In 1917 Tabley House was home to Cuthbert and Hilda Leicester-Warren and their children Margaret and John. That summer twelve year old Margaret and ten year old John made the folly tower, on a tiny island in the lake, their own private domain. On Saturday 7 July, with ‘due pomp and ceremony’, the tower was declared open for the season.

N.B. If you haven’t seen last week’s post you might want to catch up on the history of the tower here.

The family had a number of boats on the lake including a motor-launch called ‘Rainbow’ and a sailboat called the ‘Ark’. These vessels transported the family to the tower which was equipped with a ‘suitable supply of furniture, cups, saucers and plates’.

Formal invitations were sent to guests staying with their parents at Tabley House, requesting the pleasure of their company at the tower. Margaret (1905-1964) was the hostess on these occasions and styled herself the ‘Chatelaine of the Tower’. As John (1907-1975) wrote in 1918:

In the Boat we go to see
The Chatilaine [sic] who owns the key
Of the Tower on Tabley Lake
Then she gives us all a cake.

In the summer of 1918 the motor launch was out of action because of wartime petrol restrictions, so transport was only by the more ‘antiquated’ means of sail or oar.

Timetables for the boats to the lake were published to help guests make plans, and happily in 1919 the petrol restrictions were relaxed, and ‘Rainbow’ was back in action.

The visitors were invited to ascend to the rooftop viewing platform or perhaps try to catch a fish or two. After tea and cake was served they were asked to contribute to a visitor’s book called The Tower Book. Some praised the picnics (which sometimes included ‘excellent meat pies’) and others added poems or sketches.

One guest, T.W. Turner couldn’t resist mentioning his artist namesake, who had painted the tower a century earlier:

O lovely Tower, O limpid lake
For thee my feeble pen I take:-
See there the oaks and wavy beeches
Beautify the farthest reaches:
See here the sparkling wavelets beat
Upon the stones beneath one’s feet:
Right well might Turner near this spot
Call for pencils and paint pot.

In July 1920 Margaret was given a birthday present of a new tea service for use at the tower. The children kept the tower spick and span with a housekeeper’s box of brushes, and at the start of the 1921 season they ‘stained’ (painted) the upper room.

Sadly the book ends with the close of the 1921 season and we don’t know if the summer excursions to the tower were continued. Lord Bathurst contributed the final drawing to the book after a ‘turn round the lake’ with the children’s father in 1921.

Margaret was painted by Philip de Laszlo in 1927 when she was almost 22 and making her debut in society. Little brother John inherited the estate in 1954 and was the last member of the family to own Tabley. He had never married and hoped the National Trust would take on the estate after his death, but his offer was declined as there was no endowment to support the estate. In short, under the terms of Lieutenant Colonel John Leicester-Warren’s will the estate then passed to the University of Manchester.

The University of Manchester sold the wider estate, including the lake and tower, to the Crown Estate and sadly there is no public access. But you can see the house and artworks – see the Tabley House Collection website.

All images other than the portrait are taken from The Tower Book (D 5524/8/5) and are reproduced by kind permission of Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

There’s a comments box at the foot of the page and your thoughts are always welcome. Thank you for reading.

Sir Peter Byrne Leicester inherited the Tabley estate in 1742. At that date the mansion and adjacent chapel were picturesquely situated on an island in a lake, but Sir Peter had new ideas. In around 1760 he called in John Carr of York to build a new mansion, in the Palladian style, on higher ground about half a mile from the old. With the new hall complete Sir Peter did not demolish the old hall and chapel on the island, but instead left them standing to be admired as ‘ornamental features in the landscape’ (although he had little choice as the terms of his inheritance compelled him to keep the old mansion in repair). Sir Peter’s son would later add a tower as an eye-catcher and picnic pavilion.

Sir Peter died in 1770 when his son and heir was only 7 years old, and his widow managed the estate until Sir John Fleming Leicester 5th Bart (1762-1827) came of age. Sir John studied at Cambridge before setting off on the Grand Tour, returning in 1786 to his Cheshire estate.

Work to remodel the lake and build the tower was started soon after Sir John’s return and continued until around the end of the eighteenth century. In 1826 William Carey, Sir John’s biographer and art adviser, published some anecdotes of his patron’s life. He wrote that Sir John always had ‘some plans going forward for the embellishment of his domain’ and that he had erected the tower and remodelled the lake to create a ‘fine piece of water’. Sadly he is vague on dates, simply noting that this took place ‘some years ago’.

