Tucked away in the corner of the garden of an Edwardian house in Muswell Hill, north London, is a rather special structure. In 2022 its quirky elegance earned it the coveted title of best ‘Unique/Unexpected’ structure in the Cuprinol Shed of the Year Awards.
Simon Hurst’s design for the NE Elevation of the folly.
This delightful retreat was created by Jane Dorner with the help of her architect friend Simon Hurst. The building has the distinction of being probably the only folly built to solve the problem of where to store cushions in the cooler months (Jane having dismissed the usual plastic receptacles). But, as can be seen, the project became rather more than a storage box and grew to be a gorgeous Gothic Folly. Simon’s design incorporates the all-important cupboard for the cushions, and above it there is a glazed cabinet of curiosities. Jane changes the display as the whim takes her, often selecting items to suit the interests of guests.
Looking into the shed. The glazed cabinet of curiosities can be seen on the back wall above the ‘cushion cupboard’.
When the Flâneuse was lucky enough to visit recently the doors were open and the table was laid with nibbles and home-made vermouth (the red vermouth with a delicious tang of lovage from the garden was a particular treat).
A closer look at Jane’s lovely label designs, showing the interior and exterior of the folly:
The folly is illuminated from above by a lantern filled with what appears to be stained glass, which casts a lovely light. Continuing the sham tradition beloved of folly builders, this is actually a clever use of stick-on lead strips and coloured film.
Below the lantern are Jane’s paintings in grisaille, inspired by the ancient Temple of the Winds in Athens.
Some of Jane’s panels representing the winds.
As the finishing touch Jane designed the weather vane with her Abyssinian cat Khairo as the model. Or perhaps not quite the finishing touch: the project remains a work in progress, with these two handsome green men soon to be installed…
Green men to decorate the folly.
The folly even has its very own doorbell, alerting Jane to the arrival of lucky visitors. It currently plays Für Elise, but Jane is hoping to find someone who can programme it to play a few rousing bars of La Follia by Vivaldi.
One of the cushions that started it all enjoying a moment in the sun.
And as if the summerhouse itself was not enchanting enough, here it is in miniature thanks to Jane’s jeweller and designer friend Vicki Ambery-Smith.
The folly in silver as crafted by Vicki Ambery-Smith.
Thanks to Jane and Simon for their help with this post. You can discover more about Jane’s folly on her website http://www.editor.net/folly/
Simon has now largely retired from his career as an architect, and is enjoying life as an artist. There’s more about his work here https://www.schd.co.uk/#home
Thank you for reading. Don’t you wish you were sitting in Jane’s folly with a glass of vermouth (or perhaps a coffee if it is still early)? Your thoughts are always welcome – scroll down to the comments box to get in touch.
A short distance from Rothley Castle, on land which was once part of the Wallington Hall estate near Morpeth, is a sham fort known today as Codger Fort. It was built as an eye-catcher by Sir Walter Calverley Blackett in around 1770 as part of a programme of improvements at Rothley.
In the middle of the 18th century Wallington Hall, west of Morpeth in Northumberland, was the seat of Sir Walter Calverley Blackett. Like many men of his time, he remodelled his park and introduced fashionable landscape features. On Rothley Crags, a windswept outcrop of rock north of Wallington Hall, he erected a sham castle which served as a distant eye-catcher from the house.
Pictured above is Creech Grange Arch in Dorset and that, the Flâneuse feels she must confess at once, is almost all you will hear about follies this week, for she has been busy gallivanting in search of gazebos and grottoes. But if you are a folly fan who is also something of a cruciverbalist then read on.
Just south of Glasgow an immense drum topped with a dome can be glimpsed from the M74 motorway. This is the mausoleum commissioned by the 10th Duke of Hamilton. When he was interred there in 1852, it was hailed in the newspapers as ‘the most costly and magnificent temple for the reception of the dead in the world’, although with the caveat ‘always excepting the Pyramids’.
Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton and 7th Duke of Brandon (1767-1852) by Henry Raeburn (1756-1823). Private Collection.
Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852) inherited Hamilton Palace from his father in 1819. He had been on the Grand Tour and had a passion for arts and antiquities, building up a vast and important collection.
