On a wooded eminence on the Foxley Estate, Herefordshire, stands a tower that was built as a belvedere by the Price family in the first half of the eighteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century it had fallen into disrepair, but was restored in the 1970s with the guidance of an impressive group of experts in the field.

The Foxley estate is best known as the home of Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829), the writer on the picturesque, but the belvedere tower was built before he was born. A letter of 1714 notes that ‘Mr Price is resolved to have a Summer House on top of the mount’. The Mr Price in question was either Robert Price (1653-1732) who built a new mansion at Foxley after he inherited the estate upon the death of his father-in-law in 1691, or his son Uvedale Tomkins Price (1685-1764). Both were keen improvers.

An exact date for the construction of the tower has not yet been found, but it was extant by 1738 when a visitor noted the ‘Room’ which had been erected ‘upon the top of a very pretty Hill of a great Hight, from whence you have also a vast variety of Views for a prodigious Circle round’.

The Castle and Mount at Foxley sketched by Robert Price in 1744. Courtesy of Hereford City Library.

A tourist in 1752 also admired the ‘Prospects’ from the ‘Summer House’, but after that date the building seems to have been ignored, or perhaps it was by then hidden by maturing trees? Visitors instead were shown Lady Lift (sometimes Lady’s Lift), a loftier hill north of the house, which had been laid out with winding walks to the summit and allegedly gave a view of nine counties.

In the nineteenth century the estate was purchased by the Davenport family, who are still the owners today. By the 1880s the folly, called simply ‘The Castle’ on a sketch taken in the middle of the eighteenth century, had become known as ‘Ragged Castle’ and is marked as such on the Ordnance Survey maps.

The mansion was occupied by the American and Canadian military during the Second World War. Presumably they were not good tenants for the house was pulled down in 1948 as beyond repair, although the Davenport family retained the estate and continued to live locally. The folly was largely intact until 1955 when the lead was stolen from the roof.

In September 1974 Major D. J. Davenport wrote to the Georgian Group asking if anyone could help him find out more about his folly, which was ‘somewhat of an enigma’. The Georgian Group forwarded the letter to architect and folly aficionado Neville Hawkes, who in turn requested the assistance of Dorothy Stroud (curator at the Soane Museum and author of books on Capability Brown and Humphry Repton), Mavis Batey (leading light of the Garden History Society) and Marcus Binney (contributor to Country Life and co-curator of the exhibition The Destruction of the English Country House, which would open at the Victoria & Albert Museum less than a month after Major Davenport’s letter). Sadly, the responses of this learned trio have not been found.

Hawkes, a passionate recorder of follies, was particularly intrigued by Major Davenport’s description of the tower as being diamond-shaped in plan, and confessed that although he had a huge collection of photographs of follies, he had ‘no diamond’. Keen to fill the gap, Hawkes visited the Ragged Castle in October 1974 and snapped the derelict folly.

The Major, obviously impressed by the enthusiastic architect, asked him to draw up plans to restore the little tower in memory of his father who had ‘loved these woods’.

Hawkes believed that the gothic window frames, fragments of which remained in situ, were later additions as they could be seen to be a poor fit. He therefore proposed restoring the tower with 12 paned sash windows.

The restored tower (which sadly the Flâneuse could not gain permission to see) is listed at grade II and is now a Davenport family memorial. There is no public access.

The Flâneuse is grateful to Dr Michael Cousins for sharing the accounts of early visitors to the castle and to the Folly Fellowship for permission to publish the photographs.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox every Saturday morning please click the subscribe button. 

Stimulated by seeing two very different structures, the archaeologist, scientist, gastronome and TV personality Glyn Daniel ‘thought it might be interesting to collect together a few notes about megalithic follies’. As a recognised expert in the field of genuine megaliths, Daniel was well-placed to consider the folly variety. In 1959 he published his thoughts in Antiquity, the journal of which he was editor.

Glyn Edmund Daniel (1914-1986) a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University in 1974, but alongside his academic career he had always been committed to bringing archaeology to a wider non-specialist audience (one of his obituaries noted that ‘he certainly did not play the part of the remote and ineffectual don’). He presented the BBC’s Buried Treasure and its Animal,Vegetable, Mineral? game show, and was named Television Personality of the Year in 1955. He was the editor of Antiquity from 1958 until shortly before his death, and many of his articles, like his TV work, combine deep learning with a cheerful and accessible mode of presentation.

