Towards the northern end of the lengthy village street of Long Melford, in Suffolk, stands Melford Hall. In a corner of the garden, overlooking the road and the green opposite, stands a rutilant brick summerhouse. Once furnished with a table and chairs, the little building must have hosted the most elegant intimate parties.

The summerhouse was extant by the early years of the seventeenth century, and is shown on a map of Melford Hall dated 1613. It epitomises the kind of structure that John Worlidge, writing later in the same century, advised was an essential feature on a gentleman’s estate. In his Systema Horticulture of 1677 Worlidge wrote that a ‘small Edifice, usually term’d a Pleasure-house or Banquetting-house, may be made at some remote Angle of your Gardens’. The more remote the better, thought Worlidge, for the further from the mansion one went ‘the more private you will be from the frequent disturbances of your Family and Acquaintance’.

The summerhouse was modernised in the Georgian era by the splendidly named Sir Cordell Firebrace. He replaced the windows and panelled the interior. In 1873, the then owner of the estate, Sir William Parker, called the building the bowling-house, and noted that it stood alongside a bowling-green. At that date the interior was painted in white and gold and, according to Sir William, looked a little shabby.

Many generations will have retreated to this idyllic corner of the garden with the latest novel or newspaper, or perhaps a sketchbook, and no doubt liveried servants brought coffee and cake. Please excuse the Flâneuse for one moment as she drifts off into a reverie of a morning spent in such a manner…

Someone who was lucky enough to spend time at the summerhouse was author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. Potter often visited her cousin Ethel at the hall in the early years of the twentieth century, and her drawing of the then ivy-clad ‘Octagon’ is now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Visitors to the exhibition Feast and Fast: the Art of Food in Europe 1500-1800 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2019-20 saw the summerhouse reimagined in a new medium. Food historian and confectioner Ivan Day made the building the centrepiece of a sugar landscape in the style of those which would have graced a wedding banquet in c.1610.

Today, everyone can enjoy the building as Melford Hall is a National Trust property. As well as the summerhouse (grade II*) and hall, there are new walks out into the parkland. You can read more here.

A largely pictorial post this week as the Flâneuse is away from home rambling and researching, so thanks for viewing. Your thoughts and comments are welcome, please scroll down to the bottom of the page to get in touch.

On a promontory overlooking the harbour at Boscastle stands a squat white building bedecked with flags and antennas. It started life in the middle of the 18th century when it was erected as a summerhouse and eye-catcher by Cotton Amy, whose Botreaux Castle estate included the harbour and lands around it. In 1821 the land was purchased by Thomas Rickard Avery, a local merchant and, depending on who you believe, a ‘notorious wrecker’.

In 1764 a passing tourist noted the ‘summerhouse’ that Mr Amy had built as a ‘landmark’, but we know little more about its early history other than that it was named as ‘Pleasure House’ on the 1813 1st series Ordnance Survey map. The harbour it overlooks was originally known as Botreaux Castle Quay, but Botreaux Castle was soon shortened to Boscastle, as the village is known today.

The summerhouse’s story becomes more lively after its purchase by Avery (1785-1858). He was a Cornish boy and a major employer in the area — on his death in 1858 it was said that a ‘great number of people’ would lose their income as ‘Mr Avery carried on an extensive business’. Avery was also a Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall, a Magistrate and a Land Tax Commissioner, as well as chairing local business forums.

But this pillar of the community was alleged to have a much darker side: his Summer House (as it was named on the 1842 tithe map) was apparently a base for smuggling, gambling, drinking and womanising, and Avery was said to spend the evenings walking the cliffs looking for wrecks.

Although much of this history was recorded long after Avery’s death, there is a contemporary account. Avery died on 20 December 1858 and Reverend Stephen Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstow, recorded in his diary a few days later that there were violent storms in the days following Avery’s death, and the locals associated this phenomena with the death of the ‘notorious wrecker’. It should be said that Avery was not accused of deliberately luring ships onto the rocks, rather his ‘crime’ was to profit from being first on the scene to salvage the wrecked ships.

In Avery’s defence, in 1843 the former Master of the barque ‘Sedulous’ wrote to the local paper to thank the coast-guard stations at Bude and Boscastle for coming to the rescue of his stricken ship. He was ‘particularly indebted’ to Mr Avery for his ‘able superintendence’ of the situation. So was Avery the model citizen, or did he have his eye on the prize? We shall probably never know the whole story, but many years after Avery’s death the little tower played its part in avoiding further wrecks when the coastguard began to use the tower as a lookout.

