The House and Gardens
The beauty of Stowe is captured in the relationship between the house and the landscape gardens. When the formal gardens were swept away by 'Capability' Brown in the 1740s, the gardens retained the picturesque ideal of the temple and the monument - hence the family's motto, Templa Quam Dilecta ('How beautiful are thy temples'). These were framed by long vistas down which to view them. But with the softened edges of the lakes, the opening of the views and the building of even more elaborate temples, Stowe became celebrated as the most beautiful landscape gardens in Europe and its influence was felt as far away as Russia. Tourists were welcomed into the gardens as early as the 1730s and the first guidebook, written by a local book-seller, came out in 1744. To begin with, it described the gardens only, but during its revision every few years as the gardens evolved and were added to, it eventually came to include a description of the house.
Under Viscount Cobham, Stowe was a political hotbed and writers, poets, politicians and compliant relatives were invited. The visitors reflected the ebb and flow of the support Cobham received, depending upon who was in power at the time. Stowe 'Palace' was conceived under Earl Temple with the redesigning of the South Front as the principal temple in the Gardens in the 1770s. The family's aim now was to wine and dine the monarchy of Europe and the estate was the perfect setting for this endeavour. As one set of VIP guests came and went, the word spread that Stowe was the place to be and the Temple-Grenville family as the people to know.
| A few Royal visitors to Stowe | |
| 1737 | Frederick, Prince of Wales and Princess Amelia |
| 1768 | Christian VII of Denmark |
| 1804 | Prince de Conde |
| 1808 | exiled Louis XVIII of France (commemorated in the renaming of the Bourbon Tower) |
| 1805/1808 | George IV (as Prince of Wales) |
| 1810 | King Gustav of Sweden |
| 1814 | Tsar Alexander I of Russia |
| 1817 | Grand Duke Michael of Russia |
| 1818 | Grand Duke Nicolas of Russia (later Tsar Nicolas I) |
| William IV several times before his accession in 1830 | |
| 1840 | Queen Adelaide |
| 1843 | King of Hanover |
| 1845 | Queen Victoria and Prince Albert |
The modern visitor is struck by the wealth of information available from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about Stowe. Together with the 'official' guide books, famous contemporary writers such as Celia Finnes and Alexander Pope have their view, diaries from house and gardens visitors, maps, engravings of views and paintings all show Stowe changing over the decades.
And so the beauty of Stowe is not just the relationship between the house and the gardens but the relationship of the individual with the landscape.