The restoration of Stowe

The Daily Telegraph recently had an article about the completion of the lengthy scheme to restore many of the interiors of Stowe in Buckinghamshire. 

The article can be seen at Welcome to Stowe: the 100-year-old institution where Sir Richard Branson made his first business phone calls

A linked article from the Daily Telegraph from 2020 about restoration of the gardens, and in particular the statuary, at Stowe and schemes at other National Trust properties can be seen at 'The Nine Muses' recreated at Stowe after a century of archaeological detective work

The follies, temples and other garden features at Stowe have been famous and accessible for many years, but now the house, restored to much of its early nineteenth century splendour, can be seen much more as it was intended by its builders.

This restoration is reminiscent of the wonderful work being done at another monument to eighteenth century aristocratic ambition, wealth, and power at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire

Amongst other things which marked out the later owners of Stowe was their surname, unique in being five barrelled as Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville. Imagine getting that onto a credit card….

Raised to what was to be one of the last non-royal dukedoms, a further re-creation of that of Buckingham, in 1822 the title died with the third Duke in 1889. His heiress was his daughter Lady Kinloss, whose descendant, the  present Lady Kinloss, would be the likely claimant to the English throne had King Henry VIII’s arrangement of the succession been adhered to in 1603. That claim by descent through the Seymours and the Percies passed to the Chandos family in the late eighteenth century.