ALAN POWER: Welcome to the new National Trust podcast series.

I'm Alan Power Head Gardener at Stourhead and somebody who's

very passionate about everything outdoors.

In this series, we'll be exploring the Trust's amazing

spaces delving into the stories and characters that make each

place so special. We'll be traveling all around the country

from hilltop to seaside.

We'll tread sandy paths and the polished wooden floors of

country homes. Not to mention some spectacular gardens.

We delight in bird song, sublime views and exceptionally good

cream teas. So join me on this journey and immerse yourself in

the wonders of the National Trust.

Today, I'm in Buckinghamshire to explore a garden that has been

described as a work of art.

250 acres of sculpted landscape replete with ornamental lakes,

temples and monuments.

Its beauty has attracted visitors and inspired writers

and artists for over 300 years.

Of course, I'm in Stowe.

A garden shaped by the hands and imaginations of some of

history's finest gardeners.

The gardens were designed to be a paradise on earth, a purpose

that they serve to this day, but the garden is also ripe with

political history and hidden meaning and in this episode,

I'll be soaking in the beauty of this magnificent Georgian

splendour as well as digging into the past to understand the

people and the politics that have given Stowe its distinct

character.

I'm on my way to meet Hannah Richards. She's a gardener on

the team here at Stowe and she's promised to show me around the

garden.

It's just starting to spit rain at Stowe today, so we've just

taken shelter in the temple of Venus in one of the arches which

frames a magnificent view across a lake and I can just see a

feature in the distance glimpsing out from behind the

trees.

I can understand why you want to work here. Hannah, how long have

you been a gardener here?

HANNAH RICHARDS: I've been here for three years now just over,

still learning and still living it.

It's beautiful settings and it's such a nice place for a bit of

escapism. So, on the most basic level, it's really enjoyable.

But then when you start to delve a little bit deeper and you

start to get into some of the stories of the people and the

events that have happened here, it adds a whole new layer of

meaning to everything.

ALAN POWER: Who was the family that lived here originally?

HANNAH RICHARDS: So we started off in the 1500 with the Temple

family. It was Peter Temple who the only way to describe him

really was like a del boy on horseback,

A bit of a'wheeler dealer' he came from his sheep farming

background in Witney and then he was offered the chance to take

on a lease at Stowe, which he absolutely snapped their hand

off.

Not only was it a gorgeous setting, but also you had

Buckingham where they had two MPs elected by about 13 voters.

So he was keen to, to gain power and he knew that this would be

his way into it.

So they went from humble beginnings to being one of the

most famous and influential families in the country.

They had quite literally more money than they knew what to do

with.

They were definitely trendsetters of the time and

they wanted to sort of start moving away from formal

parterres and straight lines and move towards the landscape

movement, which was softening everything it was using ha-has

to create that borrowed landscape.

ALAN POWER: Could you describe for me what a ha-ha looks like

on the landscape?

HANNAH RICHARDS: If it's doing its job, it will look like

nothing in the landscape.

And the easiest way to explain it is it's a sunken wall. So

rather than using fencing or, or walls to keep cattle out, it was

dug into the ground with quite a steep bank on the other side.

And this way, the the cattle can't come into the gardens. But

when you're waking up and having your breakfast in your manor

house, you can look out and see for miles and miles because

there's no broken view.

ALAN POWER: Hannah, they sound like a brilliantly successful,

determined kind of, almost ruthless family and what they

wanted to do.

And their wealth, as you said was, you know, they could hardly

count the money they had, but actually they went bankrupt,

didn't they? How on earth did that happen?

HANNAH RICHARDS: I think possibly they got a bit too used

to the finer taste in life.

They were very power hungry and they wanted as many royal visits

as they could and famous visits.

But they couldn't let one of these go past without installing

a new statue in the garden or a new monument in their honour.

And then before they knew it, they were in just huge amounts

of debt.

ALAN POWER: So the Temple-Grenville family went

from rags to riches and then to ruin in a couple of centuries.

All that was but a blip in the timeline of Stowe's magnificent

ancient trees. I'm on my way now to see such a tree.

I'm stood beneath what is a magnificent oak tree. It's- it's

in and around 700 years old, but it's got a massive massive trunk

to it. But actually the canopy of the tree is quite small. It's

been pollarded in the past.