He was also a connoisseur of fine food and wine, and his 1963 book combined his twin passions: The Hungry Archaeologist in France – A Travelling Guide to Caves, Graves and Good Living in the Dordogne and Brittany.

The two principal megalithic monuments that piqued his interest couldn’t be more different – one massive and one quite small. The first was what is now known as the Druid’s Temple near Masham in Yorkshire (of which more later – he left the best until last), and the other was ‘the representation of a megalithic monument’ on the new Chemistry building in Cambridge University.

Built by Rattee and Kett under architect John Murray Easton (1889-1975), Daniel would have seen work on the new laboratory underway from 1953. After the scaffolding around the new building was removed in 1958, Daniel records being struck by the ‘sudden sight’ of this stone panel as he walked ‘sane and sober up Lensfield Road in the city of Cambridge’. The ‘remarkable megalithic panel’ was the work of Mary Spencer Watson (1913-2006) and features chemical symbols and the university’s crest. The architect wanted a rugged feature to ‘get relief from the smoothness of brick and Portland stone’ and the artist responded with what Easton called a ‘megalithic oddity’. John Murray Easton also told Daniel that he would like to have the chance to build a ‘free standing composition of “rude” stones’ – the Flâneuse has been unable to discover if he ever found an opportunity.

Daniel, sensible chap, had a copy of Follies & Grottoes by Barbara Jones to hand. The first edition was published in 1953, and so was relatively new when Daniel was thinking about megalithic follies.

He leaves it to Jones to describe his next megalithic folly, the grotto at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, built in 1792. Jones describes it as ‘the most Gothic of grottoes’, and Daniel’s reasoning in calling it a ‘megalithic folly’ is that he believed that three stones from a genuine antiquity (a ‘chamber tomb’ on a Tisbury farm) were used in Josiah Lane’s ‘rock-work’ (Lane and his father Joseph were prolific builder of grottoes in the Georgian period).

In his tomes on Wiltshire’s history Sir Richard Colt Hoare only says that these ‘three stones were placed near the old castle at Wardour’. And there are such large upright stones to be found at Wardour, only set up near two rustic alcoves just north of the grotto. If anything, Lane possibly fronted his grotto using smaller stones that once encircled the tomb. Either way, the site would have been a megalithic folly by Daniel’s standards.

After a passing mention of William Beckford’s ‘imitation cromlech’ at Fonthill, Daniel moved on to Alton in Staffordshire (now better known as Alton Towers). He describes the sham monument, known as ‘The Druid’s Sideboard’, as an ‘extraordinary construction of piled stones and megalithic slabs’.

‘But’, he continued, ‘the strangest and finest mock-megalith in Britain is surely the ‘temple’ on the Yorkshire moors at Ilton near Masham’. He repeats the tale told locally of how William Danby of Swinton built the folly in the 1820s (it was actually extant some years earlier) to provide work for unemployed men who were paid one shilling a day.

He illustrated his article with photographs of the ‘very remarkable structure’ and the dolmens and trilithons that stand nearby.

Daniel goes on to discuss some megalithic follies in Ireland and in France, but the Flâneuse had by now been sidetracked by the discovery of another of his pastimes – the writing of detective stories. Time for a coffee and a read…

You can see Daniel in action in episodes of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? on BBC iPlayer here and Buried Treasure here

There is full public access to the Cambridge sculpture and to the stone circle near Masham. To see the Druid’s Sideboard you will have to pay the Alton Towers entry fee and take a few rides to get your money’s worth.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts, as ever, are more than welcome. You can get in touch by scrolling down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

For centuries the Graeme family lived at Inchbrakie, east of Crieff. The ancient moated Inchbrakie Castle, home to many generations, was replaced by an elegant mansion early in the eighteenth century, but by the later years of the following century the family were selling up, and this little summerhouse commemorates their long association with the estate. It is currently overgrown, but read on and a little more will be revealed.

In 1878 Inchbrakie was advertised for sale, with the agents noting that ‘it is seldom so desirable a Residential Property comes into the market’. No buyer could be found until 1882, when it was announced that Charles Stirling Home Drummond Moray (1816-1891), who owned the adjoining estate of Abercairny, had purchased the house and land.

