The house was built of brick with stone dressings and formed the shape of a rectangle, of three floors with hipped roof incorporating dormer windows and topped by a cupola, eleven bays wide by seven bays deep. There was an extensive deer park with formal gardens including fountains and statues. It was of similar style to Coleshill House, Lindridge House and most comparable to Belton House.
Demolition
succeeded his father in 1701 but died in a shooting accident, possibly suicide, shortly afterwards. He left as heir his nine-year-old only son William Henry Granville, 3rd Earl of Bath who died in 1711 aged 19 without progeny. The inheritance was divided between the second earl's sisters and a cousin George Granville, Baron Lansdowne, after whose death the family became extinct. The house was demolished in 1739. In Polwhele's History of Cornwall, it is stated that a man resident in the nearby Grenville manor of Stratton lived long enough to see its site a cornfield before the building existed, and after the building was destroyed a cornfield again. The house was sold for building materials in 1739, and much of its fabric survives, having been used in the contemporary construction of West Country buildings.
Survivals removed
The most notable surviving fabric of Stowe House exists as follows:
Stowe House, Buckinghamshire. The carved cedar wood in the chapel, executed by Michael Chuke, was bought by Lord Cobham and applied to the same purpose at his mansion of Stowe in Buckinghamshire.
Prideaux Place, Padstow, of which the Grenville Room contains carved woodwork from Stowe.
Cross House, Little Torrington, Devon, in which exists the ornately carved wooden grand staircase from Stowe, of three flights around a square well. The balustrades are formed in open-work carving in the style of Grinling Gibbons of tumbling putti entwined in scrolls of foliage and flowers.
The Guildhall, South Molton, Devon, 1739–41, which incorporates an entire highly ornate small room, known as "The Mayor's Parlour", used historically by the town's mayor for entertaining. It includes plasterwork decorative picture frames, a decorated plaster ceiling, four doorcases with gilded pediments, a large overmantel painting in the style of Rubens of "Atalanta presented with the head of the Calydonian Boar by Meleager" and four classical capriccio scenes in small rectangular panels above the doors. The Corporation of South Molton, who were then building a new Town Hall and Council Chamber, purchased the following :
*Lady's fine Bed-chamber and planching
*9 shash windows at 10s 6d and 2 at 11s 6d
*no. 27 ye winscott wthout ye chimney and door casings
*6 squares of Planching
*A Tunn and ½ of Sheet & Pipe at 13s
*7 prs. of winscott window shutters at 8s
*172 rustic quoins at 1
*4 Corinthian Capitalls & Pillasters
*Ye caseing and ornaments of 3 windows
*3 Architraves wth Pedemts. for doors & 27 yds. of winscott in the Lobby
*A carved Cornish and Triumph of K. Charles II.
*2 right panel doors
These articles, with many others, were taken to Bude, shipped to Barnstaple, and thence carted to South Molton. The outlay for the whole amounted to £178. The "carved Cornish and Triumph of Charles II" is still to be seen over the fireplace in the old dining-room in the Town Hall at South Molton.
The Steward's House survives at Stowe as a farmhouse, and some new farmhouses were built locally from the unsold materials from Stowe and are notable for their fine appearance, for example Penstowe, also in the parish.
Capt. George Augustus Carteret Thynne, Royal North Devon Yeomanry, who had descendants surviving in 1968.
Stowe Barton
A range of stone buildings around a large courtyard, including a seven bedroom barton house with the Grenville arms sculpted above the front door, survives, located between the site of the demolished mansion and a surviving overgrown sunken garden believed to have adjoined the Tudor mansion house. The history of this barton house is not well recorded. Harper wrote: The "Stowe Barton Farm" estate is now owned by the National Trust and comprises 218 hectares of farmland and 5.77 hectares of woodland. It was offered to let by the National Trust in July 2014.
