Henry Wyatt lived at Farmhill, an estate on the edge of Stroud, in Gloucestershire. In 1834 he built an arch at the end of a new drive to his house, with an engraved stone tablet announcing that the memorial was erected to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. His house is gone, and the land developed but, after some near misses, the arch survives.

Wyatt (c.1786-1847) was described as ‘Banker’ on the 1841 census return and he also served as a magistrate in Stroud. Little more is known of his life, although he was described in 1871 as having lived in ‘great esteem and usefulness’. He may have been present at the meeting of the Stroud Anti-Slavery Association in the summer of 1832, when a number of ‘eloquent speeches’ were given, and we know for certain that in 1838 he demanded the ‘complete emancipation’ of enslaved apprentices in the British Colonies.

The full inscription on Wyatt’s arch, seen as one entered his grounds, reads:

ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES,
THE FIRST OF AUGUST, A.D.MDCCCXXXIV

On the inner side are the words:

DEDIT DEUS LIBERTATEN
DETUR DEO GLORIA
(God gave freedom. Glory to God).

In December 1932 it was proposed that Farmhill House, which had stood empty for some time, be demolished. The estate was to be ‘divided into suitable plots for the erection of good class residences’. In 1933 it was announced that Council houses were to be built near the arch at Paganhill, and indignant local residents protested that this would ‘greatly depreciate’ the value of their homes. The local newspaper reported bluntly that the Council took ‘no action’ in response, and a housing estate was soon under construction near the arch.

By 1958 the arch was under threat. A local newspaper announced that it was ‘definitely to come down’ after the local authorities agreed that the ‘expense of repairing it was not justified’, and that it should not be a burden on taxpayers. Stroud Urban Council’s Finance Committee agreed to contact the Ministry of Works, asking them to remove the arch from the list of buildings of special architectural interest. The council then planned to pull down the arch and, in a rather paltry act of recompense, ‘erect a plaque in lieu’.

As discussions continued into 1959 it was clear that there were divisions within the powers-that-be. Councillor Stephens thought it a ‘monstrosity’ that ‘stuck out like a sore thumb’, but Councillor Horsfall thought it a ‘matter of history and tradition’ that the town should be proud of.

The ’eminent architect’ Clough Williams-Ellis was contacted by the Ministry of Housing, which body thought he might be able to give the arch a home at Portmeirion, the village he had created in North Wales. Clough agreed that it sounded a ‘most eligible inmate’ for his ‘Home for Fallen Buildings’, but his first wish was that it should remain in Stroud. In a letter to the Times he proposed moving it away from the ‘pedestrian’ housing estate and re-erecting it as the entrance to the town’s park. Clough began to lobby the Ministry of Works, asking Robert Cooke MP to do a ‘little wand waving’, but the Ministry declined to offer a grant. Gloucestershire County Council raised no objections to demolition and the arch seemed doomed.

If the arch was condemned, Clough announced that he was willing to give the ‘little pet of classical elegance’ a home. He had in mind a ‘superb position’ for it at Portmeirion, where it would stand at the head of the broad harbour steps. There, he wrote, it would ‘have the company of other distinguished but slighted monuments’.

Meanwhile, the city of Hull was celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of abolitionist and local boy William Wilberforce (1759-1833). The story of the arch reached the council and, horrified at the potential loss of the important monument, Hull’s Town Clerk wrote to Stroud Urban Council asking that they did not ‘destroy the arch’ before Hull’s councillors had discussed the possibility of dismantling it and re-erecting it in the garden of Wilberforce House.

With no grant support forthcoming the Chairman of Stroud District Council began to lose his patience, stating that ‘as the organisations who were so interested in its restoration appear to have no funds’ there would need to be a public appeal. He was perhaps surprised by the strength of local support for the arch, and after a £500 donation from an anonymous resident, the monument was granted a reprieve. It was restored in 1960-61, and subsequent work over the years, including a recent thorough renovation, has kept the monument in good condition.

One mystery which the Flâneuse has not been able to solve is what happened to the fine iron gates which were still in situ in 1959. Historic England documents give contradictory information – the listing record notes that the gates are now at ‘Doddington Hall’ but the 2013 publication Slavery and the British Country House states that they are now at ‘Dodington House’. Please get in touch if you have further information.

Today the arch has an extra level of protection. In 2007 its listing status was upgraded to II* as part of a programme to recognise historic buildings associated with the slave trade. The arch is believed to be the earliest memorial built to commemorate the abolition of slavery.

A stylised view of arch is also the logo of the adjoining Archway school which was built when Wyatt’s park was developed for housing.

