Stowe owes its pre-eminence to the vision and wealth of two great owners. From 1715 to 1749 Viscount Cobham, one of Marlborough’s Generals, continuously improved his estate, calling in the leading designers of the day to lay out the Gardens and commissioning several leading architects - Vanburgh, Gibbs, Kent and Leoni - to decorate them with garden temples. From 1750 to 1779 Earl Temple, his nephew and heir, continued to expand and embellish both the House and Gardens. As the estate was expanded, and political and military intrigues followed, the family eventually fell into debt, resulting in two great sales - 1848 when all the contents were sold and 1922 when the contents and the estate were sold off separately. The House is now part of a major public school, since 1923, and owned by Stowe House Preservation Trust, since 2000. Over the last four years, through the Trust, the House has under gone two phases of a six phase restoration - the North Front and Colonnades, the Central Pavilion and South Portico and the absolutely spectacular Marble Saloon, dating from the 1770s. Around the mansion is one of Britain’s most magnificent and complete landscape gardens, taken over from the School by the National Trust in 1989. The Gardens have since undergone a huge, and continuing, restoration programme, and with the House restoration, Stowe is slowly being returned to its 18th century status as one of the most complete neo-classical estates in Europe.