Moray added the land to his substantial holdings, but the house was surplus to requirements. In April 1883 the furniture and household effects were sold, and in August a sale of building materials was held including doors, windows and mantelpieces.

Some of the stone must have been stored away for in 1888 work began on a ‘kindly memorial’ which was constructed using fragments of balustrade, pillars and dressed stone. News that a ‘memorial of the seat of an ancient family’ had been built on the Inchbrakie estate was reported in Scottish newspapers in December 1889.

The seat stands on a tranquil, leafy lane, rich with birdsong but, as the title photo shows, Mother Nature has been a little too bountiful of late, and a beech tree is engulfing the memorial. The ever-helpful Uncouth Companion kindly dragged back some of the foliage to allow the Flâneuse a better view:

The back wall has a carved family crest, salvaged from the demolition, and an inscription recording the seat’s history.

The building is marked on Ordnance Survey maps from 1899 as ‘seat’ and is listed (Category B) as ‘Inchbrakie Bower’. Consult a map to find your way to the spot and enjoy the pleasant walk to the seat (after a very hot July holiday climbing up hills to find Scottish follies, the Flâneuse was delighted to discover that the route was fairly level).

A reminder to readers that the annual Heritage Open Days in September are a great way to see follies in England that are not usually accessible – the link above (highlighted in red) will take you straight to the follies list. In Wales there are Open Doors days, and Scotland has Doors Open Days, both also in September – the Flâneuse couldn’t find any follies but you can search for yourself via the links.

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome and you can get in touch via the contact box at the foot of the page.

In the village with the simple name of ‘Hill’, near Sutton Coldfield in what was then Warwickshire, lived retired pawnbroker Hugh Lewis. At the time of his death in 1908, Lewis was remembered as ‘a man of very eccentric habits’ and chief amongst these were the building of a high wall around his house and the erection of a ‘Look out Tower’ on Hill Village Road – inevitably it became known as Lewis’s Folly.

The plans for the tower, dated 1892,  survive, and they show that Lewis (1832-1908) asked Noah Deeks junior to draw up a plan for a five storey tower with a flat roof for the prospect. Deeks was variously described as architect, surveyor and Inspector of Nuisances (a large and unappetising category that included sewers and toxic soups).

Another interesting survival is the document announcing Lewis’s intention to build the ‘Look out Tower’ which was submitted with the plan, and approved on 26 August 1892 – planning permission was not yet a universal requirement, but some local authorities checked plans on grounds of public health and sanitation. At that date Lewis gave his address as Boswell Road in Sutton Coldfield, but he would soon move to Woodfield House on Hill Village Road, and the tower was erected a short distance from his new home. The bricks were said to be destined for a new church in Birmingham, but when the plans fell through they were acquired cheaply by Lewis for his new project.

Lewis died in 1908, leaving a brief handwritten will in which he left his entire estate, estimated at £80-£90,000 (before duties), to the Guest Hospital in Dudley. This was a substantial sum for Lewis had reportedly speculated ‘with great success’ in his retirement. Affairs were almost settled when Lewis’s estranged wife appeared and challenged his will: the hospital trustees agreed to pay Mrs Lewis an annual allowance, allowing the hospital to benefit from the bulk of the bequest. Lewis was buried at St Peter’s, Little Aston, where an inscription records only his dates and his benevolence to the hospital.

Woodfield House and adjoining parcels of land were offered for sale in 1909. Lot 8 was a field, with frontage onto both Hill Village Road and the Lichfield Road (now the A5127), on which stood the ‘brick erection know as The Tower’. A clue to the tower’s chance of survival is given in the auctioneer’s description of the field as ‘absolutely ripe for immediate development’. The tower was apparently unpopular with the locals (although they had apparently been happy to watch fireworks set off from its rooftop), and within days of Lewis’s death the local paper reported that the ‘hope has frequently been expressed that it may not be long before this not altogether picturesque landmark is razed to the ground’. The unloved (and, in fairness, unlovely) tower disappeared soon after and, as expected, the land was developed and Hill Village Road is now lined with houses.