So that means all the heavy limbs would have been reduced

and reduced right back to the main stem and this young growth

has been allowed to come.

But what really draws my eye is the, is the trunk.

It's gnarly it's old. And from my point of view, being a bit of

a tree anorak myself. You know, it's full of character. It's got

a real ancient character to it.

But as you kind of wander around the tree, you can see right into

the heart of the tree and the heartwood is, is pretty much

gone. And there's a skeletal structure holding this tree up.

And I'm standing here next to this tree with Anna Tolfree.

ANNA TOLFREE: I don't know why, but I always referred to her as

a she and I think about what she's seen in her lifetime, what

she's experienced, you know what she's seen come and go.

She would have seen all the cattle walking past a market

that tenant farmers would have been taking in.

ALAN POWER: You can almost see the shepherd, sheltering under

the tree, you know, and having a rest and grazing their animals

as they walk past. But for me as well, trees like this trees as

ancient as this give magnificent punctuation marks on the

landscape.

ANNA TOLFREE: I have heard stories that when somebody

actually did come and have a look at this oak tree, they

looked inside and they were face to face with a fox who was

hiding right in the centre and they didn't move for a few

minutes.

They were, I don't know who was more scared the fox or the

person and they came out in the end. It just, it's great that

she is still sheltering people.

ALAN POWER: And when you look at this tree, what is it? You know,

I don't want to use the word say to you. But what does it mean to

you when you look at a tree of this age?

ANNA TOLFREE: It encompasses what the Trust is all about.

It's looking after what we have and making sure that everyone

has the opportunity to see this sort of thing.

ALAN POWER: We've heard about magnificent ancient trees.

Hannah. And we're now standing in, what you've told me is the

site of an abandoned village.

And while I look around here, I can see really nice kind of wild

grasses dips and furrows in the landscape. But to be honest to

the untrained eye, there's no sign of a village here. So

what's the story around this corner of Stowe.

HANNAH RICHARDS: The dip of trees behind it is, is actually

the, the lines of the road and Lamport Village, which is the

abandoned village is the name of where we're standing now.

ALAN POWER: What would the village of looks like?

HANNAH RICHARDS: Now, the first record we have of Lamport is

actually from 1086 in the Domesday Book. It was a really,

really interesting village because they had quite a diverse

range of tradesmen here.

And we know that there were three fields, all of which

joined together to create a triangular green in the middle

of the village. And from where we're standing, it's really

difficult to see that.

But if you could see an aerial shot of it. You can still to

this day see the dips in the land and you can see the the

trodden pathways of where these farmers would have walked to and

from work.

And you can still see the green in the middle, which would have

been the, the sort of common where people would have

congregated.

We know that it was quite a thriving village in the 1600s.

But then we start to face the problems of the Temple-Grenville

family wanting to build themselves a palace with the

magnificent gardens to go with it.

And they wanted to use a land where Lamport was standing to

create a deer park. Sir Peter Temple was definitely one of

the, the, the nastier members of the family shall we say?

He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew how he was going to

get it.

Yeah, there's so many stories of the residents of Lamport sort of

fighting with the Temple-Grenville's gamekeepers.

We know that there were many, many, many incidents involving

sort of swords and long pike staves and poor gamekeepers

getting injured.

We know from the paperwork that there were lots and lots of

incidents of these, midnight shenanigans where they would

cross the boundaries and have their little fisty cuffs before

they came back.

And it was all because they were fighting over Lamport.

So that's how we know that Lamport started to suffer.

ALAN POWER: And where, where do the residents of the abandoned

village end up going then?

HANNAH RICHARDS: There are records of some of them moving

into other villages in the parish. But I think a lot of

them just actually disappeared off elsewhere into the country.

ALAN POWER: While the poor villagers of Lamport were ousted

from their homes. The Temple-Grenville family had

their way and the garden was a huge success

In the 1700s, Stowe brought visitors from far and wide and

people came to enjoy the stunning landscape and to be

awed by the magnificent temples and the settings.

But over the years, you know, through falling trees and

weathering and deterioration, statues were lost and the shape

I suppose and the story of the landscape was lost to nature a

bit.

Now, the National Trust have been very, very busy over the

last 20 years, if not more restoring the landscape.

