Fane of Pastoral Poetry

I love his hidden treat, great spot for a picnic of the westher turns with four benches inside to take a pew.

As Bevington reports, The Fane of Pastoral Poetry began its life with another name in another part of the garden -- as Gibbs' Building (named after its architect) on the border between Warden Hill Walk and the Home Park, where Queen Caroline's Monument now stands. From the late 1720s to the early 30s it was surrounded by half of the busts that now inhabit the Temple of British Worthies, and it was thus also known as the Temple of Worthies. Gilbert West celebrates it in his poem on Stowe.
Bevington also reports that the Fane was moved to its present location at the northeast corner of the garden and of the Grecian Valley in 1764, and that a statue of the Muse of Pastoral Poetry, Thalia, was placed nearby to the north. The Survey claims that Thalia had a more prominent place inside. Restoration of the Fane, completed during summer 2002, included replacement of the roof, instalation of benches in the interior and herms at the four exterior corners, and limewashing of the structure.
According to the Survey, about the same time that the Fane was altered and moved from the edge of the Home Park, a grouping of statues was placed just to the southwest of the site. The initial statue, of a faun, was joined by a group of statues of shepherds and shepherdesses that had previously surrounded the Queen's Pillar in the Queen's Theatre on the western edge of the South Front near the Rotunda. This collection, called the Circle of the Dancing Faun, remained until around 1800, and its thematic relationship to the Fane would have been inescapable. The National Trust began restoration of the Circle in 2009 with the replacement of two statues of a shepherd and a shepherdess.....
faculty.bsc.edu/jtatter/fane.html

The Fane of Pastoral Poetry is a small octagonal temple of ashlar stone, four sides pierced by semi-circular headed arches. The building originally had a steeply domed roof it is now maintained as a roofless ruin.The temple was built by Gibbs in about 1726-7 on the site now occupied by Queen Caroline's Monument and was known as the Gibbs building. It was originally surrounded by the eight Rysbrack British Worthies. Plans were prepared by Borra to convert it to a Temple of Diana but this was never carried out. It was demolished and re-erected in a simpler form on its present site in the mid 1760's. Also known as the Belvedere and in the sale catalogues as the Egyptian Building.Small roofless structure 1727/3 by Gibbs, as The Belvedere. Re-erected on present site 1760's. Ashlar stone with moulded cornice. Octagonal, 4 sides pierced by semi-circular headed arches, with keyblocks, stepped architraves and impost mouldings. Blank oculi in angled faces.In a glade in the wood at the far end of the Grecian Valley is the small open-sided temple or belvedere designed by Gibbs for Lord Cobham, and first set up as part of the early, western phase of the garden in September 1729. It was originally known simply as ‘Gibbs’s Building’ and stood on a mound (accommodating an ice-house) in an almost exactly opposite relationship to the house, to the south-west, where it provided a viewpoint towards the Rotondo and the Queen’s Theatre, and housed the series of busts by Rysbrack (Bacon, Hampden, Locke, Milton, Newton, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth and William III) which were later transferred to the Temple of British Worthies in the Elysian Fields.Gibbs’s Building was repositioned by Earl Temple in the 1760s to frame a view of Wolfe’s Obelisk, which he had recently set up outside the gardens to the north, and was rechristened the Fane of Pastoral Poetry. The building also provided framed prospects over the surrounding park, reached via the shady groves of the Grecian Valley. Van Nost’s lead figure of Thalia, the Muse of Pastoral Poetry, was placed just to the north of it. The statue was one of his series of Apollo and the Nine Muses which was removed from the South Vista in the 1740s (see p. 24), but she no longer survives at Stowe. The four terms once outside the Fane are now at Port Lympne.Statue - Muse of Pastoral Poetry - was installed on Tuesday the 4th December 2018. This statue is a direct copy of the c18th lead statue of Heroic Poetry located on the Grenville Column which is attributed to van Nost. Originally (1720s) this statue was locatd on the south front parterre.Source: heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA130213