For more on Clough Williams-Ellis and Portmeirion, his Home for Fallen Buildings, see this excellent new publication Portmeirion: The Architecture of Pleasure by Sarah Baylis.

Thank you for reading. Comments are always welcome. You can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page.

In the last years of the eighteenth century, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury, commissioned James Wyatt to carry out repairs to Salisbury Cathedral. In an act that would be described as ‘outrageous’ by later generations, Wyatt removed an ancient porch. The Dean and Chapter, recognising that prominent citizen Henry Penruddocke Wyndham knew how to ‘appreciate such curious monuments of antiquity’, presented him with the ‘elegant remnant’ which he re-erected as a feature in his garden.

The porch is said to have started life as part of a cross in Old Sarum, and was reused as the north porch when the present cathedral was constructed in New Sarum, or Salisbury, in around 1250. According to local histories, the ‘miserably truncated’ cross was covered with a flat roof of lead and functioned as a porch for five centuries until Shute Barrington’s renovations in the late eighteenth century.

As the title photograph shows, the garden ornament is looking a little battered in its old age, but happily an enchanting array of images record its appearance when first moved to its new home.

Wyndham’s family home was St Edmund’s College, a former ecclesiastical building later converted into a private residence. The garden had been laid out to an undated plan by the landscape designer Richard Woods (1715-1793). Woods had suggested that a summerhouse might be placed in a corner of the garden, with a view to the house and church, so Wyndham (1736-1819) knew the perfect spot for the summerhouse and eye-catcher he created by embellishing the ancient cross.

It was Wyatt himself who oversaw the taking down of the porch and its re-erecting in Wyndham’s garden. The porch was dismantled in May 1791 and carted to Wyndham’s grounds. During the summer Wyatt’s masons carved 2 pinnacles (the others were presumably salvaged from the cathedral works) and cut stone to make the spire, with work complete by September when Wyatt submitted his bill for £33.7.6.

A Latin inscription on a sheet of lead was placed over the east arch inside the building. It is long gone, but it is known to have recorded that the porch was rebuilt in Wyndham’s garden in 1791, having formerly stood in Old Sarum and then at Salisbury Cathedral.

Wyndham’s house and grounds were sold in the late nineteenth century, with much of the land being developed for housing. The house and ten acres of garden were purchased by the Reverend George Hugh Bourne, who lived there until his death in 1925.

In 1927, on the 700th anniversary of Salisbury receiving its charter, the house and grounds on Bourne Hill were purchased by the city to create new municipal offices. The park was opened to the public and the porch, by now shaded by trees, became known to some locally as the Devil’s Arch.

Earlier this year work was carried out to restore the porch (grade II). Rusting iron clamps were removed, and old cement repairs were replaced with lime mortar. Note that although local histories date the porch to the days of Old Sarum, the information boards in Bourne Hill Gardens call it the ’15th Century Porch’.

This remarkable survival deserves to be better known, so do visit if you are in the area. Bourne Hill Gardens (grade II) are always open. Bourne Hill continues to house offices of Wiltshire County Council. St Edmund’s Church is now an arts centre.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page and the Flâneuse is always delighted to receive further information or hear your thoughts on follies. If you would like a folly story in your inbox each week please visit the subscribe page.

The Flâneuse recently puzzled over this black and white photograph of a tall archway that is annotated ‘Breedon-on-the-Hill’. Internet searches using every combination of the village name with ‘arch’, ‘gate’ and ‘folly’, and as many other ideas as the Flâneuse could come up with, drew a complete blank. But driving into the village there it was, just to our right, and unchanged since the older photograph was taken.

A little way further along the wall from the gateway three letters are created from a patchwork of stone blocks near the entrance to a busy quarry. They abbreviate the former name of the works, the Breedon and Cloud Hill Lime Works Company: Breedon has been the site of quarrying and lime extraction since the eighteenth-century.

Aerial photographs of the quarry, taken in the middle of the twentieth century, show the gateway standing in what appears to be a bare plot, but it is still not immediately clear what purpose the arch serves.

Happily the excellent Breedon-on-the-Hill parish website has links to two volumes of pictorial history which explain that the ‘gateway’ was the centrepiece of a rockery, one of a number built by the owner of the quarry to beautify the village. By the late 1950s the village had become known for these rockery gardens of ‘artistic stonework’ which were planted with flowers and full of ‘vital colour’. According to the history, much of the rockwork was created freehand by Lawrence Wakefield, although the archway is not specifically attributed to him.

