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His son, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, had inherited his father's
extravagant tastes. His aim to entertain the new monarch, Queen Victoria,
led him to completely rework the state rooms. This eventually contributed
to the building up of large debts. The Queen arrived with Prince Albert in
early 1845 and stayed for three days. The 2nd Duke's spiralling debts,
particularly due to his love of furniture and art, led to the first auction of
Stowe contents in 1848 where the selling of all the moveable contents raised
a mere £75,000 pounds against his owed £1.5 million. As a result the house
was closed up. His death in 1861 brought the 3rd Duke, his son, back to
Stowe. He tried to restore the family's name and fortune - he consolidated
much of the parkland and building work - and while he was successful, his
early death in 1889 without a son meant that Stowe was once again closed
up.
In the meantime, the eldest daughter of the late Duke, Lady
Kinloss, was twice unsuccessful in her attempts to sell the estate by the end
of the twentieth century. The death of her eldest son at the beginning of the
Great War, and the crippling financial situation her second son found himself
in due to death duties, income tax and a large pension out to his stepgrandmother,
resulted in the property being put back on the market again.
In 1922, after many of the artefacts and removable statues in and
outside the house were auctioned off in the previous year, the house,
gardens and parkland were purchased by a property developer, Harry Shaw,
who intended to donate the estate to the nation. However, since he could
not raise an endowment to accompany the gift, he was forced to sell Stowe
again. The future of the house was under threat of demolition, as so many of
the country's great houses were, following the First and Second World Wars.
In 1922, with the risk of the estate breaking up, the commission set up to
create a new public school, found the money to buy Stowe as one lot from
Mr Shaw. Its future was secure as Stowe School was created. In 1923, 99 boys
enrolled as pupils at the School under the first headmaster, J.F. Roxburgh and
by the time he retired in 1949, the number of pupils had risen to 500.
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