Unknown artist, View of the South Front of Hamilton Palace, ca. 1800, Watercolor, pen, and black ink on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1975.4.1641. Public Domain.
A number of architects were consulted about the planned mausoleum, including the Duke’s kinsman David Hamilton (1768-1843). Hamilton designed the crypt with niches for the coffins of many generations to come.
But the rest of the building we see today was built to a design by David Bryce (1803-1876) based on a sketch by the Duke himself. By 1852 the crypt was ready to receive the remains of the Duke’s ancestors which were brought to the mausoleum from the old church in Hamilton. The building was still incomplete when the duke died in September of the same year, although he was immediately laid to rest in his sarcophagus in the upper chamber and work continued around him.
The Duke was fascinated by all things Egyptian and had asked a specialist, Mr Pettigrew, to embalm his body after his death. He then wished to be placed in a sarcophagus which he had purchased. This casket, ‘executed by the most cunning workmen of the Pharoahs’ featured a female face and was thought to have been used in the burial of an Egyptian queen: according to one source the Duke ordered it to be further chiselled out to make room for his body.
The Sarcophagus as pictured in the Illustrated London News in 1882.
Not everyone was impressed with the Duke’s mausoleum (or the Duke for that matter: he was considered self-important). In 1863 Lady Waterford found it in poor taste, writing that it was a ‘monument of pride’ in which the Duke ‘reposes alone […] under an immense doom [dome] in the sarcophagus of an Egyptian queen’.
In 1943 a novel called The Pleasure Dome was published. It was the work of Elizabeth Kyle, and the story was based on the history of Hamilton Palace, and the colourful characters associated with it. Elizabeth Kyle was a pen-name of Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlap (1901-1982), who also published as Mary Forsyth and Jan Ralston, although she used her real name for her journalism. Her first novel was published in 1934 when she was described as ‘not one of those writers who derive local colouring from their imagination’: instead she drew upon her experiences of wandering ‘about Europe and America in a more or less vagabond way in order to satisfy her craving for adventure’. She also travelled widely as a correspondent for both the Manchester Guardian and the Glasgow Herald.
The mausoleum is hard to photograph so here’s the dome from a jaunty angle. The plaque has a Latin inscription telling that the 10th Duke erected the mausoleum for himself and his descendants.
The Flâneuse is rambling, but there is a good reason for introducing the book. Kyle’s characters include the Duke of Hamilton, his architect, and the architect’s assistant Mr Connell, a man who has experience in building ‘whigmaleeries’. This wonderful word instantly evokes something enchanted or whimsical, but the Folly Flâneuse reached for her dictionary to double-check: whigmaleerie – ‘a fanciful ornament or contrivance’. Also in the cast of characters was the Duke’s father-in-law William Beckford, builder of whigmaleeries including Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire to a design by James Wyatt and Beckford’s Tower in Bath (H.E. Goodridge, architect of Beckford’s Tower, was one of the men who submitted a design for the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace).
The mausoleum featured on many nineteenth century picture postcards, but one in particular caught the eye of the Flâneuse. The message on the front is quite conventional, with Howard sending lots of love to his sweetheart in 1904, but the reverse, written in code, suggests clandestine meetings and illicit affairs. Upon cracking the code Howard is found to be above reproach: he tells Lilian his cold is getting better and comments on the weather. Incurable romantics will however be pleased to know that Howard and Lilian married in 1910 and had a long life together.
Postcard sent in 1904. Courtesy of a private collection.
The family collection, including the treasures collected by the 10th Duke, was sold in a magnificent sale in 1882. In the early 1920s mineral workings under the estate threatened the stability of the palace and the mausoleum. In 1921 the bodies in the crypt, along with the 10th Duke in his sarcophagus, were reinterred in the nearby Bent Cemetery, where a simple monument marks their site (the remains of two most recent Dukes were reinterred on the Isle of Arran). Only the plinth which once held the sarcophagus remains in the upper room of the mausoleum.
