page_title: Stowe House
section_title: The approaches
hierarchical_section_title: Stowe House / Stowe Landscape Gardens / The approaches
caption_attribution_description: Stowe: The Oxford Bridge and Water
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: There are two main entrances to the Park, the Grand Avenue, from Buckingham to the south and the Oxford Avenue from the south-west, which leads to the forecourt of the house. The Grand Avenue was created in the 1770s, 100 feet (30 m) in width and one and half miles in length, lined originally with elm trees. The elms succumbed in the 1970s to Dutch elm disease and were replaced with alternate beech & chestnut trees. The Grand Avenue by the Corinthian Arch turns to the west to join the Queen's Drive that connects to the Oxford Avenue just below the Boycott Pavilions. The Oxford Avenue was planted in the 1790s, and sold to the National Trust in 1985 by the great-great grandson of the 3rd Duke, Robert Richard Grenville Close-Smith (1936–1992), a local landowner. Close-Smith was the grandson of the Honourable Mrs. Caroline Mary Close-Smith, who was the 11th Lady Kinloss's daughter. This was one of the first acquisitions of the Trust at Stowe.
  The buildings in this area are:
  The Buckingham Lodges. 2.25 miles south-southeast of the centre of the House. Probably designed by Vincenzo Valdrè and dated 1805, they flank the southern entrance to the Grand Avenue.
  The Corinthian Arch, designed in 1765 by Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, Lord Temple's cousin. Built from stone 60 feet (18 m) in height and 60 feet (18 m) wide, it is modelled on ancient Roman triumphal arches. This is located at the northern end of the Grand Avenue 0.8 miles south-southeast of the centre of the House and is on the top of a hill. The central arch is flanked on the south side by paired Corinthian pilasters and on the north side by paired Corinthian engaged columns. The arch contains two four-storey residences originally for game-keepers. The flanking Tuscan columns were added in 1780.
  The New Inn situated about 100 metres to the east of the Corinthian Arch. Built in 1717 specifically to provide accommodation for visitors to the gardens, the red brick Inn included a mini brewery where barley was brewed into beer, a farm and dairy. The Inn closed in the 1850s, it then being used as a farm, smithy and kennels for deer hounds. The building was purchased in a ruinous condition by the National Trust in 2005. In 2010 work started on converting it into the new visitor centre, and since 2011 this has been the entrance for visitors to the gardens. They formerly used The Oxford Gates. The New Inn is linked by the Bell Gate Drive to the Bell Gate next to the eastern Lake Pavilion, so called because visitors had to ring the bell by the gate to gain admittance to the Garden.
  The Water Stratford Lodge is located over a mile from the house near the border with Oxfordshire, at the very start of the Oxford Avenue, by the village of the same name. Built in 1843, the single storey lodge is in Italianate style with a porch flanked by two windows, the dressings are of stone, with rendered walls. The architect was Edward Blore.
  The Oxford Gates. The central piers were designed by William Kent in 1731, for a position to the north-east between the two Boycott Pavilions, they were moved to their present location in 1761, and iron railings added either side. Pavilions at either end were added in the 1780s to the design of the architect Vincenzo Valdrè. The piers have coats of arms in Coade stone manufactured by Eleanor Coade.
  The Oxford Bridge, built in 1761 to cross the river Dad after this had been dammed to form what was renamed the Oxford Water, was probably designed by Earl Temple. It is built of stone and is of hump-backed form, with three arches, the central one being slightly wider and higher than the flanking ones. With a solid parapet, there are eight decorative urns placed at the ends of the parapets and above the two piers.
  The Boycott Pavilions built of stone and designed by James Gibbs, the eastern one built in 1728 and the western in 1729. They are named after the nearby vanished hamlet of Boycott. Located on the brow of a hill overlooking the river Dad, they flank the Oxford drive. Originally both were in the form of square planned open belvederes with stone pyramid
caption: The Oxford Bridge & The Western Boycott Pavilion in the background
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