Projects › Stowe House

Stowe House

Since 2000, Stowe House has undergone extensive restoration under the direction of The Stowe House Preservation Trust (SHPT), and Purcell architects. The Grade 1 listed property, home to Stowe School since 1923, was built and extended by the Temple-Grenville family as one of England’s largest Georgian country houses, set within the gardens and landscapes designed over time by William Kent, Charles Bridgeman and ‘Capability Brown’. The creation of SHPT allowed for a major National Heritage Lottery Fund grant to be used in the restoration of, initially, the North Front of the main mansion.  

Working through a sequence of internal and external restoration projects included the South Front, North Hall, Blue Room, State Library, Marble Saloon, with the two most recent projects - the State Drawing Room and the State Dining Room – requiring the specialist expertise of Zardi & Zardi. Taking the lead from a contemporary watercolour illustrating a colour scheme of peach/orange, as well as mention of orange damask in the estate guidebooks, in the State Drawing Room, Zardi & Zardi took up the challenge of recreating this vivid wallpaper, with the added requirement that it be hard-wearing enough to withstand its role as a school dining room.

Recreating the wallcoverings in the State Dining Room was an altogether greater task, with five large tapestries measuring approximately 3.5m high and in some cases 7.3m wide, plus smaller panels at intervals throughout, covering all four walls. The original tapestries depicting Roman mythological figures Venus, Diana, Mars, Bacchus and Ceres, from the Triumph of the Gods series, were originally woven in 1749 and sold in 1922. Textile historian Annabel Weston tracked down the originals in Europe, and worked with PJ Keeling, Director of Zardi & Zardi, to painstakingly reproduce the texture and colours with as much accuracy and as close to the originals as possible. Working from an archive of black and white turn-of-the-century photographs, they were able to hang them in their original order and bring this impressive room back to life.

The State Dining Room has a rich history of hosting royalty including Queen Victoria in 1845 and Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. With magnificent windows and breathtaking views across the South Lawns down to the Octagon Lake, the room is bathed in natural light reflected by the opulent gilt ceiling decoration. Venus and her mythical creatures look on from above.

The recent completion of restoration works at Stowe House has resulted in a unanimous award from The Georgian Society for ‘the sheer cumulative scale of works, the underlying pragmatism that allows the building to continue to function as a school, and the quality of what has been achieved in establishing new restoration standards.’