History of Stourhead

Expert curated

Two adults and a child look at the house, with its pediment supported by columns, at Stourhead, Wiltshire — Looking at the house, with its pediment supported by columns, at Stourhead, Wiltshire | © National Trust Images/Nick Daly

Stourhead, Wiltshire, is the product of 18th-century imagination. Its English landscape garden is an internationally celebrated ‘living work of art'. The neo-Palladian house was among the first of its kind. Home to the Hoare banking family - and to rich collections - each generation made their mark.

Early history

On the western edge of chalk downland, to the east of the village of Stourton, White Sheet Hill Iron Age hillfort looks out over the Stourhead estate. This corner of Wiltshire has long been occupied and is rich in Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age remains. Stourton itself, whose name means ‘farm by the River Stour’, is of at least Saxon origins.

A new beginning

This story, however, begins with an act of destruction.

The manor house of the Stourton family had stood on a hill above the Stour Valley since the Middle Ages. Family fortunes declined during a 16th century dominated by scandal and a 17th century that saw the house captured by Parliamentarians - during the British Civil War (1642–51). In 1717, after brief ownership by the Meres family, the estate passed to the son of a goldsmith-turned-banker, Henry Hoare I (1677–1724). Around two years later, Henry demolished the Stourton's house.

Henry built a new house to the north and west of the old - which was pioneering. It was designed by Colen Campbell (1676–1729), the leading British champion of neo–Palladian architecture. His book, Vitruvius Britannicus, included celebrated British houses of the past century. The newly named 'Stourhead' appears in its third volume (1725).

Global commerce

The new house was funded by new money, earned from the family business. Hoare's Bank had been founded by Sir Richard Hoare (1648–1719) in 1672 and would soon count diarist Samuel Pepys and Queen Catherine of Braganza, widow of King Charles II, among its customers. In 1702 Richard's second son, Henry Hoare I, became partner.

Henry, and his brother, inherited their father’s bank in 1719. Richard had been a director of the South Sea Company, at the core of whose business was a monopoly right to ship enslaved Africans to the Spanish–held Americas. The bank continued to trade in its shares and a year later, during a rapid financial cycle known as the ‘South Sea Bubble’, the bank made huge profits. Henry partly invested these in Stourhead.

Henry died before his new house was completed. His wife, Jane Benson (1679–1741), lived on the estate until her own death in 1741. Their son, Henry Hoare II (1705–85), would go on to transform the estate forever, and earn the nickname, Henry ‘the Magnificent’.

An arcadian vision

When the Hoare family arrived at Stourhead the Stour valley to the west consisted of a chain of ponds, each with a dam. By the end of the century the site had become an arcadian landscape, filled with architecture and sculpture inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. Curious garden follies and idyllic, tree–lined vistas appeared, set around an artificial lake.

This vision of Stourhead was rooted in an emerging 18th-century fashion for gardens inspired by art and a landscape’s natural features. Henry’s own inspiration may have come from multiple sources, such as his travels in Europe, from reading Virgil's poem the 'Aeneid', and the landscape paintings he owned by Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and Gaspard Dughet.

Partners in design

Henry also made use of talented craftspeople, artists and designers for the house, garden and estate. These included architect Henry Flitcroft, sculptor Michael Rysbrack and painter John Wootton.

It was Flitcroft who designed the famous temple buildings which punctuate the route around the lake. The first of these was the Temple of Flora, erected 1744–46. The Pantheon followed and, lastly, the Temple of Apollo, which took its place high on the hillside in 1765.

The scale and imaginative design of Stourhead make it one of the most iconic English landscape gardens in the world.

The exterior of house at Stourhead on a sunny day, showing its columns, the stairs up to the door and two wings — Stourhead House has been home to different generations of the Hoare family | © National Trust Images/Dennis Gilbert

House of treasures

Henry also made a number of changes to the house, rebuilding the West Front to accommodate a double-height Saloon, and introducing a top lit ‘Skylight Room' to display paintings, many likely purchased during his Grand Tour. And it was Henry who acquired one of Stourhead's greatest treasures, the pietre due (hard stone) 'Pope's Cabinet', made in the 16th-century for Pope Sixtus V and bought from a convent in Rome in around 1739-41.