The lake and tower (it is always simply ‘the tower’) were used for ‘aquatic parties’, with Sir John having a small fleet of ‘ten or twelve pleasure vessels’, all built to his own specifications. He was described as a skilled sailor, making excursions on the lake ‘safe and agreeable’.

Sir John’s great passion was contemporary British art, and in the first decades of the nineteenth century he commissioned many artworks, including a number of views of his new lake and tower.

Perhaps most famous of the views of the tower at Tabley are two works of 1808 by J.M.W. Turner showing the lake and tower on a calm morning and in a ‘brisk gale’. They became separated in 1827 when works from the late Lord de Tabley’s London house (Sir John was created a Baron in 1826) were sold at auction to pay his debts. Lord Egremont purchased the ‘calm morning’ view, and it can be seen today at Petworth House in West Sussex.

Happily, its partner, showing the tower on a windy day, was sent to Tabley House where it remains today.

In 1874 the Old Hall was described as an ‘ivy-clad ruin’, although it was still furnished and could be visited by tourists, and some rooms housed estate staff. At the same date the chapel was recorded as being in ‘excellent preservation’ as it was still in regular use. Around fifty years later the situation changed dramatically when the island on which the buildings stood succumbed to brine subsidence (briefly – the pumping out of liquid brine causes the land above to become unstable). The mansion on the island was damaged and the contents and many of the internal fittings were salvaged before the inevitable total collapse – only a small section still stands today.

To save the chapel Cuthbert Leicester Warren (1877-1954) had it taken down and rebuilt close to the eighteenth century mansion in 1927. Material salvaged from the Old Hall was used to create the Old Hall Room which links the chapel to the mansion. Cuthbert’s son John, who died in 1975, was the last private owner of the Tabley estate (there’s more on him next week).

Tabley House and its collection are now owned by the University of Manchester. The house is leased to a care home, but the state rooms on the middle floor are home to the Tabley House Collection of paintings, furniture and decorative arts. The collection is open regularly between March and October.

The grade II listed tower, once an eye-catcher from the piano nobile, can today only just be made out in the distance as the overgrown trees on the tiny island hide the tower and cast shadows. The University sold the parkland to the Crown Estate in 2007 and sadly there is no public access. Happily we have Sir John’s pictorial record, and there’s the rather more modern medium of a YouTube film here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGU2dnGl_9M

For more on Tabley House http://www.tableyhouse.co.uk

Thank you to the Tabley House Collection and ArtUK for making these wonderful images freely available.

Watch out for part II next week which features a charming period in the tower’s existence. Thank you for reading and do get in touch via the comments section below if you’d like to share any thoughts.

Exploring the rather charming little village of Peckforton in Cheshire, one might stumble across a rather unusual garden ornament. Tucked into a hedge, bordering a garden, is a huge stone elephant carrying a castle on its back. This was carved by the local stonemason, John Watson, and all sorts of stories are told of its history.

The 1846 tithe map shows that the Watson family’s house and garden was just outside the village, where they also rented fields and crofts totalling a little over 5 acres. Their benevolent landlord was John Tollemache (1805-1890) of Peckforton Castle, who believed the labouring man should have ‘three acres and a cow’. In the 1851 census Watson (c.1799-1875) gives his employment as ‘Stone Master employing 3 men’: presumably two of these were his sons, George and Robert, who are both listed as stonemasons. In 1860 he is listed in a directory as ‘stonemason and quarry owner’.

Tollemache (Baron Tollemache from 1876) built Peckforton Castle to a design by Anthony Salvin in 1844-50, and the resulting vast turreted and battlemented pile has been hailed as ‘one of the great buildings of its age’. The faux-mediaeval fortification enjoyed views to the genuine ruins of Beeston Castle.

Watson quarried the Peckforton Stone for the new bridge across the Dee in Chester in 1827 and he is also thought to have worked on Peckforton Castle. Not content with quarrying and carving all day, the elephant was apparently the work of his evenings – there’s even a story that the feckful Watson worked after sunset with his sons holding candles. The earliest mention is in an 1860 Cheshire history and gazetteer, which noted the elephant ‘in the garden occupied by Mr John Watson’, adding that it had been placed there ‘about two years ago’. By that date Watson and family had moved into the heart of Peckforton village. One newspaper report suggests that the statue was moved to its current location from its original site: if true it would have been a mammoth task.

No one seemed able to accept that Watson carved the Elephant and Castle purely as a decorative object, and from around 1900 a story circulated that it was built as a bee-hive. But the windows were once glazed, making access for bees somewhat difficult  – to say nothing of the lack of means for a beekeeper to extract the honey.