This use continued until the 1970s, and the tower then stood empty until 2002 when the volunteer National Coastwatch Institution moved in. Read more about their excellent work here

The Boscastle Estate was sold by Avery’s heir in the 1880s, and in 1956 Boscastle Harbour and 146 acres of land, including the summerhouse, passed into the care of the National Trust

There are clifftop walks to the Lookout from the lovely little harbour at Boscastle.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share any information or thoughts please go to the comments box at the foot of the page.

Bolton Hall in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, was the seat of the Dukes of Bolton. The 3rd Duke’s mistress (and later wife) was the acclaimed actress and singer Lavinia Fenton, best known for creating the role of Polly Peachum in the premiere of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. In the 19th century writers told the romantic tale that this tower was built as a summerhouse retreat for the Duchess, but it actually began life years earlier as a hunting stand.

An estate map of 1723 shows a square enclosure, either walled or paled, in which stands a tower with a domed roof, suggesting that the tower was extant in the lifetime of the 2nd Duke (1661-1722). The map gives very little detail but only a few years later the engraver, print publisher and antiquarian Samuel Buck (1696-1779) produced a ‘Perspective View of the Hall and Castle of Bolton, &c’. Bolton Castle was the former family seat and stands a few miles north west of Bolton Hall.

His working sketches and finished pen and ink drawing (dated 1727) survive in the Gough Collection at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. They show that the upper floor of the tower was accessed by an external staircase, and that the tower was surmounted by a large statue of a figure blowing a horn – which would seem to confirm that the tower was a hunting stand to view the chase. The finished engraving shows a herd of deer on the move through the park.

The tower is named on Buck’s finished drawing as ‘Mount House’, although an estate map of 1737 showing the footprint of the tower has the altogether simpler annotation of ‘Lodg’. An exact date for the tower has not been found, but as previously noted it is probably the work of the 2nd Duke of Bolton, who ‘greatly improved’ the house and grounds before 1718. The tower would have been used as viewing platform for spectators enjoying the chase in the park below, and as a banqueting house for refreshments.

As John Byng, later Viscount Torrington noted, by 1792 the Bolton Hall estate was ‘in wild neglect and disorder’, and a letter in the family archive dated 1793 confirms that the ‘Temple in the Park’ was by then ‘dilapidated’. In that same year John Anderson of nearby Swinithwaite wrote that the temple should be saved as it was ‘an ornament to the Dale’, but he was a particular fan of eye-catchers, having built his own in 1792 (link below).

In 1798 the cupola of the Mount Tower collapsed in strong winds, and the lead was removed before it could be pilfered. The architect John Foss (the designer of Anderson’s tower) proposed adding ‘little turrets’ to the corners to retain its role as an eye-catcher in the park, but there’s no evidence that this was ever done, and the tower seems to have been abandoned and allowed to slip into romantic ruination.

Only one reference to Lavinia Fenton having ever having set foot in Wensleydale has been found. In 1792 John Byng was given a tour of Bolton Hall and shown the bed in which ‘Polly’ had ‘always modestly slept alone’. It is impossible now to know if this story is true, or if the aged retainer was embellishing the story in the hope of a generous tip.

The idea that the tower was a favoured retreat of the Duchess seems to have first appeared in print in the middle of the nineteenth century when W.G.M. Jones Barker published The Three Days of Wensleydale or Valley of the Yore. In 1854 the book erroneously claimed that the summerhouse was ‘built so as to resemble a ruined tower’ and that it was erected ‘for the accommodation of the famous Lavinia Fenton’ (Lavinia by then would have been Duchess of Bolton, having married the duke in 1751 after the death of his first wife). Ten years later the tale was further embellished when it was said that ‘village tradition asserts that when the lady warbled here, the Duke used to listen to the strains at Bolton Hall’. In 1925 Edmund Bogg, in his Beautiful Wensleydale, romanticised the history still further: ‘in the tranquil charm of summer evening twilight she would give out her voice in beautiful melody, which was eagerly listened to by the dalespeople’.

The ruined lodge continues to enjoy a wonderful panorama of Wensleydale, taking in the family seats of Bolton Castle and Bolton Hall (rebuilt after a fire in 1902).