Woodfield House is also gone, replaced by flats, but you can still see part of its high brick wall. According to local legend this was built by Lewis to alleviate poverty. The Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group’s website records that Lewis had ‘acquired a large quantity of bricks cheaply. At that time there was a steady trickle of workmen tramping along Lichfield Road hoping to find work and a better life in Birmingham, but rather than give them charity Lewis would offer them a square meal in return for a stint on building the wall.’

This stretch of wall is today the only reminder in Hill village of the benevolent and eccentric Hugh Lewis. Thanks to the Garden Historian for suggesting the tower as a subject.

Thank you to all of the readers who sent congratulations to the Flâneuse on the 400th post on this site. Your kindness made it all the more frustrating when the technology failed last week. This, after a brief hiatus, is post number 401. Thank you for reading. 

Close to Prestwick Airport, a few miles from Ayr, a handsome monument stands on high ground. It was erected in the middle of the eighteenth century to commemorate a local boy, of very humble beginnings, who had made a fortune in the service of the East India Company. The monument came close to total collapse before, hurrah, a local campaign secured its future.

Macrae is said to have left his native Ayr when little more than a boy and found work on boats leaving the busy port. He worked his way up the ranks to the influential position of Governor of Fort St George, a British power base at Madras (now Chennai) in India. In his time as Governor (he held the position from 1725-1730), Macrae ‘acquired a handsome Estate’, and he returned to Britain a wealthy man in around 1731. In 1736 he was said to be laying out his fortune in ‘purchasing Lands’ and this included an estate at Monkton, near Ayr, which he called Orangefield in honour of William III – Macrae also funded the erection of a statue of William of Orange in Glasgow in 1735.

Four years after Macrae’s death in June 1744, work began on his monument. No records have been found to explain the planning behind the structure – there is no inscription and the architect is unknown. We don’t even know who commissioned the monument, although Macrae’s sole heir and executor the Countess of Glencairn, née Elizabeth Maguire, seems likely. Whilst there has been speculation that the structure was intended as Macrae’s mausoleum, his will simply requests that he be ‘decently buried’.

John Swan began work on the monument in 1748, but the near complete structure is recorded as having collapsed the following year before being rebuilt in 1750 (and this is corroborated by the discovery of damaged stone in the rubble infill during the restoration). This information, the only early history of the monument the Flâneuse can find, is recorded in the second volume of James Paterson’s History of Ayr, published in 1852, and all later descriptions of the fine monument rely on his account.

A century after it was built surveyors mapping the county of Ayrshire noted ‘Macrae’s Monument’ as a ‘very prominent object’ (earlier maps simply mark the structure as ‘Monument’). It is unsurprising then that in the second half of the nineteenth century it was used as a landmark for the hunt, with many reports of the hounds and their prey racing by. Robert Bryden (1865-1939) took this view in 1912, and by that date the monument was ‘in a rather dilapidated condition’, although no major issues can be seen in his fine etching.

In 1967 an officer from the National Monuments Record of Scotland visited the site. He wrote that the ‘small pylonic monument’ was ‘well executed’ and noted the maritime motifs which featured on the four faces. There was however ‘considerable decay of the stonework’, although some repointing was underway when he visited.

These motifs include a shell, dolphins, a stylised castellated building on a rock, a trident and an anchor. Mr Hay’s detailed investigation of the monument took longer than expected, with an added delay caused by his Land Rover getting stuck in a stony patch. Disgruntled and hungry, he finished his report with the note ‘No lunch’.

The tower continued to decay, and by the end of the twentieth century it was in a most precarious condition, having been damaged in a storm. The monument was restored in the early years of the current century under the auspices of the Three Towers Trust working with Ayr-based ARPL Architects. There was strong support from the landowner, Glencara Estates, and from the local community, as well as funding from Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The obelisk had to be taken down to enable the rebuilding of the square base, and the shaft was re-erected once that had been consolidated.

Macrae was buried in Monkton churchyard, but no stone marks the spot (although a modern headstone records that he is interred somewhere in the churchyard). The story is told locally that a group of Macrae’s friends, in high spirits after a two-day drinking spree, exhumed his body from the churchyard and re-interred it in the newly-completed monument. Human remains of four adults and two children were found in the monument during the restoration work, but were thought to be of a later date. Like much else about the monument, the identity of those whose remains were found remains a mystery.

