The employment of architects by the Temple and Grenville families of Stowe is characterised by three different periods of patronage. In the first hall of the eighteenth century, under Sir Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham (1675-1749), Stowe became an architectural treasury of the work of the best architects available: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), James Gibbs (1682-1754), William Kent (1685-1748) and Lancelot Brown (1716-1783). The second, related to the time of Lord Cobham's nephew, ...