Bolton Hall is home to Thomas, 9th Lord Bolton and his family. There is no public access to the hall or the grade II listed tower, but you can appreciate the view the tower enjoys from nearby roads and from a public footpath that runs above it. Bolton Castle, the former family home, can be visited.

Access to the path above the tower was restricted when the Flâneuse visited – these lovelies lolloped over to say hello, and they were just a little too lively to tempt her to walk through the field.

Read more about the Temple at Swinithwaite here. For more on Bolton Castle click this link.

Thanks to Val Helpworth of the Yorkshire Gardens Trust for sharing extracts from the family correspondence. Her research into the history of the Bolton Hall gardens and pleasure grounds can be read here. 

And many thanks to the Garden Historian who alerted the Flâneuse to the Buck sketches in the Bodleian Library.

And as ever thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page and the Flâneuse is always pleased to hear from fellow folly fans.

In the first half of the 1760s Thomas Farr, a Bristol merchant, bought land at Henbury near Bristol, which included the prominent eminence called ‘Blaize Hill’. In 1766 he commissioned designs from the architect Robert Mylne for a sham castle eye-catcher to top the hill.

Early Bristol historians describe the hill as the site of a Roman camp, and Farr was said to have dug up ‘great quantities’ of coins when the foundations for the castle were made. It was also said to have housed an ancient chapel, and more recently had been home to a summerhouse approached by a formal double-avenue. Farr (1732-1791), a ‘person of exquisite taste’, followed fashion and abandoned this straight approach, creating instead meandering serpentine walks and rides which wound through woodland up to the fine new gothic folly.

A single drawing by Robert Mylne (1733-1811) is known to survive, and as it is annotated ‘no.3’ it is assumed that Mylne provided several variant designs. The castle had offices at ground level where the servants could prepare food, and three rooms on the first floor for socialising. The principal circular room was 25 feet in diameter and ‘very highly finished in the Gothic stile’. Stairs in one of the smaller turrets led to the roof, where the views took in ‘many miles’ of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel, as well as a prospect over the surrounding counties and across to Wales. Contemporary sources suggest that Farr would watch his ships arriving in Bristol from the top of his ‘Summer or Pleasure House’, and it was also an eye-catcher, announcing Farr’s elevated status to all who saw it.

Farr’s ambitions for his estate were foiled by bankruptcy in 1778, and he sold the estate to one Dr Denham Skeet. The poet Edward Davies was a guest of Skeet and recorded his visit in verse. This was published in 1783 as Blaise Castle: A Prospective Poem, and he includes a rather disturbing description of the effort required to ascend the footpath to the folly:

The fat and lazy would ne’er reach the Top.
Were there not Seats prepared for them to stop,
And breath [sic], while they their reeking Foreheads mop.
But after various Perils, Stops and Pain,
With trembling Knees, we reach the Castle Plain,
And panting view the Horizon again.

The artist Samuel Hieronymous Grimm visited a few years later (it is not recorded if he walked the tortuous footpath or opted for a sedate carriage ride) and took a number of views of the folly. His sketches show that the door was originally flanked by a pair of sphinx statues, which are sadly no longer in situ.

In 1789 the estate was bought by the Harford family. They built a new mansion, and invited Humphry Repton to remodel the grounds: he suggested raising one of the turrets of the castle to give it a more interesting silhouette, but his advice was not taken.  Tourists were allowed to explore the walks through the woods to the folly, although there were restrictions: one early nineteenth century visitor was unable to persuade (bribe?) the ‘churlish porter’ to allow access on a Sunday.

Blaise Castle (the folly soon gave its name to the entire estate) remained in Harford ownership until the early decades of the twentieth century, and by the later nineteenth century the ground floor of Blaise Castle was earning its keep as a residence for estate workers. The family continued to allow access to parties of naturalists, antiquarians and ramblers, and the reports of their visits in the first decade of the twentieth century provide detail of the upper room in the tower. It was by then furnished with a collection of arms and armour, rare old china and furniture, and had ‘beautiful stained glass windows’. Like the earlier tourists, the groups could climb up to the top to appreciate the magnificent scenery.

In 1926 access became available to all when the Bristol Corporation bought the estate as a ‘charming natural playground’ where the city’s citizens might enjoy ‘the beauty with which nature has endowed this place so lavishly’.

As well as the hilltop folly the grounds also featured a castellated lodge, a ‘fairy tale’ thatched lodge and places of ‘childish delight’ such as ‘The Butcher’s Cave’ and ‘The Giant’s Footprint’. In 1949 a Folk Museum was opened in the mansion, and there was also a ‘pleasant restaurant’ where visitors could dine off elegant crockery bearing the arms of the city.

