Visitors to the House today can view eight state rooms which were part of the suite of rooms on display to the public in the late 18th century. Built along a line, or enfilade, of inter-connecting doors, the rooms were designed to look across over the South Front of the Gardens. The rooms were not for everyday use and only used for special occasions, mainly for visiting royalty. The memoirs of an estate tenant, Elizabeth George, writing after Queen Victoria's three-day visit in January 1845, mentions 15 rooms "all gilded and so full of expensive furniture that it made the rooms look like furniture warehouses"! This penchant for collecting expensive pieces of furniture and ornaments - both at Stowe House and four of the 2nd Duke's other properties - led eventually to the Great Sale of 1848. (see below)
Piano Nobile The piano nobile is the principal floor of large houses mainly built in the Neo-Classical style and traditionally contained the principal state reception and bedrooms of the house. It was often the first or sometimes the second floor, located above a basic ground floor containing minor rooms and service rooms. The reasons for this were so the rooms could have finer views, and more practically to avoid damp. This is true of Stowe House, whose piano nobile is on the first floor to give it height and the views it deserves. The present State Rooms were laid out in the 1770s, most of which looked over the South Front, forming the enfilade (line of rooms linked by connecting doors) running from east to west and considered to be the longest in England. The Marble Saloon forms the central State Room with the rest of the rooms placed symmetrically either side of it (see plan below).
The two Great Sales While it was not uncommon to see great men fall in the nineteenth century, Stowe has suffered twice from the expensive tastes of it's owners, rooted in the ambitious building plans of the eighteenth century. While Earl Temple (owner 1749 - 1779) spent most of his life here on a building site, it was the 1st Duke whose frivolous attitude towards money led to his wife sending him abroad for two years to reduce his spending. His son, the 2nd Duke, who completely redesigned the State Rooms in the hope that Queen Victoria would eventually visit. She finally did, with Prince Albert, in early January 1845. The Duke was already in debt for £1.1 million (at that time) and by 1848 was forced to sell the contents of the House and Gardens. Raising a mere £75,000, the family never really recovered. The second sale came about in 1922 when the estate, having been sold by the last heiress to a property developer who was unable to pass it across to the nation without an endowment, was separated from the contents once more. The contents were sold off and sent literally all over the world. Certain pieces can still be found in museums and galleris around the globe.
The empty shell was then purchased by a group of men, the Allied Schools Group, looking to start up a new public school - thus Stowe School was born. Undoublty this purchase prevented the House being pulled down and the land sold off.
New to Stowe House since July 2005, the Interpretation Centre chronologically tells the story of the rise and fall of the Temple-Grenville family and the development of the House itself. Panels with text and pictures explain how the Temple family rose from being sheep farmers to Dukes in 150 years and how they built a palace to match their rise up the social ladder. With a computer-generated evolution of the House, a touch screen audio-visual on the restoration of the Marble Saloon, and some children's activities including dressing up clothes, there is something to help everyone understand and appreciate the importance of Stowe House. The Interpretation Centre can be found at the end of the walk through of the State Apartments and is only open in the holidays.