For much of the twentieth century the quarry was owned and/or managed by the Shields family. In 1959 Captain C.F. Shields, Managing Director of the works, told a reporter from the Leicester Evening Mail that providing good houses for workers, and ornamenting the village, was ‘making a return’ for ‘despoiling the rock that gives the village its name and character’. And of course the stonework was a great advertisement for the company’s products which included ‘rockery and grotto stone’.

Through the archway, which stands on the village’s Main Street, are steps leading up to the quarry offices, although sadly they now terminate in a ‘keep out’ sign.

If visiting Breedon-on-the-Hill don’t miss the village’s other attractions which include an eighteenth century lockup and the very pleasing War Memorial to those lost in the First and Second World Wars.

Take time to explore the church of St Mary and St Hardulph, which stands high above the village close to the quarry face (it is just out of shot in the aerial photo’ – it stands on the plateau above the quarry face on the right). As well as important Anglo-Saxon sculpture there are also fine tombs, including a vast monument to Sir George Shirley and his family, dated 1598, which features this intricate life-size memento mori.

Thank you for reading and do please get in touch if you know more about the arch, or would like to share any thoughts. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

P.S. A well-known landscape ornament has been in the news this week and deserves a mention. Beckford’s Tower, near Bath, won the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in a Landscape at the Georgian Group Architectural Awards 2025. Congratulations to all the team at the Bath Preservation Trust

This fine brick arch is one of the few surviving eighteenth century features of the designed landscape of Gobions in Hertfordshire. The mansion is long gone, and much of the park has been developed for housing and a golf course, but the arch still stands – although it has come very close to collapse.

The exact early history of the arch is not known, but it is generally accepted to have been built for Jeremy Sambrooke (died 1754), who bought the estate in the first decade of the eighteenth century. It is attributed to the architect James Gibbs, who is known to have designed garden buildings for Gobions (also often referred to as Gubbins), but to date no documentary evidence has been found.

The arch straddled an entrance which led to a tree-lined drive down into the park, laid out to a design attributed to Charles Bridgeman, although Sambrooke himself probably made a significant contribution. By 1726 visitors could admire woods cut through with walks and ornamented with canals, statues and an ampitheatre.

Although a number of contemporary accounts describe the fine park in some detail, the arch is not mentioned and hence it remains something of a mystery, although it is clearly shown on a map thought to have been drawn before Bridgeman’s death in 1738 (above).

John Hunter, a wealthy merchant, bought the Gobions estate in 1777. It seems that he removed the formal gardens admired by earlier generations and naturalised the park, his principal interests being ’tillage and grazing’. Early editions of Ambulator: or, A pocket companion in a tour around London, describe the delightful formal pleasure grounds, but by the time the 6th edition appeared in 1793, Gobions was described as ‘once famous for its fine gardens in the ancient taste’. Happily, the arch survived under the new owner.

In 1786 the Brookmans estate, which stood adjacent to Gobions, was bought by Samuel Robert Gaussen. His descendant Robert William Gaussen added the Gobions estate to his land holdings after John Hunter’s death in 1827, and in 1842 the Gobions mansion was dismantled and sold for the materials after Gaussen decided to ‘throw Brookmans and Gobions parks into one’. By this date the tithe map shows that the arch was known as the ‘folly’ and the open meadows beyond as ‘Folly Park’.

A fire in 1891 destroyed the Brookmans house, and the Gaussens created a new home in the stable block. In 1911 the estate, now known as Brookmans Park, was home to Hubert Gaussen, and he gave permission for the Herts County Open Speed trials to take place in his grounds. This wonderful photograph captures Jack Holroyd, on his Motosacoche motorcycle (described in 1911 as ‘The Motorcycle that is Booming’), setting off over the starting line. Although Holroyd was not the fastest on the day, he did go on to have great success, and later manufactured his own models as well as running a motorcycle shop on Regent Street, London.

The Gaussen family offered the estate at auction in 1923 and it was bought by developers to create the ‘Brookmans Park Estate’ in the ‘gently undulating and well-wooded country on the borders of Middlesex and Hertfordshire’. The rural setting was always emphasised in advertisements, and a 1929 sales pitch made the rash promise that the ‘Home Farm will always supply Grade A milk, real new-laid eggs, and fresh butter to residents’ (today a trip to Sainsbury’s at Potters Bar is required). The Brookmans Park railway station opened in 1926, and a golf course in the former parkland in 1930. Meanwhile ‘Country Homes 35 Minutes from Town’ were snapped up by buyers keen to live in bucolic Brookmans Park, for as the sales brochure noted ‘under the strenuous conditions of modern city life, country surroundings are becoming not so much a luxury as a necessity’.