By the 1970s, after years of neglect and abuse by vandals, the folly was in poor condition. The interior had fallen into complete disrepair and, as Barbara Jones noted in her research files, the stained glass had been destroyed ‘by hooligans’.

The exterior fabric was also in a poor condition, and in 1979 the council proposed pulling down the most dangerous section, and preserving the rest as a ‘conserved ruin’. Public opinion was vociferously in favour of restoring the whole castle, and in March 1981 a local paper could announce that the dangerous turret was currently being rebuilt and that it was ‘hoped to fully restore this fanciful building over the next three years’.

Today an active community charity, Friends of Blaise (born out of the campaign to see the castle restored in the 1980s) supports the city council in their efforts to maintain the estate. The volunteers open the castle (grade II*) to the public on certain days in the warmer months, but you can walk up to it at any time. There’s a walking guide here. There’s still a museum and a cafe – just don’t expect the fancy china.

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Many follies have lurid tales attached telling of wicked acts and/or ghostly goings-on and a classical temple, high on the Whitley Beaumont estate near Kirkheaton, doesn’t disappoint. It is known locally as Black Dick’s Temple, after Whitley Beaumont’s owner in the early seventeenth century, Sir Richard Beaumont. Local legends tell that Sir Richard ran up such huge debts gambling that he had to live a double-life as a highwayman. He is said to haunt the site and, of course, there are whispers of a network of secret tunnels under the building.

Sir Richard (1574-1631), 1st and only baronet, or Black Dick if that’s the version you prefer, built a new mansion at Whitley Beaumont which remained in the family until the early twentieth century. Sir Richard is commemorated with a magnificent monument in St John’s, Kirkheaton.

… also shown here, with an appreciative visitor, in a lovely watercolour sketch by Huddersfield artist Peace Sykes.

The tales of Sir Richard and his dissolute lifestyle may or may not be true, but he never knew the Palladian temple. It was built in the middle of the eighteenth century, as a landscape ornament and banqueting house, for a later Richard Beaumont (1719/20-1764). The architect was possibly James Paine (1717-1789), who was married to Richard’s sister Charlotte, and who worked on the house at Whitley Beaumont in the 1750s. It was extant by 1760 when a visitor admired the grand Terrace Walk which led to the ‘Temple’. A domed banqueting room, once decorated with ornate plasterwork, stands above a basement that probably housed a kitchen for the servants (although it is sometimes said to be an ice-house).

The next generation of Beaumonts remodelled the park south of the house to a design by Capability Brown. By the middle of the twentieth century, this part of the park had been exploited for its coal reserves, but the terrace and temple north of the house remained largely unchanged, although greatly neglected. The Beaumonts had sold up in the 1920s, having auctioned the mansion’s fixtures and fittings in 1917.

The estate was once more offered for sale in 1950, when it was auctioned in lots. The auctioneers didn’t even consider that a private owner might make the ‘impressive mansion’ their home, and although ‘renovation as an institution’ was a proposed use, it seemed to be taken for granted that it was ‘eligible for demolition’. Lot 2 was ‘The Avenue’ which included that ‘local landmark known as The Temple’.

As predicted, the house was indeed pulled down soon after the sale in 1950, and the materials sold. Local boy Brian Tattersfield began to visit Whitley Beaumont just as demolition started, and explored every corner of the estate. In his own words it became a ‘lifelong obsession’. Whenever a busy career (as one half of the acclaimed design studio Minale Tattersfield) allowed, he returned to his early Box Brownie photo’s and sketches, and created finished pen and ink drawings. Although the dome of the Temple was gone when he first visited, he always preserved the building’s dignity and showed it intact.

Today the temple is a ruin. Vandals and thieves have long-since stripped the lead from the roof (where was the terrifying ghost of Black Dick when he was needed?), and the internal floor is long gone, leaving a gaping hole inside the building. The soot-blackened shell remains a local landmark and can be seen from nearby public footpaths.

Thanks to Katina Bill, Senior Curator, Kirklees Museums and Galleries and Brian Tattersfield for their invaluable help with this post.

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In the grounds of Benington Lordship, an early 18th century mansion near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, is a sham ruin on a grand scale. Constructed in the 1830s it combined the roles of eye-catcher, gateway, smoking room and banqueting hall in one rambling structure.

