Monument record 0420802068 - Temple of Sleep, Stowe Landscape Gardens

Mentioned as a lost garden feature (B7).
The National Trust's Survey of Stowe noted that this is the approximate location of the Temple of Sleep designed by Vanburgh and closely resembling the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard (box with small peditmented portico). Built in 1724 and then demolsihed about 1760 with the urns being moved to the parapet of Oxford Bridge [CAS 0420802032] (B26).
The Sleeping Parlour was a single room structure with short flights of steps on the two principal fronts, set within woodland known as The Sleeping Wood, at the centre of a series of radiating serpentine paths. The building is shown in an engraving of 1750 by George Bickham as fairly plain with a plinth, dentil cornice, parapet with two large bulbous urns, four steps leading up to a portico of four Ionic columns supporting a plain pediment with dentil frieze. Contemporary accounts include references to pillows and cushions for a couch and the parlour appears to have been associated with a group of statues on pedestals representing country labours. Trial trenching and geophysical survey carried out by the National Trust identified a series of mostly later paths and located one corner of the Sleeping Parlour. Subsequent excavation carried out in October 2007 by Northants Archaeology exposed the rest of the building plan. The building was 6.3m wide and 6.7m deep with the chamber measuring 4.3m wide and 4.8 deep internally, with two flights of steps 4.25m wide and projecting 1.2m from the front of each portico. The surviving foundations were of limestone rubble bonded with lime mortar and the total lack of dressed stone suggests that the superstructure was of rendered brick. Fragments of decorated plaster indicated that the interior of the building were decorated with architectural egg and dart moulding and painted guilloche friezes with central flowers and foliage borders. No traces of the statue pedestal bases were found. See report for detail (B46).