Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of Portmeirion, was appointed to recreate the Stowe estate as Stowe School, purchasers of the estate in 1922.

He adapted the house to form dormitories and classrooms and the first pupils arrived in May 1923. The building and landscape were central to the school's ethos, in that every boy should know beauty when he saw it.

Some of the new buildings jarred. Vanbrugh's Temple of Bacchus was demolished to make way for the school chapel, Chatham House was made out of incongruous red brick and temple columns were reused elsewhere. This work was, however, balanced against a consistent and active programme of repairs, with the Queen's Temple restored to become Stowe School's department of music in the 1930s and ten further garden buildings restored in the 1950s and 1960s.

Maintenance of the Stowe landscape became a national responsibility in 1954. Ten years later, the newly reformed Stowe Landscape Committee appointed architect Hugh Creighton to report on the state of the buildings and drew up a ten-year plan for repairs to keep them standing rather than make them perfect. Much of the necessary replanting work was carried out by Stowe schoolboys.

A second report by Creighton in 1983 found that the buildings were declining faster than the rate of repair. Even those already attended to needed expensive work again. In 1986 the Stowe Gardens Building Trust was formed by a group of old Stoics to raise funds, but it was an uphill task.

Following the donation of £1.8 million on the condition that the National Trust assumed responsibility for Stowe Gardens and its buildings, and with support from English Heritage and the National Heritage Memorial Fund, an overall plan for restoration was drawn up. The governors formally conveyed the garden to the National Trust in 1990.

For more information on Stowe School, visit www.stowe.co.uk