Conservation specialist Cliveden has been given the challenge of recreating the ‘Gothic Cross’ at Stowe as part of the National Trust’s programme of returning the famous landscape garden to its 18th-century glory by restoring its lost monuments.

The Gothic Cross was built in 1814 from one of the earliest forms of man-made stone substitutes, Coade stone. It was three tiers high and built as a memorial.

The original was knocked down by a falling tree in the 1950s. Now it is Cliveden Conservation’s job to recreate it, which it is doing with the help of Jez Ainsworth Terracotta Ltd and a recipe sourced from a book, Mrs Coade’s Stone, that was modified for this project through numerous trials and testing.

A few fragments of the cross discovered in the undergrowth in the 1970s were used by Cliveden’s team as reference points for recreating it in new Coade stone. They started by  creating a 3D computer model to interpret the original structure.

“We are combining craft with modern science and technologies,” says Nicholas Barnfield, Architectural Stone and Sculpture Conservator at Cliveden Conservation.

“Fragments of the cross have been scanned and inserted into 3D CAD drawings. By forensically using those fragments, together with only one drawn reproduction, we have successfully managed to recreate the Gothic Cross as an image.

“As a result of these drawings, we can model and recreate the plaster patterns to produce the moulds, which are then fired in a kiln to produce the Coade stone.”

The reinstatement of the Gothic Cross is just one of the projects in the Landscape Restoration Programme to restore Stowe’s magnificent landscape garden to its original design. The garden is famous for its statuary and temples.