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Character Areas Tour Poetry and Prose about the Gardens
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The Conduit HouseStowe: The Park
The Conduit House is a small octagonal building occupying the same high ground to the north and east of the House as Wolfe's Obelisk, as shown in the photograph below. Before its restoration, completed summer 2002, the building was in serious disrepair, its stucco facing and window tracery being all but gone as well as the slates of its roof.
As the photograph below illustrates, the building's roof and windows have been repaired, and the entire structure has been limewashed. An iron gate has been installed in the doorway, the floor has been paved with brick. The three wooden slatted structures on either side of the Conduit House are there to protect young trees from the sheep that graze the meadow.
Bevington notes that it covers the source of a stream, a fact that I discovered quite by accident as I made my way through the soggy ground just to the south of it during my visit in December 1998. Oliver Jessop, Project Archaeologist at Stowe, explains further that the structure contains an underground vaulted chamber acting as a cistern. When cleaned the chamber was found to contain a flagstone floor, possibly from an earlier structure on the site. A trapdoor to the chamber has been installed in the floor.
The photograph above shows the details of the coade stone arms of the Marquess of Buckingham, dated 1793, which occupy a prominent place over the door of the building. The Conduit House is referred to by Bevington and others as the Gothic Umbrello, a name which highlights its architectural style as well as its function as a shelter.
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