History of the site
The greatest architects gather
One of the finest neoclassical buildings in Europe, it is hard to imagine a building which has benefited from the input of so many of Britain’s finest architects. Sir Richard Temple’s original seventeenth-century house was enlarged significantly by his son Viscount Cobham in the early eighteenth century. James Gibbs, Robert Adam, Sir John Soane are just a few to have contributed. It is set within an Arcadian classical landscape designed by Capability Brown and William Kent. The house was added to throughout the eighteenth century by successive owners and the result has been described by Professor Michael McCarthy as ‘the largest and most completely realised private neoclassical building in the world’.
Soldiers in triumph
The Marble Saloon stands at the heart of the building and was designed by Giovanni Battista Borra between 1775 and 1778, with Georges-François Blondel and Vincenzo Valdre also contributing to the decorative design. Recalling the great Pantheon of Rome, it contains sixteen great scagliola columns, supporting an entablature with carved satyrs in the metopes. This entablature is surmounted by a spectacular plaster frieze showing a procession of triumphant soldiers in high relief. Containing two hundred and eighty human figures, the frieze supports a huge elliptical coffered dome which reaches a height of over seventeen metres. The plasterwork of the dome is spectacular, and nearly every single one of the one hundred and sixty coffers is different in shape and size due to the elliptical design.
It is the floor of the saloon which gives the room its name, as it is comprised of over seventy-two four-foot squares of Massa Carrara marble. These were transferred to Stowe from another of Earl Temple’s properties in Dorset. The whole ensemble of the room became highly admired and influential from the moment of its completion.
From private house to public school
Demand for a new boarding school increased greatly after World War I, and the sale of Stowe in 1921 afforded the opportunity to save the site from demolition. Many alterations were needed to make it suitable for an educational institution, but Stowe School opened in 1923 with just ninety-nine pupils. The Marble Saloon was used frequently for assemblies and other gatherings of pupils, and is still today a much loved part of the school.
Detail from the frieze encircling the Marble Saloon before restoration
The frieze post restoration with missing elements recreated and cleaned