In the jet-setting 1940s Macrae’s former estate became home to Prestwick Airport, with the mansion as its centrepiece – Orangefield is probably the only country house to end its days with an air traffic control tower plonked on its roof. The building is sadly no more.

The monument (upgraded to Category A in 1994), was once a distant landmark, but is now on the edge of a new housing estate and is easy to reach from the road named…

The Flâneuse thanks Susan Kellerman for sharing her research into the monument, undertaken at the time of its restoration. Thanks also to Peter Drummond, of Peter Drummond Architects. Peter was part of the ARLP team at the time of the restoration.

UPDATE: thanks to John Malaiperuman for the fascinating observation that the monument echoes the tower and spire of the church of St Mary at Fort St George, a building that Macrae would have known well.

This is the 400th post to be published after 8 years of the Folly Flâneuse. Thank you for reading!

Late in the eighteenth century, the Grant family lost their livelihood in their native Scotland and set out to find work in the rapidly developing industries of Lancashire. Pausing to rest on their journey they admired the ‘beautiful valley’ of the River Irwell, which reminded them of Speyside. Decades later they bought the ground, and erected this tower to commemorate that moment.

William Grant (1769-1842) recounted this history in a letter of 1839. He told how he found work in Bury, historically Lancashire but now Greater Manchester, and with his brothers became ‘very successful’ in the textile business (the ‘rags to riches’ story of the brothers is said to have inspired the characters the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens). In 1827 the family added the Park Estate to their considerable land holdings, and there, as Grant wrote, they erected a ‘monument to commemorate my father’s first visit to the valley’. Almost immediately the building became known as ‘Grant’s Tower’.

The architect is not known, and few early descriptions of the tower can be found, but we can assume that the Grants used the tower as a belvedere and party venue. There were wedding festivities at John Grant’s Nuttall Hall in 1848 and banners were hoisted on Grant’s Tower, high above the house (Nuttall Hall was demolished in 1952 and the grounds are now a public park).

The public were initially invited to visit on set days, but by 1892 it was open daily and a popular destination for picnic parties. Refreshments were available, and no doubt picture postcards were also sold – many different views of the tower were in circulation.

In the early years of the twentieth century the tower could be discovered in many kitchens  as it featured on the label of a ‘delicious relish’ called Tower Sauce. Manufactured by Scott & Rosse of Bury, this condiment could, if one believed the advertisements, aid digestion, produce an appetite and ‘please every palate’.

It is first mentioned in newspaper ads in 1904, and the marketing department hit their stride in 1905 when a housewife could send the company three one penny stamps and in return receive a free sample of the sauce and six picture postcards. The cards were ‘guaranteed to be free from advertisements’ – were they perhaps views of the tower?

By 1911 the tower was ‘showing signs of neglect’ and in 1914 the interior of the tower was said to be in a ‘ruinous condition’. There were plans to repair the ‘famous Lancashire landmark’, but the outbreak of the First World War meant that plans were shelved.

Around 1940, with another war underway, Ramsbottom Urban Council began negotiations with the tower’s owner, Sir Peter Lawson, to take control of the tower as soon as the hostilities were over. No agreement was reached, and soon after the tower was closed to the public as unsafe. In September 1944, when ‘Ramsbottom’s weather beaten landmark’ collapsed, the local paper reported that this ‘did not come as a big surprise’. The more dangerous walls of the truncated tower were demolished, and only the roofless lower storey was left standing.

In 2017 Bury Council granted the owner of the tower (it had by now changed hands) permission to repair and reroof the remains of the tower to prevent any further damage to the interior. The renovated remains can be seen from the public footpath that passes the tower.

The Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from you – the comments box is at the bottom of the page if you would like to share any thoughts. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each week please see below. Thank you for reading.

When Archibald Hogg of Bandrum House built this tower as an observatory and summerhouse in the 1840s, Saline had the ‘well-merited reputation of being the Paradise of Fife’. The village, built along the valley of the Saline Burn, is surrounded by hills and from the eminence called Bandrum this tower enjoyed a prospect of the undulating landscape to the Firth of Forth and beyond.

The story told locally is that the tower, known as the Temple, replaced a wooden structure, which had been erected by the previous owner in around 1805. Construction of the stone tower began in 1845 under the supervision of Lewis Mercer who worked alongside his brothers. Stone stairs lead up to an upper floor, now collapsed, with a fireplace and windows giving an amazing view to Bandrum House and the surrounding countryside.