Happily the arch and its lodge were left in peace on the edge of the estate, although the lodge had fallen into disrepair. In the early 1990s the lodge, complete with folly arch, was offered for sale: although the Gobions Woodland Trust, already custodian of parts of the park, was keen to buy the arch, it went instead to a private buyer who built a new house to replace the derelict lodge.

Meanwhile the grade II* listed arch, patched up on a number of occasions over the centuries, had fallen into a very poor condition, with a huge crack above the arch, and the North Mymms Greenbelt Society appealed to English Heritage to take action and save the folly from collapse. The arch was propped up whilst discussions continued between English Heritage, the private owner of the lodge and arch, and local amenity societies. It took four years to resolve the situation and for work to begin. The restoration was completed in 2023.

The arch remains in private ownership, but can easily be seen at the junction of Swanley Bar Lane and Hawkshead Road: the pretty old sign in the postcard above has gone, but you can’t miss the mailbox at the lodge.

You can also walk in the former parkland (listed grade II) and enjoy views back to the arch. The woodland is now managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.

For lots more on Brookmans Park see the excellent North Mymms History Project website. You can read more about the nabob John Hunter here.

The Flâneuse must conclude with the story that a farthing was placed between each pair of bricks when the arch was constructed. No evidence of this extravagance has yet been found.

Thank you for reading. As ever, you are encouraged to scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts.

In 1941 Batsford published a new title by Edmund Vale called Curiosities of Town and Countryside. With a striking cover by Brian Cook, featuring the triumphal arch at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, the jacket blurb promised the reader ‘freaks, eccentricities and follies.’

The Flâneuse recently ordered a copy online and whilst waiting for the postman to arrive began to do some background research. She was baffled to find the reviewer in the Hampstead News writing that amongst the buildings featured in the volume were ‘monstrosities like Lansdown Tower, Bath, and the Sugarloaf Folly, Sussex’. William Beckford and ‘Mad’ Jack Fuller may have built structures that weren’t to everyone’s taste, but ‘monstrosities’ seemed a little harsh.

And then the book was delivered, and all became clear. As he states in the book’s preface, Mr Vale (1888-1969) excludes follies from his study of curiosities for the simple reason that he has ‘always cherished a profound and contemptuous dislike for these monstrosities’. His publisher, Harry Batsford, is adamant that follies should be included in the book, but Vale is resolute that he won’t write about them, and continues that follies are ‘interlopers’ as they are ‘decidely eccentric and not accidentally so’.

‘However I must not rant’ Vale writes (rather too late in the Flâneuse’s opinion) and he introduces Mr Charles Bradley Ford who has come to the rescue by writing a final chapter on follies, and thus allowing Vale to maintain his moral high ground. However this is all a little tongue-in-cheek, for ‘Charles Bradley Ford’ was the pen-name of Harry Batsford and his colleague Christopher Fry: when the company was hit by the financial crisis of the early 1930s, it was cheaper to write the books themselves using a pseudonym.

The publishers also had the last word on illustrations, so many ‘monstrosities’ can be found pictured in the book, including those featured here, although to add to the confusion some of the photographs are of structures that are not even mentioned in the text. And of course the dust jacket features a famous landscape ornament.

‘Ford’ begins his chapter with the obligatory note on the difficulty of defining a folly. He continues that the subject of follies is an ‘amusing and engaging byway’, but with a nod to Vale he continues that to some they are ‘detestable and deplorable excrescences’. Ford believes that follies ‘add to the gaiety of the countryside’, although he draws the line at obelisks which are ‘dull and commonplace in spite of the efforts of lightening to reduce their number’.

The Illustrated London News called the book ‘delectable’ and it is certainly a handsome volume. The argument for and against follies it contains is decidedly odd, but most entertaining: an excellent addition to any folly fan’s library.

The Flâneuse first spotted the striking dust jacket in a new Batsford publication – The Book Cover by Paul Dimond. The book explores 150 years of the vibrant covers designed for Batsford publications.

All of the follies pictured here are extant, and all can be visited or seen from a public road.

Thank you for reading. There will be more monstrosities next week. Scroll down to the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts.

In the Victorian age, many churches were rebuilt or renovated in the very latest taste. One of these was St Augustine’s at Hedon, east of Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Here, the architect G.E. Street oversaw the work, part of which included the replacement of the window in the south transept. But the ancient traceried window removed during the works was to get a second and even a third life elsewhere…

The history of the window was far from transparent, but guest blogger the Garden Historian has gone to great pains to establish the facts and enlighten readers.