The 13th Duke of Hamilton sold a vast chunk of the estate, including the palace, mausoleum and the hunting lodge called Chatelherault to Hamilton Town Council in the early 1920s. Work began almost immediately to demolish the palace, and there were calls to pull down the mausoleum too. Happily, local interest was so strong that the plans were abandoned. Today the mausoleum stands as an unlikely eye-catcher in the midst of playing fields and cricket pitches.
For much more on the history of the mausoleum visit the Low Parks Museum in Hamilton or see the excellent Virtual Hamilton Palace website https://vhpt.org
Two lions guard the entrance to the vault. One is on duty and awake, whilst the other sleeps until it is his turn to stand sentry. The lions and the masks were carved by Alexander Handyside Ritchie of Edinburgh.
View of the tower by John Varley, 1823. Courtesy of Chris Beetles Gallery, St James's, London. Full details below.
Just outside Little Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire stands a lofty circular brick tower which sits on an octagonal base. It was built towards the end of the eighteenth century by the Stratton family and has, appropriately, a tall tale attached. The eye-catcher was a popular subject with artists, and a number of very pretty views survive.
The Palladian Bridge at Wilton House, in Wiltshire, was built in 1736-37 for Henry Herbert, the 9th Earl of Pembroke. The design was his own, and such was his passion for building that he became known as the ‘Architect Earl’. The bridge crosses the River Nadder which forms the boundary between the formal gardens and informal landscape.
In the vast park of Cirencester House, adjoining the town of the same name, a pretty rusticated temple sits in an opening called Seven Rides. This is the point where avenues cut through the woodland meet, giving long vistas in each direction. It was named Pope’s Seat after the poet, Alexander, who designed it for his friend Lord Bathurst.
Pope’s Seat as photographed by Henry Taunt in 1883. Courtesy of Oxfordshire History Centre POX0150400
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a good friend of Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl of Bathurst (1684-1775), who in the early eighteenth century was laying out pleasure grounds and parkland at his seat on the edge of the town of Cirencester. By 1742 Lord Bathurst’s demesne was described as ‘a fine park […] adornd wth several beautifull buildings’. Pope is said to have offered advice on this landscaping and designed this alcove, which was named in his honour – ‘POPES SEAT’ is engraved on a stone above the entrance.
The Flâneuse is delighted to announce that a diminutive new version of the summerhouse has been added to the Cirencester Park landscape. Bristol based woodcarver Andy O’Neill started his working life as a graphic designer, before a desire to work outdoors led to a new career as a tree surgeon. Then, combining his creative and arboricultural talents, he began to create sculptures with a chainsaw.
Andy O’Neill working on the sculpture. Photo courtesy of the Bathurst Estate.
When a decaying cedar had to be felled in Cirencester Park, Lord Bathurst saw the opportunity to use some of the timber to create a bench on the Broad Avenue, which runs for around six miles through the estate. In consultation with Andy it was decided to decorate it with Pope’s Seat in miniature.
The bench with Hamish Mackie’s Andalusian Stallion in the background. This front looks down the Broad Avenue to the town of Cirencester.A glimpse of the statue through the alcove’s open arch.The back of the ‘new’ Pope’s Seat which looks up the Broad Avenue towards where its much older big brother stands.The seat enjoys a peep to the Queen Anne Monument.
Pope’s Seat is listed at grade II*. It and other fascinating ornaments can be seen when exploring Cirencester Park. For more information visit https://www.bathurstestate.co.uk
On the northern edge of Stratford upon Avon is Clopton House, a handsome mansion which once stood in an extensive park. In 1837 Charles Thomas Warde inherited the Clopton estate from his uncle, and his improvements included this attractive castellated prospect tower.
In 1928 a new detective was introduced to readers. Her name was Maud Silver and she was as fond of knitting and quoting Tennyson as she was of solving crimes. She was the creation of Patricia Wentworth, who would go on to write thirty-two books featuring Miss Silver, including The Gazebo, which was published in the United States in 1956 and in the United Kingdom in 1958. Having called this post ‘Murder in the Gazebo’ it is a little late for a spoiler alert, and as you have no doubt guessed the garden building is the setting for key scenes, including the death at the heart of the novel.