Lewis Mercer (c.1809-1867) was an architect and mason who lived in Saline and designed and built a number of buildings there. A simple stone marks his burial place in the village churchyard, but the most curious monument to him is his head, carved in stone, which sits outside a house on Main Street in the village.

A poem, published in a local paper in 1888, tells that the from the tower there was a view to Stirling and across the Forth to Edinburgh. The Pentland and Ochil hills, could be seen, as well as the mountains of Ben Ledi and Ben Lomond. The writer recalled his childhood visits to the tower:

‘Twas here I used to sit and gaze upon
The glimmering landscape, as the setting sun
Went down behind Ben Lomond’s lofty peak,
And tinged the hilltops with a golden streak.

The tower (listed as Category C) is now a roofless shell but remains a popular landmark, and rewards the hike up from the edge of the village.

Follow the footpath opposite the entrance to Midfield Terrace in Saline (the path is overgrown and is best left until winter when the nettles and thistles are less ferocious – the Flâneuse speaks from recent experience). Or you could take a leisurely drive into Saline on the B913 and admire the distant tower on its hillside as you approach the hamlet of Cowstrandburn. From this road you will also be able to appreciate the tower’s relationship to Hogg’s seat at Bandrum House, now a nursing home.

Saline was once home to another curiosity – a group of stone figures carved in the 1820s by sculptor George Forrest. Depicted are Tam o’ Shanter and Souter Johnny, characters created by Robbie Burns, and Symon and Bauldy from the poem The Gentle Shepherd by Allan Ramsay. From 1832 Forrest exhibited his sculptures on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, where they were described as ‘one of the most popular and attractive exhibitions in the Scottish metropolis’. The collection was gradually dispersed after his death in 1852, and these four figures found a home in the grounds of Kirklands House in Saline. They were sold to Fife Museums Service in 2010. Whilst Symon and Bauldy await conservation, the restored statues of Tam and Johnny can now be seen outside Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries.

Thank you for reading. Further information is always welcome so please scroll down to the comments box to share your thoughts.

In 1823 the Rev. Oliver Raymond was instituted into the Rectory of Middleton, a village which although very near Sudbury in Suffolk, just sneaks over the boundary into Essex. On 9 November 1841, Queen Victoria gave birth to her first son, Albert Edward (the future Edward VII). Almost immediately he was given the title Prince of Wales, and Raymond marked the occasion by planting an avenue of trees which became known as the Prince of Wales Avenue.

Partway along the avenue Raymond (1794-1889) erected a ‘handsome entrance gate’ of brick and flint, inset with older carved stone which is thought to have been salvaged from local church rebuilding projects. The fragments carry a star, emblem of the De Veres of Hedingham Castle, so the stone is said to have been salvaged from a church under their patronage, but no firm evidence has yet been found.

Around the arch is the inscription: PLANTED BY OLIVER RAYMOND LLB RECTOR OF THIS PARISH IX NOV MDCCCXLI THE DAY OF HRH THE PRINCES BIRTH.

By the time Barbara Jones saw it in the middle of the twentieth century, the arch had become a picturesque ruin. It is not clear if this was as a result of natural decay or of vandalism, but the arch was certainly the haunt of those intent on carving their names in the stone, with graffiti evident today from within the first decades of the arch being completed.

Raymond remodelled his parish church of All Saints and improved the graveyard. In September 1853, a newspaper report likened the burial ground to a ‘miniature Pere-la-Chaise‘. Raymond had apparently removed years of accumulated soil and trimmed back the overgrown cypresses and laurels to create a park-like setting.

A contemporary poem entitled ‘Middleton Church-Yard’, questioned why a burial ground should only display ’emblems drear to view’, and praised the planting of flowers at Middleton:

Then there let many a flower unclose
Its blossom to the Spring,
There let the Lily and the Rose
Round them their odours fling.

Raymond had built a new rectory, in white brick, where he and his family lived. The rooms were hung with a number of works by Raymond and his family, and he also built up a substantial art collection of Old Masters and works by contemporary artists, including local boys Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable.