George Proctor had bought the estate in the 1820s, by which date most of the mediaeval castle that once stood on the site had been gone for six centuries. A charming manor house had been erected in its place around the beginning of the 18th century. The spectacular sham was executed in 1835-1838 by the inchoate Hertfordshire family firm of Pulham, which grew to specialise in building garden features in artificial stone – although seldom on the scale of this range which features a sham Norman arch and gatehouse and a separate summerhouse.

The designer is thought to have been the Hertford architect, Thomas Smith (1798-1875). Documentary evidence doesn’t seem to survive, but the work is attributed to him on the basis that he was active locally, and also because he had built a ‘tower and fine archway in the Norman style of architecture’ in his own garden.

The Benington Lordship folly, inspired by the genuine fragments that remained on site, was erected in the form of a substantial ruined Norman castle. Built of flint and artificial stone, it was pictured in the Pulham company’s c.1877 account of their work to date: ‘Picturesque Ferneries and Rock Garden Scenery’. No doubt some antiquarians were horrified at Proctor’s ‘alterations’, but as a visitor in 1897 wrote ‘it cannot be denied that the work is most artistically carried out’.

Elsewhere in the garden remnants of the ancient castle were ‘improved’ as ornamental features. In her research notes Barbara Jones makes clear that she did not think this work as successful as the folly. She described the remains of the keep as a ‘formless lump’ with a ‘fake’ doorway which led to a walk to another ‘lump of stuff’.

Sadly George Proctor did not enjoy his new garden ornament for long: he died in 1840 and was succeeded by his son Leonard. The estate was bought by the Bott family in 1905, and it remains their family home today. Barbara Jones featured the ‘very fine large folly’ in the 1st edition of Follies & Grottoes in 1953, and when working on the revised edition in 1972 (it would be published in 1974) the Bott family were happy to confirm to Jones that the folly was ‘still safely standing’. Fifty years on the same is still emphatically correct, and today’s visitors can even enjoy a cup of coffee and very tasty cake in the structure.

Benington Lordship has been the location for a number of television and film productions, and looks stunning in One Day, the new (2024) Netflix adaptation of the 2009 novel by David Nicholls (episode 9).

The house and grounds also appeared in Late Flowering Lust, the 1993 BBC tribute to Sir John Betjeman starring Nigel Hawthorne and with the dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures (now New Adventures) choreographed by Matthew Bourne. You can see it here, with a great view of the folly about 28 minutes in https://new-adventures.net/news/late-flowering-lust

The castle folly is listed with the house at grade II*, the summerhouse and attached curtain wall are listed at grade II, the remains of the ancient keep are grade I and the gardens are registered as grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

The Bott family open the gardens at Benington Lordship regularly. The snowdrop season has just finished, but things hot up with a chilli festival in August. See the website for details of further open days this year https://beningtonlordship.co.uk. 

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome – please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch.

When first built the handsome gazebo in the grounds of Crow Nest in Dewsbury would have had views over the estate’s fine gardens and pleasure grounds. At the end of the 19th century Crow Nest was bought for the people of Dewsbury, and has now been a public park for 130 years. The Temple remains an ornament to the park, but sadly today it has a rather forlorn appearance.

Information about the Crow Nest estate is quite hard to find (and it shouldn’t be confused with Crow Nest at Lightcliffe, which is not far away). We know that in 1733 it was purchased from the Bedford family by Samuel Burroughs (c.1695-1761), a Master in Chancery and author of important texts on the legal system. Upon his death in 1761 the house passed to his recently widowed daughter, Sarah, who arranged for Crow Nest to be let the following year. The ‘exceedingly pleasant house’ was described as ‘fit for a Gentleman’s family’ and came with gardens, orchards and pasture. There is no mention of the temple, although two maps show it was extant at that date.

The first visual evidence for the gazebo is on a plan of the River Calder surveyed by the engineer John Smeaton in 1757 (the house is mistakenly named as ‘Crows Mount’). The gazebo can be seen in a corner of the walled grounds, and traces of these walls can still be seen attached to the temple today. A map dated to c.1766 shows the gazebo and mansion in more detail.