And I'm standing here at Stowe today with the assistant head

gardener at Stowe, Paul Stefanovic, and Paul, You've

been involved pretty much since day one of the restoration,

haven't you?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: Absolutely. I've been here from the first

day that National Trust took over from Stowe School. Yes.

Amazing time. I can remember very well at the time we started

the week working for Stowe School and then we ended the

week working for the National Trust and it's just been full on

restoration work ever since.

ALAN POWER: It's amazing to think, isn't it in that time

that you, you probably started a restoration thinking that you'd

finish it at some stage, but you're far from it, aren't you?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: When we first-

Trust first took over, it was a 20 year restoration project and

that was to restore the temples, to re estate, the paths, the

statues, the Park land, reinstate the lot in 20 years.

And, I've been here now for nearly 32 years and I'm still

doing restoration work. So it's just full on and it's totally

ongoing.

ALAN POWER: And it's really interesting thinking about

restoration work in a garden like this because I think

sometimes you think, ok, there's a defined restoration plan.

But I know as you tip toe your way through the garden, whether

it's on foot or in a tractor, you'll come across things like

statue pedestals that you might not have known were there, don't

you?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I can give you a

really good example of that.

There was an area where we was actually planting some shrubs

and one of their volunteers suddenly put his spade in and

all of a sudden he shouted out and he hit an enormous stone and

he dug down to try and remove the stone.

And we actually uncovered a statue base literally about

three or four inches under the ground.

And it was on a manicured piece of grass, but the statue was

laid and we excavated it and uncovered it and it was a full,

fully intact statue base.

I mean, the good thing here about Stowe is that we got lots

of information. We got lots of maps, we got guidebooks from a

very early stage.

So, I mean, I use those when I do my restoration work and when

you've been doing it for quite a while, you actually get a feel

for things.

So when I'm looking for pathways or statue bases, you know, you

look for tell-tale signs, you look for trees, you look for

stumps that were possibly there, you know, and you get a feel for

how things were then, even though you can't see them now.

ALAN POWER: We're standing in a part of the garden at the

moment, Paul, that's to me, brand new.

And we have the dancing fawn who's kind of a slightly hunched

over muscular figure with pointy ears and a tiny little tail

coming out of his back, but it's pristine, isn't it?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: It is absolutely pristine.

ALAN POWER: This is new. Were you, did you, were you involved?

Were you here when they discovered the foundations of

this part of the garden?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: It was me that discovered all these

foundations! So first of all, obviously, we have to clear the

trees away through just to find the pathways and then to find

this area here of the dancing fawns, I had my excavator in

here and again, by getting the maps out, we knew roughly where

they were the statue bases.

ALAN POWER: Your job sounds like a bit of a combination of

gardening, archaeology, construction digging, you know,

and research as well.

Putting that jigsaw all back together again and the statues

that we see, you know, are they, are they cast concrete statues

or are they re carved statues? It's hard to tell from here

whether they're?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: I Mean, we've got some, some, we've got some

stone ones here. These ones are actually made of lead. The

smaller ones are made of lead and these are the new coloured

ones you got here.

ALAN POWER: They're painted in proper human dress, aren't they?

You know, the, the dresses the jackets the men are wearing, you

know, they're all painted properly.

PAUL STEFANOVIC: They're all painted properly. And all in the

pastel colours, but given the colour to it, I think it's just

added a little dimension to like the sort of the lime wash on the

stone here. These have been recently lime washed. So that's

why they look really sort of new and fresh.

These two statues that you see here, they actually came from a

garden in Buckingham and when we got them back to the estate,

they, they were very old, they were very warm and they were

covered in lichens. They had moss over them and these have

been, lime washed just recently just to sort of tie it all in

together.

ALAN POWER: Paul, you said these two statues behind came from

Buckingham, which is just down the road from Stowe. How on

earth did they end up down there?

PAUL STEFANOVIC: Totally no idea.

It was one of their volunteers said she had these two statues

in her garden and she kindly donated them back to Stowe. So

she was very kind of her to donate them back. So they took

pride of place in this circle.

ALAN POWER: I'm going to catch up with Hannah again to learn

about some of the other statues and temples that Richard Temple

also known as Lord Cobham had instated in his garden.