In 1853 the ‘picturesque little church’ and the rectory were described as amongst the ‘most attractive objects in [the] neighbourhood’. Two decades later a visitor wrote that ‘around this bijou of a church Mr Raymond has lived to see noble oaks arise, planted by his own hand, and vistas flourish, looking over a great extent of country’.

Church and rectory were approached along a drive which curved past an ‘ornamental sheet of water’, seen in the engraving above. In Raymond’s own words, the view from the rectory across the pool was ‘unusually imposing and picturesque’.

In January 1881, in ‘blinding sleet’, a cab driver swerved on the Rectory’s drive and skidded onto the frozen pool, where the ice gave way. The driver and horse were rescued, but the partially submerged vehicle had to be hauled out the following day.

Raymond quickly erected a string of pedestals by the lake, each topped with an urn and connected by iron fence-panels.

One pedestal carries a carved inscription reading CAVE STAGNUM – beware of the pond. A ‘time-stained’ notice, in which Raymond explained his actions, was reportedly discovered by a workman in the 1950s: it read ‘To prevent a future accident of the kind this Barrier was erected by Oliver Raymond, L.L.B., R.D. Rector of the Parish of Middleton, Essex, February 17 1881. GOD save the Queen!’.

Raymond died in 1889, having lived in Middleton as curate from 1818 and then as Rector from 1823. His children erected a new reredos in the church in memory of his seventy years as priest in the parish.

The rectory is today a private home but the church and pool can be seen. The arch stands on a public footpath across the field from the lane leading to the church. Remnants of the avenue survive.

The Rev. Oliver Raymond was a younger son of the Raymonds of nearby Belchamp Hall, where another curious arch was erected and architectural fragments were reused.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and further information are always welcome. The comments box is at the foot of the page –  a reminder that only your name will be published and your contact details remain private.

Close to the border between Wales and England stands a simple, but elegant, stone tower. It was built in the early nineteenth century, but was later abandoned and left to decay. It was renovated in the 1980s, and again more recently, and is now a lofty holiday let.

The tower is actually in Herefordshire, but its postal address is Hay-on-Wye which is just over the border in Wales. It was built in the park of an estate called ‘The Moor’, which in the 1820s was home to the extravagantly-named Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre – the family name being extended in 1824 as a condition of an inheritance.

Architect George Phillips Manners (1789-1866) remodelled the house at The Moor in the 1820s, and is thought also to have designed the tower. The original purpose is unknown: the Historic England listing suggests it was a water tower, but if so it must have doubled as an eye-catcher and belvedere. It is marked simply as ‘Tower’ on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 1880s.

The house at The Moor was let to tenants in the later nineteenth century, and occupied by the United States Army during the Second World War. In peace time it was considered too large to be used as a family home and, when an institutional use could not be found, it was demolished in the 1950s. The tower was not maintained, and by 1964, as the photo’ above shows, it had fallen into desuetude.

Some years later the Penoyre family offered it to John Nankivell, an artist and friend, for the sum of one pound a year, subject to him renovating the ‘gutted’ structure. Work was described as ‘almost complete’ in 1989 after Nankivell had fitted out the tower with architectural salvage, including ironwork from a hotel in Ilfracombe and doors from a convent in Wantage.

Early this century the tower reverted to the family, and in 2018 work began to restore the tower as a holiday let. The London-based practice MICA was commissioned to create completely new interior spaces, and even ‘squeezed in an extra floor’ to give more space. Jenkinson Builders of Brecon carried out the work, which was completed in 2021.

A little distance from the tower stands an obelisk which would have been visible from the tower, but is now masked by mature trees. This was once one of a pair, but as a photograph taken in 1964 shows one column had fared better than the other, and that in the foreground collapsed soon after this picture was taken. The story is told that the obelisks were built to create employment at a time of need, with the stone being collected from nearby fields.

In the 1950s Barbara Jones noted ‘fragments of a tablet’ inscribed ‘B.S. Penoyre’ and dated 1826 at the foot of one of the obelisks, and concluded that they were built by Anna Maria Brodbelt in memory of her father, Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre. However her father was still alive, if failing in health, in 1826 (he died in January 1827) so either Jones misread the date or another explanation is still to be found.

The tower and surviving obelisk are both listed at Grade II.

The Moor Tower is available to book via this link. There is no general public access to the tower or obelisk.

You can read more about the restoration project by clicking here.

