The Garter Room at Stowe House’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
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Michael Bevington, ‘The Garter Room at Stowe House’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XV, 2006, pp. 140–158 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2006 THE GARTER ROOM AT STOWE HOUSE MICHAEL BEVINGTON he Garter Room at Stowe House was described as the Ball Room and subsequently as the large Tby Michael Gibbon as ‘following, or rather Library, which led to a three-room apartment, which blazing, the Neo-classical trail’. This article will show Lady Newdigate noted as all ‘newly built’ in July that its shell was built by Lord Cobham, perhaps to . On the western side the answering gallery was the design of Capability Brown, before , and that known as the State Gallery and subsequently as the the plan itself was unique. It was completed for Earl State Dining Room. Next west was the State Temple, mainly in , to a design by John Hobcraft, Dressing Room, and the State Bedchamber was at perhaps advised by Giovanni-Battista Borra. Its the western end of the main enfilade. In Lady detailed decoration, however, was taken from newly Newdigate was told by ‘the person who shewd the documented Hellenistic buildings in the near east, house’ that this room was to be ‘a prodigious large especially the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra. Borra’s bedchamber … in which the bed is to be raised drawings of this building were published in the first upon steps’, intended ‘for any of the Royal Family, if of Robert Wood’s two famous books, The Ruins of ever they should do my Lord the honour of a visit.’ Palmyra otherwise Tedmor in the Desart , in . ‘This apartment is to be fitted up with the greatest This article will demonstrate that the Garter Room Magnificence, it is at present only brick walls yet said was the first room in the modern world to be based to have cost ten thousand pounds’. The room was on the Temple of the Sun, and it will suggest why not mentioned by the Duchess of Beaufort, who the iconography of Palmyra would have been so visited on September , so it was presumably attractive to Earl Temple. still unfinished then. Since the brickwork seen by Lady Newdigate presumably included the fireplace, the only possible location for the bed would have been against the THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE west wall, where it eventually went. Here the Stowe STATE APARTMENT AT STOWE State Bed was intended to stand on a dais behind The State Bedchamber or Garter Room (Figs. and ) railings. This may have been Lord Cobham’s own was the culmination of Lord Cobham’s design of the idea, as by this time he had designed at least one ’s. During this decade he embarked on the garden and one park building. Or it could have grand scheme of extending his father’s seventeenth- been one of his architects, who included Gibbs in century house by galleries and two end pavilions. – , possibly Flitcroft c. , and Brown, The result was an impressive enfilade of eleven nominally head gardener, but effectively clerk of rooms centred on the Great Parlour (replaced in the works from to . Lord Cobham had ’s with the Marble Hall). Lord Cobham had requested Brown’s plans for the ‘Long Room’ in started on the eastern side with a gallery once known April . This is unlikely to have been for the THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV THE GARTER ROOM AT STOWE HOUSE Fig. The Garter Room photographed by J. Mudd in the s. The State Bed in the recess at the west end until had been replaced by a large mirror. Stowe School . Fig. The Garter Room as school Dining Room, before . The mirror had been removed and an elliptical window set in the west wall by Clough Williams-Ellis. The former loggia is on the left. Buckinghamshire County Council . THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV THE GARTER ROOM AT STOWE HOUSE Fig. Fairchild, plan of the State Apartment at Stowe House, . a) is the State Bed Chamber (the Garter Room), b) is the State Dressing Room, c) is the State Dining Room (the Gallery), and f) is the loggia. gallery on the east side (the Ball room, now the Lord Cobham clearly intended that the State Bed Library), since its cornice and cove were plastered by itself should be the climax of his enfilade. In April and it was complete by July . It is also Stowe had been designed with an enfilade aligned unlikely to have meant the State Gallery (now the State with windows in the end rooms and located close to Dining Room), which answers the Library on the west the exterior wall. The positioning of doorways close side, as joiners and plasterers were at work there in to the exterior walls limited the range of possibilities , and Francesco Sleter was