The story starts with William Thomas White (1822–1888), who, by 1857, was managing the family firm of fruit brokers in Hull (founded by his father in 1837) and had moved into a property in Hedon (pronounced head-on) that would later become Lambert House, so-called after his late mother’s maiden name. 

At some point White developed an interest for things antiquarian. When the historic Citadel at Hull went out of use and was subsequently demolished, many of the ‘Very Valuable Materials’ were sold at auction from January 1863. One of these was an entrance arch from the time of Charles II (the keystone has his cypher), which White acquired.

White was active in local and parochial concerns, and in 1866 a scheme was set in motion to restore the town’s only remaining medieval church. The initial phase of work, which involved fitting a new window in the south transept, took place between 1867 and 1869 and the old window made its way to White, no doubt helped by the fact that he was active on the church’s Restoration Committee.

By 1874, both the arch and the window had been re-erected in the garden of Lambert House, as noted by The Hull Packet and East Riding Times which reported on the parish church school festival that summer:

‘The procession wended its way to the beautiful grounds of Lambert House, and passing through the ruined arches into the croquet lawn, the children were seated on the raised terrace which surrounds it’.

Croquet hoops aside, other embellishments were added in the grounds, some from uncertain sources but all in keeping with White’s antiquarian leaning. When he enlarged the house, various stones and smaller architectural fragments that he had collected were incorporated into a room, ‘The Dungeon’, which remains today. 

Lambert House descended through the family until it was sold in 1931, but by that date the garden features had been removed by one of White’s grandsons, Joseph Dalton White (1881-1974). He had purchased Lea Hall, near Hatfield Heath in Essex, and it was there that he re-erected the two ‘arches’, plus another piece of salvage that may have come from Hedon (all listed Grade II).

And there they remain. When visited in 2023, Lea Hall looked like a building site, probably because that’s exactly what it was due to major restoration and renovation work taking place.

The grounds and its features are part of the Lea Hall refurbishment plan, and so are likely to delight and cause curiosity for many years to come.

Other salvaged windows have likewise become features in gardens across the country, and it has to be said that the town of Hedon has more than its fair share of architectural remnants used in such a way… but these are stories for another day.

Lambert House is now a guest house and function venue, but is usually open for Heritage Open Days in September.

Thanks to the Garden Historian, aka Dr Michael Cousins, for researching these garden ornaments and giving the Flâneuse a week off. And thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts.

Dromana House in County Waterford enjoys wonderful views over the mighty Blackwater river, but the approach to the house crosses a tributary, the Finnisk, and there’s a surprise for anyone visiting for the first time. The road curves, and suddenly there is the most perfect of scenes: a tranquil river crossed by a bridge leading to a lodge built in a magnificent melange of the gothic and the oriental.

The bridge was originally a wooden structure, with a central drawbridge allowing boats to pass in the days when the river was navigable. Old postcards show that the bridge originally had ogee-arched railings to match the lodge, but even by 1928 the bridge was becoming worn ‘under the strain of heavy traffic’, and strengthening and safety works in the later twentieth century saw the wooden bridge and railings replaced with concrete and steel.

In the early nineteenth century Dromana was the seat of Henry Villiers Stuart (1803-1874), created 1st Baron de Decies in 1839. The tale is told that a papier-mâché arch was erected, where the lodge stands today, to welcome Stuart when he returned to Dromana with his new bride in 1826. The arch was said to have been fashioned in an indo-gothic style to help the happy couple remember their honeymoon in Brighton, where they would have seen George IV’s Royal Pavilion. Stuart and his wife were apparently so taken with the design that they decided to recreate it in a more substantial fashion.

No records can be found to corroborate this story (although such ephemeral celebratory arches were certainly in vogue in this period). In fact, the whole story of Villiers Stuart’s marriage is rather mysterious. He is said to have married Theresia Pauline Ott (c.1802-1867), a Viennese-born widow, in a Catholic ceremony in London in 1826, and a son, Henry, was born in 1827. In 1839 the marriage was solemnised in Christ Church, Marylebone, when the curate noted in the register that the couple had been ‘heretofore married in the city of Dublin according to the Ritual Ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church’, but crucially no date is given. No records of an 1826 marriage could be found after Lord de Decie’s death in 1874, making his son illegitimate, and therefore unable to inherit the title. This was a ’cause celebre‘ of the day, and the ‘exceptionally interesting peerage case’, filled the courtroom and the newspapers for some weeks in 1876.