In 1785 Crow Nest was sold to Richard Milnes, but in 1798 he was declared bankrupt, and the estate was once more offered for sale. The ‘Most Valuable and Truly Desirable Estate’ was described as ‘situate upon an eminence, commanding a most extensive view’. It was bought by the Hague family who remodelled the mansion and remained there for almost a century until they sold the estate to Dewsbury Corporation, who wished to create a public park for the townsfolk. The park opened in 1893 with a day of ‘holiday and public rejoicing’.

The town plan of Dewsbury produced by the Ordnance Survey office in 1852 shows the Temple at the end of a long straight path which was terminated at the other end by a summerhouse. At that date it had two adjoining walls, one of which was  connected to an arch, seen in this photograph. Although ‘old castellated arches of Norman design’ were mentioned in 1889, they had disappeared by the time the 25″ map was published in 1894 and the Temple was by then a free standing structure.

The building is not named on the 1850s 6″ Ordnance Survey map, but is called ‘The Temple’ on the 25″ map surveyed in the late 1880s (but not published until 1894). By the time a revised edition of the map was published in 1907, Crow Nest Park had been created with lake and island, bowling green and, of course, a bandstand. The designer, William Cox, incorporated the Temple into the layout of the park, surrounding it with ornamental shrubberies. From the upstairs room of the gazebo there was a panorama of the whole park and the countryside beyond.

A lovely watercolour in the collection of Kirklees Museums calls the building the ‘Observatory’, but it is likely that the term was used in the sense of a belvedere or gazebo, a building from which the view could be admired, rather than as an astronomical tower. Locally the story is told that a tunnel leads from the mansion to the Temple, and that one of the owners of the estate used it to to escape from his bad-tempered wife – a tale attached to more than one folly.

In the early 20th century a group of retired Dewsbury men known as ‘the Veterans’ Parliament’ used the Temple as a shelter in which to meet. Judging by their age the men had probably served in the wars in South Africa, and the park houses a memorial to the friends they lost which was unveiled by Baden-Powell in 1906. By 1937 the men were in their seventies and finding the stairs in the building a challenge. Bemoaning the lack of facilities to ‘mash a pot of tea’ they left for alternative accommodation.

Soon after that date Britain was at war again, and the maintenance of ornamental buildings was not a priority. At date unknown the elegant roof was removed, and it became a rather grand store for park equipment. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘quite elegant’, the Temple was listed at grade II in 1985, but is bricked-up and sadly neglected today.

In 1894 a committee was formed to establish a museum in the mansion, and it was a popular attraction for over a century. Sadly the Dewsbury Museum was closed in 2016 after the council withdrew funding as part of a programme of austerity measures. A long campaign to keep the building in community use was unsuccessful, and the house (grade II) currently stands empty. Crow Nest Park is listed at grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

The Temple delighted the families who made Crow Nest their home for a century and a half, and has been an attractive feature for the visitors to a public park for another 130 years and counting. It is sad to see it neglected today.

Thanks to Katina Bill of Kirklees Museums for her help with this post.

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The Folly Flâneuse celebrated her birthday this week, and what better way to mark the occasion than with an enormous cake? Although sadly, this one is not edible. As many of the buildings featured in these pages are gone, it was a real birthday treat to see this new folly, recently constructed to ornament the Waddesdon landscape.

The cake is the work of Joana Vasconcelos, a Portuguese-born sculptor, and was commissioned by Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild for the Waddesdon Manor estate in Buckinghamshire. The pair had collaborated in 2012 when Vasconcelos showed her Pavillon de Thé at Waddesdon – a massive wrought iron teapot.

A few years later Vasconcelos created a work featuring a drink more commonly associated with the Rothschild family – two candlestick sculptures made from bottles of the famous Chateau Lafite.

This latest Vasconcelos commission is on an entirely different scale, and has been five years in the making. The Wedding Cake celebrates love and marriage, and also continues the Rothschild tradition of offering hospitality in exuberant spaces. 12 metres high, it is built around a steel frame, and clad with 25,000 Portuguese ceramic tiles which echo the colours of the famous Sèvres porcelain in the collection at Waddesdon Manor.

The finishing touch, or perhaps the icing on the cake, is when two people climb the final steps to emerge on the top tier, and the cleverly-composed scale of the building is revealed as they become the happy couple who top many a traditional wedding cake.

The Wedding Cake has been described as ‘first and foremost a temple to love’, but when asked if it was a folly Vasconcelos said “yes”, and writing in the Times Adam Davy called it ‘the latest architectural absurdity in the great British tradition of the garden folly’. Top marks for describing the structure go to the editor at the Financial Times who came up with the headline ‘The Gateau at the Chateau’.

