Stowe Gardens' Circle of the Dancing Faun

The Circle of the Dancing Faun, another group of statues in Stowe Gardens, have recently been recreated by the National Trust. Viscount Cobham commissioned the original group in the 1750’s to depict the shepherds and shepherdesses from the local village of Dadford coming out and playing music and dancing with the Faun during the hours of darkness, with the faun returning to its stone effigy at sunrise.

You can find the statues along the Path of Liberty as it follows the top of Capability Brown's Grecian Valley. But did you know they've only recently returned?

When the family landed in financial trouble in the early 1800s, they sold the original figures of the Circle of the Dancing Faun to raise funds. Fortunately, the Sleeping Shepherdess and Sleeping Shepherd were found locally in the market town of Buckingham and returned to Stowe Gardens in 2008. The original Faun is still missing, but to restore the original tableau, the National Trust used a mould of a similar Faun from Hughenden Manor to create the new composite stone Faun we see today. The dancing shepherdess and shepherds were recreated from 18th century engravings and cast in lead. They’ve been painted to make them more lifelike and to differentiate the difference between life and mythical.

And attached to a tree beside the Circle of the Dancing Faun is a quote from the 1766 to 1798 Seeley guidebook,

“And every Shepherd tells his Tale. Under a Hawthorn in the Dale.”

Meet the Characters of Stowe Gardens' Circle of the Dancing Faun

We've been having fun exploring Stowe Gardens and the Stowe Estate and trying to locate as many of the Stowe Monuments as we could. A pictorial summary of all the monuments we discovered can be found here.

For more information on Stowe Gardens and Parkland and opening times and events please visit the National Trust website here.

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A short break or long weekend are ideal if you'd like to spend time exploring Stowe Gardens, or even make your own attempt to find all the monuments. Look for local accommodation using our Booking.com search box.

For more England days out return from our Stowe Gardens' Circle of the Dancing Faun page to the Monuments of Stowe Park page.

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