The roof tiles with personalised messages by members of the public, who helped to sponsor tiles for New Inn, have now all been placed on the roof of the new building which is set to become the cafe.

The cafe building will be in keeping with the architectural style of New Inn. Inside there will be 120 seats, beautiful exposed beam and big glass windows that provide an open and airy atmosphere to relax in. In the warmer weather, visitors will also be able to enjoy a cake and cuppa tea in the outside seating area of the cafe.

Everything is coming together on this project as the car park with 380 spaces is now complete. There will be  toilets in a brick building as part of the New Inn, which will be a great improvement from the facilities we currently have at Stowe today. The gift shop and plant sales at New Inn will provide inspiration for gifts as well as locally grown plants to purchase.

In the very near future visitors will be able to walk in the footsteps of the earliest eighteenth century tourist, approaching Stowe from the main avenue that leads to the iconic view of the Corinthian Arch. Upon entering  New Inn, visitors will be welcomed by a carefully restored New Inn building with inviting parlour rooms that will have crackling fire, activities for children, areas to sit, artefacts to handle and an atmosphere from another era altogether.

We hope to open New Inn to visitors in the new year sometime, so please visit the Stowe website to discover more:

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stowegardens

But what a fantastic place to view the development of this amazing building, and observe what is happening below in the other construction areas.

Richard giving a tour

The roof timbers have been repaired using reclaimed oak from the old collapsed barns. The Trust is using Herdwick sheep’s wool insulation which is a natural product.

Sheep's wool insulation

The roof is almost at the stage of having the reclaimed tiles refitted – all 280,000 of them!

Reclaimed roof tiles

From this wonderful viewing platform, the rest of the complex is visible and it is quite exhilarating to see the other buildings take shape. The height and size are very similar to the original barns and the new shop, restaurant and visitor centre are now coming together. The oak timber roof frames have been hoisted into position using heavy plant machinery.

Oak roof frame

Carina, our National Trust Shop Manager, is so looking forward to her new shop which will be twice the size of her current one. She will be able to offer our visitors a greater selection of beautiful gifts and delicious local produce. She will also have a large space outside, to tempt us with even more unusual plants for our garden.

Carina's new shop

She can’t wait!

New Inn, although still roofless is enjoying the attention and is looking good. The chimneys have been repaired  and some of the roof structures strengthened. This has been a major task and is taking a considerable amount of time.

Bob the joiner, has removed most of the windows and repaired them individually by hand. Real workmanship!

The new build at the complex is following the line of the old barns which collapsed long ago. The roof will be the same height as the previous building and larch, from National Trust Ashridge Estate, is being used for the roof  timbers. The new build will become the 150 seater restaurant and shop.

We can’t wait for these wonderful new facilities!

Other conservation work never stops at Stowe because with 40 monuments, temples and statues, when one is complete another practically falls down. Our latest beauty that is now complete is the Grotto.

I was lucky enough to be here when the restoration began and have closely followed the progress. The amount of work that has gone into the restoration never fails to amaze me. The Grotto is a cave like structure overlooking the River Styx. Until recently, the walls were unstable and the floor had collapsed due to rabbit damage and the whole place had suffered water damage.

It’s former use was a a rustic dining area but today it is just a very beautiful folly. 70,000 pebbles have been relaid by hand and the walls are once more clad with tufa which is rock derived from limestone.

The most fabulous piece of the restoration is a statue of a crouching Venus which has been replaced in a Carrera marble basin, where a trickle of water flows down below into a another marble basin. I’m besotted with Venus as she is one of the prettier Roman versions. She looks stunning bathed in a natural shaft of light looking across the Grotto towards the Garden.

All this restoration sounds easy but I saw Roger and colleagues lay the 70,000 pebbles in a cold January, the tufa arriving from distant places, Venus with a wonky hand and a damaged neck, the effort it took to get over a ton of marble down a narrow slope and in position, the precision to get the water flow correct and more of course.

The Grotto is well worth a visit and is part of our guided tours. Next year, New Inn will be finished.