Surprisingly few accounts of the lovely lodge can be found, but we do know it was extant by 1835 when a Scottish tourist, Robert Graham, saw a ‘remarkable bridge’ with a building with a ‘pear-shaped cupola’ at the end of it.* The ‘costly fanciful structure’ was noted by another writer in 1844, and in 1848 John Bernard Burke (of ‘Peerage’ fame) described it as ‘singularly fanciful and striking’ and ‘looking like some romantic scene in the Arabian Nights’.

The architect is thought to be Martin Day (?1797-?1860), who is known to have worked at Dromana in the correct period. Surviving drawings of the lodge by Day are dated 1849, suggesting that it was perhaps remodelled or renovated at that date. The inspiration behind the lodge remains a mystery – is the Brighton honeymoon story true (probably not – the court case suggests they went straight to Scotland after the wedding)? Had Villiers Stuart or his architect seen Oriental Scenery, the volumes of views of India produced by the Daniell brothers in 1795-1807 (above)? Were they aware of Sezincote, the Mughal palace in the Cotswolds built by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, with the assistance of Thomas Daniell, for his brother Charles in the first years of the nineteenth century? Wherever the idea came from, we should be grateful it did, and that this joyful structure survives today.

The Irish Georgian Society restored the decrepit lodge in 1968, and further repairs were made in the 1990s, but the lodge is once again in need of some care. In 2023 the IGS gave a grant to support the preparation of a building report to investigate how to ‘reinstate this structure to its former glory’.

The bridge and lodge are freely accessible. The house at Dromana was reduced to a more manageable size in the twentieth century and remains the home of the Villiers Stuart family. You can read more about the history and visiting here https://dromanahouse.com

That’s the last folly (for now, at least) from the Flâneuse’s recent Irish jaunt. If all goes to plan next week’s post will go off at a tasty tangent. Thank you for reading, and as ever you can share thoughts and comments at the foot of the page.

*This information is from J.A.K. Dean’s impressive gazetteer of the gate lodges of Ireland, and in particular the volume for the province of Munster.

In 1972 Mariga Guinness, or Mrs Desmond Guinness as she was known in more formal times, wrote an article on follies for Ireland of the Welcomes, a publication produced by the Irish Tourist Board to promote Ireland as a holiday destination. Launched in 1952, it is still published today and describes itself as ‘the largest and longest-running Irish interest magazine in the world’. Hermione Maria-Gabrielle von Urach (1932-1989), known as Mariga, married Desmond Guinness in 1954 and they moved to Ireland the following year. Mrs Guinness loved Ireland, and threw herself into preserving the architectural heritage – she and her husband co-founded the Irish Georgian Society in 1958. The couple first rented the Georgian mansion Carton House, and later bought Leixlip Castle, both home to garden ornaments, so Mrs Guinness was well-placed to write in praise of follies.

Accompanying the text is a delicious map which was drawn by Jan de Fouw (1929-2015), a Dutch-born graphic designer and illustrator who settled in Ireland in 1951. From 1952 to 1996 he was the freelance designer of Ireland of the Welcomes. As well as featuring in the magazine the map was published as a stand-alone guide to Irish follies, complete with a county-by-county list of what to see. Mrs Guinness didn’t give exact locations believing, as the Flâneuse does, that ‘Folly-hunting must be regarded as an exploratory adventure’.

Mrs Guinness opens her article with the assertion that ‘there are more follies to the acre in Ireland than anywhere else in the world’. The Flâneuse doubts that anyone has ever tried to prove or disprove this bold claim, but there is no denying that Ireland has both quantity and quality. Mrs Guinness thought that ‘folly-hunting appears to be a totally neglected facet of Irish travel’ and as Ireland of the Welcomes was mainly aimed at the U.S. market, one hopes that American tourists took up her challenge to explore Ireland’s arbours, grottoes, towers and shell-houses.

The first folly Mrs Guinness mentions in her text is the Conolly Folly in County Kildare. This unique structure was built by Katherine Conolly (1662-1752, born Conyngham) in 1740 to terminate a vista, and to provide work and food for the local population in a time of need.

It is attributed to the architect Richard Castle (d.1751) and stood on high ground in the Castletown demesne – or rather it stood near the Castletown estate. Apparently Mrs Conolly (widow of William, reputedly the richest commoner in Ireland) discovered too late that she didn’t own the plot on which the obelisk was built: it was just over the Castletown demesne boundary, and was actually on Carton estate land. Marked on a mid-eighteenth century map as ‘Obelisk’, it soon became known as the Conolly Folly or Conolly’s Folly.