18th century visitors

Stourhead’s fame grew and accommodation was made for the increasing number of visitors with the construction of a village inn in 1772. It continues to trade today as The Spread Eagle.

Henry delighted in the fun and frivolity his playground paradise afforded his family, in particular his grandchildren, noting that ‘the Dear Harriot’, his granddaughter, could not be kept out of the water in hot weather.

A new owner

Two years before his death, Henry gave Stourhead to his grandson, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 2nd Baronet (1758-1838). Richard, who would one day become an antiquarian and historian of Wiltshire, had spent childhood holidays at Stourhead, watching as the landscape took shape.

In 1783 he returned to live at Stourhead with his wife, Hester Lyttelton (d.1785). Her early death following the birth of their second child, who did not surive, led Richard to travel to Europe. He reached Rome early in 1786 and, aside from a brief visit the following year, did not return home until 1791. Richard came back with new artworks to add to Stourhead's collection, as well as a collection of his own drawings and ideas to improve his estate.

Stourhead’s watercolours of Rome and the surrounding countryside, by the Swiss artist Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros, entered the collection at this time. Some years later they would be admired by the artist J.M.W Turner, who also used watercolours.

A new vision

Richard had a significant impact upon the landscape, particularly through a large-scale programme of planting. In many places fir trees were removed and replaced with broad-leaved varieties. The sclae was breathtaking, he established around 90,000 trees within the space of 13 years.

Further changes included the introduction of rhododendrons, for which Stourhead is renowned, a collection of pelargoniums (over 600 varieties), and the removal of several garden structures – Richard voiced a dislike of ‘nature overcrowded with buildings’.

An 18th-century extension

Like his grandfather before him, Richard made changes to his new house. In 1792, work began on two large wings, which contained a library and a picture gallery. New furniture was commissioned from furniture maker, Thomas Chippendale the Younger, who lived and worked at Stourhead for several years. His furniture remains in the house today.

A grand entrance and a swift decline

On Richard’s death in 1838, the Stourhead estate passed to his half-brother, Sir Henry Hugh Hoare, 3rd Baronet (1762–1841). During just three years, Henry added the portico to the front of the house, close to the earlier design proposed by Colen Campbell.

For the second (and final) time in its history Stourhead then passed from father to son. Sir Hugh Richard Hoare, 4th Baronet (1787–1857) made improvements to the estate and introduced new species of trees, brought into the country by 'plant hunters'. He was succeeded by his nephew, Sir Henry Ainslie Hoare, 5th Baronet (1824–94).

Over the course of Henry Ainslie’s 37–year ownership, the estate fell into decline, due to debt and an agricultural depression. The low point came in 1883, the first of a number of sales of ‘Stourhead Heirlooms'. Workd sold included paintings by J.M.W. Turner, Angelica Kauffmann and Poussin, as well as Francis Nicholson’s watercolours of the garden and Richard Colt Hoare’s library of topographical books.

Revival

Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Hoare (1865–1947) inherited Stourhead in 1894 and he and his wife Alda embarked on a programme renovation. This period of revival encountered a significant setback, however, when on 16 April 1902 the house was gutted by fire. The library and picture gallery wings alone escaped damage.

Henry and Alda decided to rebuild, generally in line with the original design. Only the West Front, the Staircase Hall and the Saloon underwent significant change. The majority of collections on the principal floor had been saved and both in form and contents this largely reflects its appearance before the fire.

National Trust ownership

Henry and Alda experienced further, and greater, tragedy when their only child, their son Harry, died during the First World War. Determined to secure the future of the estate they saved it once again, this time for the nation.

Henry and Alda died on the same day, in March 1947, and the ownership and care of Stourhead passed to the National Trust.

For more than 75 years the National Trust has continued to care for the estate – though close association with the Hoare family continues and a member of the family lives onsite. Dams and paths have been (and are still being) repaired. Significant views have been reintroduced and maintained, and Stourhead's woodland and notable tree collection are carefully managed. And, on occasion, lost treasures have found their way home - Stourhead celebrated the return of the painting of Penelope and Euriclea (c. 1773) by Angelica Kauffman in 2023.