page_title: Stowe House
section_title: The Grecian valley
hierarchical_section_title: Stowe House / Stowe Landscape Gardens / The Grecian valley
caption_attribution_description: English: The Temple of Concord and Victory, Stowe The Temple of Concord and Victory, viewed along the Grecian Valley. The temple is one of the grandest in any garden in the country, it was begun in 1747 for Lord Cobham and originally called the Grecian Temple.
context_page_description: Stowe House is a grade I listed country house in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of Stowe School, an independent school and is owned by the Stowe House Preservation Trust who have to date spent more than £25m on the restoration of the house. Stowe House is regularly open to the public. The gardens, a significant example of the English garden style, along with part of the Park, passed into the ownership of The National Trust in 1989 and are open to the public. The parkland surrounding the gardens is open 365 days a year. National Trust members have free access to the gardens but there is a charge for all visitors to the house which goes towards the costs of restoring the building. The gardens and most of the parkland are listed grade I separately from the House.
context_section_description: Is to the north of the Eastern Garden. Designed by Capability Brown and created from 1747 to 1749, this is Brown's first known landscape design. An L-shaped area of lawns covering about 60 acres (24 ha), was formed by excavating 23,500 cubic yards (18,000 m³) of earth by hand and removed in wheelbarrows with the original intention of creating a lake. Mature Lime and Elm trees were transplanted from elsewhere on the estate to create a mature landscape. Other tree species that Brown used in this and other areas of the gardens include: Cedar, Yew, Beech, Sycamore, Larch & Scots Pine. The buildings in this area are:
  Temple of Concord and Victory
  The designer of this the largest of the garden buildings is unknown, both Earl Temple and Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford have been suggested as the architect. Built from stone, between 1747 and 1749, the building is located where the two legs of the valley meet. It is raised on a podium with a flight of steps up to the main entrance, the cella and pronaos is surrounded by a peristyle of 28 fluted Roman Ionic columns, ten on the flanks and six at each end. The main pediment contains a sculpture by Peter Scheemakers of Four-Quarters of the World bringing their Various Products to Britannia, there are six statues acroterion of cast lead painted to resemble stone on both the east and west pediments. In the frieze of the entablature are the words CONCORDIAE ET VICTORIAE, the sculpture on the building dates from the 1760s when it was converted into a monument to the British victory in the Seven Years' War. The ceiling of the peristyle is based on an engraving by Robert Wood of a ceiling in Palmyra. Within the pronaos and cella are 16 terracotta medallions commemorating British Victories in the Seven Years' War, these were designed by James "Athenian" Stuart, each one is inscribed with the name of the battle: Quebec; Martinico & c.; Louisbourg; Guadeloupe & c.; Montreal; Pondicherry & c.; the naval battle of Belleisle; the naval battle of Lagos; Crevelt & Minden; Fellinghausen; Goree and Senegal; Crown Point, Niagara and Quesne; Havannah and Manila; Beau Sejour, Cherburgh and Belleisle. The wooden doors are painted a Prussian blue with gilded highlights on the moldings. Above the door is an inscription by Valerius Maximus:
  The interior end wall of the cella has an aedicule containing a statue of Liberty. Above is this inscription:
  When the School built its Chapel in the late 1920s, 16 of the 28 columns from this Temple were moved to the new building, being replaced with plain brickwork. One of the earliest National Trust restoration works was to create replacement columns with which to restore the Temple.
  The Fane of Pastoral Poetry, located in a grove of trees at the eastern end of the Grecian Valley at the north-east corner of the gardens, it is a small belvedere designed by James Gibbs in 1729 it was moved to its present position in the 1760s. It is square in plan with chamfered corners that, built of stone, each side is an open arch, Herma protrude from each chamfered corner. It is surmounted by an octagonal lead dome.
  The Circle of the Dancing Faun Located near the north-east end of the valley near the Fane of Pastoral Poetry, the Dancing Faun commanded the centre of a circle of five sculptures of shepherds and shepherdesses, all of the sculptures had been sold. Two of these statues were located in Buckingham and restored in 2009 to their original place in the garden. In 2016 the Faun supported by the so-called Saxon Altar and the other three statues where recreated.
  The Cobham Monument, to the south of the Grecian Valley is the tallest structure in the gardens rising 104 feet (32 m). Built 1747–49 of stone, probably designed by Brown. It consists of a square plinth with corner buttresses surmounted by Coade stone lions holding shields added in 1778. The column itself is octagonal with a single flute on each face, with a molded doric capital and base. On which is a small belvedere of eight arches with a dome supporting the sculpture of Lord Cobham, the probable sculptor of which was 
caption: The Grecian Valley looking towards the Temple of Concord and Victory
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