paid for the four for the dynamic shapes of rooms. But this was the paintings in the cove in April . Although the usual position. Several large English houses Library and State Dining Room are and feet long included the bedchamber near the end of the respectively, it may be significant that Seeley called progression through the State Rooms. At Chatsworth them both ‘galleries’, not ‘rooms’, in the the state apartment on the first floor of the south side Description .... However, the State Bedchamber, runs east to west towards the State Bedchamber. In originally feet inches by feet inches, could the south front of Hampton Court, progressing from also have been described as a long room. Brown, who west to east, the State Bedchamber lay beyond the had designed the Grecian Temple and other buildings Throne Room, although the Queen’s closet in the garden, may therefore have drawn up the plans, occupied the actual corner. Only in a few instances, but the idea could have been Lord Cobham’s. It may as in the Saloon at Blenheim, was the enfilade used be significant that Lord Cobham’s portrait was to more creatively, providing vistas along the centres of feature in this part of the house. the rooms. At Blenheim a pair of three-roomed THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV THE GARTER ROOM AT STOWE HOUSE apartments in the state rooms along the south front the bed alcove. The wide south arm was adjoined by was mirrored on the east front by another pair of a loggia ( f on the plan in fig. ), to balance that on the private apartmens. Likewise Stowe had its private south side of the east pavilion. But the room was apartment at the east end of the enfilade, mirroring rebuilt for structural reasons by Fielding Dodds in the location of the state apartment at the west end. (Figs. & ). The four closets were removed, as Nevertheless, at Blenheim, more typical of a were the two additional Palmyrene ceilings near the seventeenth-century layout, the final room in the windows. The ceiling is aligned on the centre of sequence was the dressing room or closet, and the the new room and not on the enfilade, like the bed in the previous room could therefore not be in original ceiling. the alignment but had to stand to one side, at right angles. The ground floor on the south side of Beningbrough has bedroom suites at either end but, again, the dressing rooms are in the corners, with the THE SOURCE OF THE DESIGN bedchambers one room in towards the centre of the It was clearly Lord Cobham’s intention from the start house. Stowe’s State Bedchamber is therefore probably that his state apartment should be decorated with unique on two counts. The bedchamber is at the very classical themes. The four medallion paintings in the end of the enfilade, and the bed itself is aligned with cove of the State Gallery, for which Sleter was paid six the enfilade, not set back from it at right angles. guineas in April , represent Hebe , Diana , and Although Earl Temple inherited Stowe in , it Cupid and two Graces . Lord Cobham commissioned was not until that work started on the interior of Urban Leyniers at Brussels to manufacture a series of the State Bedchamber. In February John five large tapestries, all on the theme of the triumphs of Hobcraft charged for ‘Drawing a Plan for State classical deities (Bacchus, Neptune, Mars, Diana, Bedchamber’. In April Thomas Collingridge was Ceres), while the overmantels illustrated the paid for joining the floors. In June Charles Scriven importance of truth and poetic inspiration. Such a was paid for glass. In July Thomas Collingridge was classical triumph was part of the carefully orchestrated paid for work about the partitions. In October iconography supporting Cobham’s other martial and George Pain was paid ( £ ) for the ceiling. Nearly political themes elsewhere in the house. three years later, in September , Thomas Page was Earl Temple, who succeeded his uncle at Stowe paid for hanging the doors, and the room must have in , was more single-mindedly devoted to the been complete by , when William Bacon set up classical world. He spent much time and money the State Bed. was also the date of Seeley’s first purifying Stowe’s classical buildings and developing Description ... to give details of the interior of the more complex classical iconographies. Previously house. Earl Temple, however, was awarded the Garter classical architecture had been copied from sources only in February , after his brother-in-law William like Palladio’s engravings of Roman temples. These Pitt had asked for it on his behalf, so the centre of the were turned into trend-setting copies like William ceiling with its Garter insignia and the hangings on the Kent’s Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe in the mid bed were not added until then.