You can see this conjugal confection for yourselves as the Wedding Cake is open to the public on Thursdays and selected Sundays https://waddesdon.org.uk/whats-on/wedding-cake-tours/

Visitors to Jupiter Artland, the sculpture park close to Edinburgh, may have seen the vibrant Vasconcelos swimming pool there, or indeed have taken the plunge as there are public sessions over the summer https://www.jupiterartland.org/gateway-bathing-sessions/

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The Flâneuse is travelling far and wide this month in search of follies, and the results of her research will appear here very soon. Until she gets home, and gathers her thoughts, here are the highlights of a very recent day in the Cotswolds with members of the Folly Fellowship.

The day began at a familiar landmark – the dramatic bulk of the Broadway Tower. From the top of the late 18th century tower it is said that 13 counties can be seen, but on a hazy morning we weren’t in a position to confirm this story.

Next stop brought us right up-to-date as we toured a private garden full of quirky structures designed and built by the rather talented present owner. His next project is to be a sham ruin so a return visit will soon be needed.

To finish this day of delights there was a walk around the landscape of Ditchley Park, now a conference centre, where a number of elegant 18th century pavilions can be seen. Most lovely of them all is the recently-restored rotunda.

As well as organising jolly jaunts (and thanks to the team behind this one) the Folly Fellowship also publishes a regular magazine, and you can now consult back issues online. Find out more here http://follies.org.uk/

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome, please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch.

Sundorne House in Shropshire was the seat of the Corbet family and the estate included the picturesque ruin of Haughmond Abbey. In 1774 John Corbet added a dramatic eye-catcher to the ensemble – a sham castle on the summit of Haughmond Hill.

John Corbet (1751-1817) spent 1773 on the Grand Tour, where he was painted by Pompeo Batoni. He had inherited the Sundorne estate from his father in 1759, when still a minor and on his return from Europe he began to remodel the mansion using the architect Robert Mylne, and his improvements to the park included a vast new lake.

Although his portrait by Batoni shows him with a plan of the Pantheon in Rome, he chose to ornament the park with a building in the Gothick style. High on Haughmond Hill he built a mock fortification called Haughmond Castle.

The architect Robert Mylne sent Corbet a ‘design of a castle to be erected on the top of a hill’ in November 1774. Mylne had experience in the field having already built Blaise Castle in Bristol: Haughmond Castle had a similar triangular floor-plan of a central core surrounded by three circular turrets, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps. It was complete by 1777 when a lucky visitor stayed in the ‘pea green’ room at Sunborne and his view took in the building on Haughmond Hill.

As well as being an eye-catcher from Sundorne, the Castle would have served as both a landmark and a refreshment pavilion during the chase, for Corbet was a passionate huntsman. Locally it is told that a flag was flown when hunting was to take place the following day, although an alternative version has it that the flag was hoisted to warn the servants at Sunborne House that the hunt was over and the participants were heading back for dinner.

It was also a belvedere and from it there was a ‘magnificent panorama’ which included ‘the valley of the Severn, with the ancient town of Shrewsbury, backed on the horizon by the Welsh Mountains, while further south the wooded crest of the Wrekin towered above the valley’.

The prominent eye-catcher played a key role in the celebrations of the coming-of-age of Corbet’s eldest son Andrew William in 1822. Cannon were fired from Sundorne Castle (the house by now remodelled and renamed) and ‘these were answered by discharges from the Castle on the hill’. Tenants and their friends were invited to partake of a ‘cold collation’ at the Castle, and in the evening the building must have been a magical sight when it was illuminated.

For some years the eye-catcher doubled as a home for estate workers. Photographs and postcards from the early years of the 20th century show the Castle in good condition, but in the 1930s it collapsed. In 1938 a visitor noted the ‘ruins of Haughmond Castle’ and by 1973 only ‘traces’ remained.

Sundorne Castle too is gone – demolished in 1955, although a very attractive gatehouse and chapel were left standing.

All that remains of Haughmond Castle today are a few moss-covered bits of masonry and some curved ironwork. The view can still be appreciated, although the valley has been developed since Corbet’s day. There are walks to the site from the Forestry Commission’s Haughmond Hill car park https://www.forestryengland.uk/haughmond-hill/walking-trails-haughmond-hill

Haughmond Abbey is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited all year round https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/

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