There’s a short illustrated article on John Nankivell’s time at the tower in an early edition of Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship. Thanks to a superb digitisation project you can read it here.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or further information,

Blagdon Hall stands close to the former Great North Road, a few miles north of Newcastle upon Tyne. At the end of the lake stands a circle of Doric columns known as The Temple. The columns were first erected as part of a rotunda ,with an unusual domed roof, at Heaton Hall, on the edge of Newcastle. Part of the grounds of Heaton Hall later became a public park, but when it looked as if the Temple was going to be a drain on corporation funds, it was removed to Blagdon in around 1937.

Matthew Ridley (1711-1778) of Heaton Hall was a successful businessman and represented Newcastle as mayor and as Member of Parliament. He succeeded his father to Heaton Hall in 1739, by which date the ‘beautiful house’ already stood amongst avenues, gardens and a wilderness. Ridley added a new stone front to the existing brick mansion, with towers at the corners and by 1766 Heaton Hall was noted by Sir Roger Newdigate as a ‘well looking house with round Towers at each End sashd & modern’ (confirming that the house was remodelled by Matthew Ridley, and not by his son Sir Matthew White Ridley in the 1770s as has previously been stated). An account in 1787 confirms that the architect of the new front was William Newton of Newcastle.

Ridley must also have been laying out his grounds in the then fashionable natural style: the park was described in 1769 as planted with ‘small clumps of young forest-trees’ (there is a tantalising mention of the landscape designer Richard Woods leaving Harewood in Yorkshire to visit ‘Mr Ridley’ in Northumberland in 1765). The watercolour below shows that there was a vista through a plantation to the Temple as a distant eye-catcher when approaching the estate.

The Temple probably also dates from this period of improvements. It is described as a ‘tempiato’ in Wallis’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland… of 1769, and in the 1770s William Beilby painted it for the Duchess of Northumberland’s album of views. It may also be the work of William Newton, although no evidence is known to survive.

Sadly no trace survives of some ‘mock ruins’ built by Ridley ‘as ornamental objects from Heaton Hall’. This folly, also extant by 1769, stood on an eminence at nearby Byker and as well as being an object from Heaton Hall, it gave a ‘most extensive prospect’ of the town of Newcastle and the shipping on the Tyne.

The Ridleys left Heaton in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the estate became home to the Potter family. In 1878 Addison Potter sold part of the pleasure grounds to the Corporation of Newcastle for use as a public park – this portion included the ‘ornamental temple-like building’, which was one of the first things to be seen when entering the new park via the South Gate. The Gardeners’ Chronicle magazine liked how the corporation had conserved the pleasure garden ‘very much as it was as a residential place’. Picture postcards show the Temple at the top of a slope, with steps rising through a rockery, although it is not clear if this was created by the Potter family or if it is a later landscaping by the Parks department.

In 1932 the Potters sold Heaton Hall, and the remainder of its ground, to a firm of builders. Under the headline ‘The End of Heaton Hall’ the local paper announced that the hall would be razed and the land developed for housing.

Meanwhile, the Temple in the park was not being kept in good repair and in December 1936 a corporation working group discussed its future. The councillors were divided, with some wishing to see its immediate demolition and others keen that it should be repaired. By that date Viscount Ridley of Blagdon (the viscountcy was created in 1900) had already been consulted, and had agreed to take the columns if the Temple was to be pulled down. The vote was won 4:3 in favour of keeping the Temple, but by autumn 1937 no action had been taken and it was roped off from the public and declared unsafe. Contractors were called in to give estimates for taking the structure down and re-erecting it at Blagdon – a deal must have been struck and the columns were moved the few miles to Blagdon. History does not seem to record what happened to the domed roof, but the columns form a charming eye-catcher at the head of the lake.

Blagdon Hall is a private home but the gardens open for charity on a few days each year. You can find forthcoming dates here.

Heaton Park, with adjoining parks along the valley of the Ouse Burn, is a Grade II registered public park and is freely accessible.

The Flâneuse is grateful to Dr Michael Cousins for sharing his transcript of the travel diary of Sir Roger Newdigate. Thanks also to Fiona Green for sharing her research into Heaton Park and to Richard Pears for information on Blagdon Hall.

Thank you for reading. As ever your thoughts or observations are very welcome. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.