Hannah, you can't miss as you wandered through the garden at

Stowe, as we've just done the number of statues that you catch

glimpses of through the trees and they all maintain a high

level of significance in the story of this place, don't they?

HANNAH RICHARDS: Yeah, they, they all have a reason for being

there and a story to tell and where we are now in the Elysian

fields. This is without a doubt, the most political part of the

garden.

Lord Cobham was a prominent politician and he aligned

himself with the, the Whig Party back in the day and he very much

used the gardens and especially the statuary in the garden to

show his political beliefs.

ALAN POWER: And Hannah who were the Whig Party. What were they

all about back in the 18th century?

HANNAH RICHARDS: The easiest way to say it really is. They were

sort of rivals of the Tories.

ALAN POWER: Conham was- Cobham was designing his garden here at

Stowe and how did he fit in with the Whig party?

HANNAH RICHARDS: So he was a very high profile member.

But as Walpole, who was the British Prime Minister and

Cobham fell out, he actually split off and joined some other

high profile members of, of the Whig party and they sort of

fractioned off and started a new patriot opposition based at

Stowe.

ALAN POWER: And we're looking across a sloping landscape, you

know, dressed with some young trees, you know, and some older

trees.

But what we see is the, the swathe of grass that runs into

the distance broken by this lake that runs through the middle and

the temple of the worthy in the distance is kind of a, a semi

circle, isn't it?

HANNAH RICHARDS: Yes. So the design of that is you have the

16 British worthies and these 16 worthies have been picked

because they show the right characteristics that men needed

to have.

The left hand side is the thinkers, shall we say? It's,

it's the eight people that Cobham thought were really,

really, really great for their thinking.

Then as you look across to the right hand side, it's the eight

people who were famous for their doing.

So you've got people of brain power and people of action in

the doers. There's one person in there who really, his name

wasn't known, no one knew who he was. But Cobham and Walpole fell

out largely over the excise bill in 1733. And this John Bernard

who sits on the corner of it.

The reason he's in there is because he voted with Cobham

against Walpole in the excise bill.

So for Cobham to put him in there saying this, this merchant

deserves a place in there when Walpole doesn't it? It's just

such a, a great way to say. Yeah. No, I've, I've had enough

of you. You, you don't deserve a place in my garden.

We also have the, the 17th Secret worthy that not many

people know about. And it's in the form of a poem and it talks

about this Señor Fido who was a great husband and a great hunter

and warrior. And you think, oh gosh, who is this person?

And then when you get to the bottom, you realize actually it

was Cobham's pet Greyhound. So even the dog made it in there.

ALAN POWER: And Walpole didn't!

The view is quite spectacular from the Temple Of Virtue, but

it has significance in other terms as well, doesn't it?

HANNAH RICHARDS: Yeah. So it's very cleverly designed as you

stand here and you look down at it, you'll notice that it feels

really light.

So it's meant to represent a place where the gods pick these

people who can be immortalized and spend the rest of time in

this gorgeous setting.

So the fact that this landscape is so open and just glorious. It

shows that these people belonged here. This Whig government

belonged in such a paradise. Whereas Walpole who's hidden

away under the under the yew trees and his broken down

temple. He had no place here.

ALAN POWER: We've been on an amazing journey today we've met

and heard about a 700 year old tree that's witnessed enormous

change at Stowe.

I've walked through and hopefully described an abandoned

village in the landscape.

We've heard about the complex Whig associations with the

family at Stowe.

We've learned about the, the passion, the success, the

fortune, it costs to create a landscape like this, but also

about the characters throughout history who are almost

determined and a little bit mean to the locals in moving villages

out of the way just to achieve their dream.

And if you want to find out more information about Stowe, you can

visit their website at nationaltrust.org.uk/stowe

For our next full episode, I'll be in Mount Stewart in Northern

Ireland, discovering the wonderful gardens there.

That episode will be available in a couple of weeks, but don't

worry, there will be a mini episode available next week.

We'll be going behind the scenes with one of the rangers, Isabel

Thompson to learn more about the conservation and ecology in

Stowe's Grecian Valley.

To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on itunes or

your chosen podcast app and please do let us know what you

thought of this episode and share your suggestions for

future topics on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

We're @nationaltrust. You can also email us at

podcasts@nationaltrust.org.uk

Until next time from me, Alan Power and all the team here at

Stowe. Goodbye.