Carton was Mariga Guinness’s first Irish home, and although she moved to other properties it would become her last: she was buried beneath the folly in 1989. Her memory lives on in the many properties and follies she actively campaigned to save, and in the ongoing work of the Irish Georgian Society. And 52 years after it was first published, her article recently guided the Folly Flâneuse on a fabulous flit around some of the follies of Ireland (watch this space).

The Conolly Folly is now a national monument in the care of the state. It was among the first buildings to be restored by the Irish Georgian Society in 1962, and was adopted as their logo. There is public access, but unlike the contented visitors in the early photograph above, you will not be able to get up close: ugly security fencing protects the monument from vandals.

The view to the Conolly Folly is now obstructed by mature trees, but the tip of the obelisk can be seen peeking above the verdure from some distance.

For a wonderful tribute to Mariga Guinness see https://theirishaesthete.com/2014/05/05/marvellous-mariga/

There’s more on Ireland of the Welcomes here https://irelandofthewelcomes.com

Regular readers might remember that the Flâneuse is a huge fan of artist Ed Kluz. If you are anywhere near Bath before the 22nd of June go and see his new sculptural pieces at Berdoulat at 8 St Margaret’s Buildings in the city centre. Here’s a taste of what you might see, and more works can be seen at https://www.edkluz.co.uk

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Eighty years ago this month Sir Osbert Sitwell and his good friend Rex Whistler were discussing how materials such as papier-mâché, much used in theatrical set construction, could be used in the ‘arts of landscaping and garden design’. Once the war was over they planned to erect a dramatic eye-catcher at Sir Osbert’s Renishaw home. But two months after their meeting came tragic news: in July 1944 Whistler was killed in action in France.

Having designed sets for drama, ballet and opera, Whistler (1905-1944) had become fascinated by the use of ‘papier-mâché and other kindred substances’ by set builders, and thought they had developed to a point where they would be durable enough to survive outside for around 50 years. He planned ‘great constructions of all kinds’ including colonnades, aqueducts, clusters of towers, gigantic statues, artificial hills and ‘panoramic visions of vast cities’. These were all ideas which he had explored in two dimensions in his art, and in particular his great murals for the Tate Gallery and Plas Newydd.

At Renishaw the men planned to test Whistler’s idea by erecting a ‘vast colonnade’ at the bottom of the garden, framing views over the lake. Sir Osbert (1892-1969) recalled that his father, Sir George Sitwell, had planned something similar in ‘bricks and rubble’, but it had never come to fruition.

As Sir Osbert believed that Whistler, a ‘wonderful and extraordinary being’, had been the only man who could ‘comprehend or undertake’ such a work, this pioneering scheme for Renishaw was abandoned after his death. As Whistler’s brother Laurence later wrote, this plan for a grand garden arcade would have been ‘magnificent in form and flimsy in magnificence: the folly of follies.’

Even if Whistler and Sir Osbert’s plan for Renishaw had been implemented, they believed it unlikely to have a long life. Sir Osbert calculated that the colonnade would have ‘dissolved’ by the end of the 20th century (if not already swept away by the successive generation).

But perhaps they had underestimated the material. Papier-mâché had been used for internal and external ornaments in the 18th century, and there were a number of manufactories in London.

The Temple of Bacchus at Painshill, in Surrey, had ornament within the pediment that was crafted in papier-mâché. It was put up in the early 1760s and, as the photo’ below shows, it was still intact, if a little decrepit, in the 1940s. Papier-mâché was also used in the construction of Painshill’s Turkish Tent. Although the Duffour family business, whose trade card is featured above, was employed at Painshill in 1752-4, no documents have been discovered to link them to the garden buildings.

By the middle of the 20th century the columns that supported the pediment of the Temple of Bacchus had been reused at the house, and the temple was shortly to collapse into total ruin. The Painshill Park Trust commissioned a new temple on the footprint of the old, and the exterior work was completed in 2019.

Whilst not quite the ‘vast city’ of Whistler’s imagination, there was once an entire papier-mâché village. It was created in 1835 by the papier-mâché specialist Charles Frederick Bielefeld for his client, Mr Seymour, who was about to start a new life in Australia. The village consisted of 10 houses which included a villa with an elaborate papier-mâché mantelpiece supported by caryatids. An early exercise in pre-fabrication, or flat-pack, the village was easy to transport and erect, and was tested at Bielefeld’s Staines manufactory. The Illustrated London News reported that during this period the site flooded, but despite being ‘nearly two feet under water’ the buildings were not damaged.

