interiors of its period. The [pounds sterling]36 million restoration programme continues (the whole south front is next), and the house is open to the public when school is down.

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