Victorian fireplace with beam above wallpaper

Inside the entrance to New Inn is a set of bells that were used to summon the proprietor or whoever, up to various rooms within the inn. Gary has spent several hours tracing the cables to discover which rooms were connected to the bells. Not rocket science but a lot of pull power!

Row of bells

Outside  New Inn, where light excavation has been done to erect scaffolding, several brick and gravel paths have been discovered that match the 1880 plans. My favourite spot is where there is a pretty wrought iron gate underneath some yew trees. It is very ornate for a simple inn and may have come out of the main Garden, who knows?  ”Gary…….Where did the pretty little wrought iron gate come from?”

Pretty wrought iron gate

Old Gravel Quarry

The car park is going to be slightly sunken so cars will be out of view from the Garden and the surrounding countryside and our modern day steeds will not spoil any ancient vistas!

Old JCB and farming implement

Soon, scaffolding will be erected at New Inn so that the roofing tiles can be removed and the roof repaired. All the terracotta tiles will be reused and damaged ones replaced with reclaimed ones.

At the moment, we are running a fund raising exercise called  ’Adopt a Tile.’ All the poor little orphaned tiles who need a good home at New Inn can be saved for £1.00 each! You can leave a personal message on the back of the tile to remain there for another 300 years.

Gary the Archaeologist

So anyone visiting Stowe, please give a tile a home!

Last week when visiting New Inn with two staff members from Bucks Vision, who are very kindly giving advice about signage and accessibility for the visually impaired, our hands immediately turned blue and our feet numb. An old building without a substantial roof, windows, walls and floors is a very cold place indeed but I’m assuming that when it was an inn in the 18th century, it would have been far more inviting.

The long-awaited for restoration begins this month and a major transformation will take place within a few months. But before the contractors arrive on site, an awful lot of clearing has had to be done by hand and for this we have relied upon our volunteers, who have spent several days at New Inn.

Our volunteers are indispensible and do a fantastic job for the Trust. Today lots of dedicated people have been moving old wooden beams, shifting several hundred old roof tiles, clearing rusty bits of metal and cutting down deep-rooted vegetation to make way for the plant machinery due in a couple of weeks.

The weather has been cold, dull and damp but the volunteers both long-term and new have unselfishly given their free time over to New Inn.

A BIG thank you to all our volunteers.

A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting at New Inn about 18/19th century lighting and decoration. Part of the meeting consisted of a fabulous talk about lighting implements throughout the ages and what may have been in place at New Inn. By the way, did you know that you can get eight pints of oil from a penguin? Useful info if you are on an expedition in Antarctica and run out of torch batteries!

Over 40 wallpapers have been found at New Inn, some only tiny fragments but at least we begin to piece together the decorative layers that reflect the fashion of bygone eras. Our advisor could identify the fabric and age of most pieces but samples will be taken and analysed. Some are hand painted and others are machine printed reflecting the age of New Inn.

Unfortunately, the ravages of time have taken their toll and between penetrating damp, paper-loving silverfish and layer being placed upon layer, the original quality and colour of the papers have long gone. Still exciting to see though and hopefully samples will be on display in 2011 when we have our new visitor centre.

Machine printed paper

Manuscript has the words New Inn

During the past few years New Inn and the surrounding land has been poked and prodded but it’s now time for the real plunder to find hidden treasures in the form of old bits of wallpaper, glass, metal farming implements and all other things old and mouldy which give us an idea of how things were and how things have developed.

The entrance into the yard at New Inn is under an arch where many a weary traveller would have passed. The ground is paved with cobbles which over the years have sunk, been removed or covered with centuries of soil. Gary and two volunteers were busy uncovering the cobbles which will eventually be removed and re-laid in specific areas around the yard where they will not be tripped over, slipped on or their bumpy surface uncomfortably endured by some poor toddler sitting in a pushchair.

Gary had a great time uncovering the cobbles and discovered a silver sixpence and a 19th century clay pipe bowl. I know Saxon jewellery would have been much more exciting but hey, it’s an 18th century inn, so what do we expect?