Although the Illustrated London News story was picked up by the Australian press, no further reports have been found, so sadly it is not known if the village ever reached the other side of the world.

As ever, the Flâneuse digresses…. so back to Renishaw. There may not be any papier-mâché scenery, but the estate has plenty of other attractions, including the house itself and two early 19th century garden ornaments, all the work of Sir Sitwell Sitwell (1769-1811). On a lawn near the house stands the Gothic Temple, once a glazed conservatory, and later an aviary, but now a pretty shell filled with the graves of family pets.

Loveliest of all is the Gothic Lodge, built in c.1807 to a design by Sir Sitwell himself. The lodge is now a shell, but sometime in the nineteenth century the central arch was filled to create a dwelling (the drive through the arch had by then been rerouted). In 1938 it was declared ‘unfit for habitation’ and the central room must have been demolished soon after. The lodge then took on its new role as a garden ornament, and what Barbara Jones called a ‘very pretty borderline folly’.

The gardens are open regularly. There is a weekly house tour when the many views of Renishaw by another artist friend of the family, John Piper, can be seen in the eclectic Sitwell collection. There are also fascinating displays in the Sitwell Museum in the stable block.

For more on visiting Renishaw see https://renishaw-hall.co.uk

Thanks to Christine Beevers, Renishaw’s archivist, for her help with this post, and to Michael Symes and Cherrill Sands for information on papier-mâché at Painshill.

And finally… many readers clicked on the link in last week’s post to see Portmeirion from the air with commentary by John Betjeman. There is to be a celebration of John Betjeman and his work on the 40th Anniversary of his death, Sunday May 19th, with a whole evening of films on BBC4. The rarity is The Last Laugh, the biography shown only once, in 2001. The full schedule is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/schedules/p00fzl6b/2024/05/19

In 1934 a local paper published a ‘Cleveland Ramble’ featuring a walk around Kirkleatham village. The author looked across the park to the ‘elaborate castellated pigeon-cote’ which was described as a ‘startling example’ of the extravagant ‘pseudo Gothic craze’ of the later 18th century. Only a couple of decades after this account was published the castellations were gone, and the pigeon cote was cracked and crumbling, and soon to disappear.

In 1808 Kirkleatham was praised for both its ‘various natural beauties’ and the ‘many decorations art has furnished it with’. The pigeon cote was one of the most striking of these ornaments, with a circular central tower and linking walls radiating out to three smaller turrets. Sadly no images of the folly before it began its decline have been found, but the Ordnance Survey maps illustrate the unusual plan.

The building’s early history seems to be lost, and although a document in the family archive cross-references an account book for work on the estate, that ledger does not seem to survive. The pigeon cote was most likely commissioned by Charles Turner (1726-1783), who lived at Kirkleatham after his father inherited the estate in 1757. No architect is named, although John Carr of York, who remodelled the house at Kirkleatham in the 1760s, is a possible contender. We do have a terminus post quem for the pigeon cote of around 1775, as it is not shown on an estate map of 1774.

The Kirkleatham estate passed through various families until the middle of the 20th century. The contents were then dispersed and, after attempts to find a use failed, the fabric of Kirkleatham Hall was auctioned as building materials in 1954.

Although promises were made to protect the historic structures on the estate, the pigeon cote and temple, admired by the 1934 rambler as an ‘exquisite little pavilion’, survived for less than a decade before they too were pulled down. The arable field surrounding the pigeon cote now covers the site of the building, with not a trace remaining above ground.

Happily there are still many reasons to visit Kirkleatham. The Free School of 1709 houses the Kirkleatham Museum, and the almshouses called Turner’s Hospital and the church with its adjoining Turner Mausoleum are both fascinating structures (there’s limited public access to the interiors, but they can be admired from the footpath).

The walled garden has been restored and continues to develop, and a wander around the village reveals the elegant stables and a number of other fascinating structures – look out for information boards and maps around the village. Here’s a taster…

Thanks to David Winpenny for introducing me to the archive of Peter Burton’s photographs. Burton (1927-2014) took many of the images which illustrated the Shell Guides that were produced in the mid-20th century. Burton was commissioned to write the North Yorkshire volume by the editorial team of John Piper and John Betjeman, but the project was cancelled before he could complete his research. He eventually published his material as North Yorkshire: a Guide in 2006. Thanks also to Burton’s friend and fellow photographer Harland Walshaw for permission to use images from the collection.

For the Kirkleatham Walled Garden https://kirkleathamwalledgarden.co.uk

And for more on the Kirkleatham Museum https://redcarcleveland.co.uk/enjoy/kirkleatham-museum/

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