Sadly nothing seems to survive to explain why Watson chose an elephant and castle as his subject. Was he inspired by the ancient carved elephant with howdah on its back on a pew in the Quire of Chester cathedral? Had he made the trip to Liverpool in 1852 to see ‘Wombwell’s Royal and Monster Menagerie’, complete with ‘two largest elephants’ and a calf? Or travelled even further afield and seen the Elephant and Castle sculpture at Bomarzo in Italy? Some sources claim he was referencing the crest of the Corbett family, which does indeed feature an elephant and castle, but it is hard to substantiate the family’s link to the village. The Peckforton proboscidean remains a wonderful mystery

Thank you for reading. Comments, as ever, are very welcome. Please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Only your name will be published – your contact details remain private.

The last decades of the 19th century saw a passion for all things rustic in the garden – seats, arbours, bridges, and above all summerhouses. For as it was said in 1870, a garden summerhouse of some sort was ‘desirable, and indeed almost necessary’.

These are the words of Shirley Hibberd, an influential Victorian garden writer, in his Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste of 1870. In this volume he advocated all things rustic: boat houses, fishing houses and some curious, and alarming, hybrids such as a ‘Rustic Reading Room and Bee-shed combined’. He believed a rustic summerhouse was essential as a ‘place of retirement for rest, shelter, conversation […] the quiet enjoyment of a book, or an afternoon nap’.

One of the most famous suppliers of such gardens buildings was the firm founded by Henry Caesar in Knutsford. Although 20th century catalogues for the company state that it was founded in 1871, the rustic work probably came a few years later. In the 1871 census 18 year old Henry describes himself as a ‘joiner’, and in 1878 he advertised as a builder of ‘Hot Houses and Garden Frames’. But by 1884 he had decided his future lay elsewhere, and he placed an advertisement in the local papers:

HENRY CAESAR
RUSTIC HOUSE BUILDER
KNUTSFORD
RUSTIC CHAIRS, SEATS, VASES, BRIDGES, PORCHES, ARCHES, TABLES, AND EVERY
DESCRIPTION OF RUSTIC WORK. HOUSES RETHATCHED AND REPAIRED.

This early letterhead shows the sort of summerhouses and furniture he had on offer, and that enquiries were coming in from across Britain. The summerhouses were made with a wooden frame that was decorated with branches and bark to give the rustic effect. The roof was thatched, or covered in wooden shingles, and the windows usually featured floral motifs in coloured glass.

Very quickly Henry decided that the best way to attract custom was to showcase his rustic work at country fairs, and in June 1885 he was at the Essex Agricultural Society Show. In 1886 he exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Exhibition in Wavertree Park in Liverpool, where he ‘carried off the medal’ for ‘garden seats &c.’. Not just the judges were impressed: the paying public loved the work too, and at the Shropshire and West Midland Agricultural Show of 1906 ‘so comfortable looking were the seats, and so inviting the summer-houses, that many were unable to resist the temptation to use them.’

By 1889 the business had been renamed ‘Henry and Julius Caesar’, and at the Warwickshire Agricultural Society Show of that year the newly-named company won a medal for a summerhouse. It seems that Julius was entirely fictional, and Henry simply decided to promote his business by adopting a more august name. And if one has the surname Caesar, who better to have on your letterhead than Julius to help you conquer the competitors?

Henry Caesar died in 1891 and his wife Jane continued the business, being described as a ‘Rustic House Manufacturer’ in the census later that year. The company continued to flourish, and in 1893 it could be found at stand 399 at the Royal Agricultural Show in Chester. The Manchester Courier reported that ‘Messrs Henry and Julius Caesar of Knutsford and Kings Cross Station’ were showing a collection of rustic houses. The paper continued that ‘this firm enjoys a high reputation for this class of work, and their present display will undoubtedly come in for a good deal of notice.’ As the summer houses were built in panels, and essentially ‘flatpack’, the range must have been (relatively) easy to transport, and a ‘very pretty summer house’ was shown in Dublin in 1899, and ‘some artistically constructed rustic summerhouses and seats’ at the Highland Show in Cupar in 1912.

The summerhouses were snapped up for gardens in the town and country, and were at home in the gardens of the middle classes as well as those of the grander country houses – Queen Victoria owned one and Edward VII is rumoured to have presented a Henry and Julius Caesar rustic shelter to many of the Edwardian hostesses who invited him for the weekend (and gave Alice Keppel the adjoining room). That the King was a patron is confirmed by a plaque in one of the company’s summerhouses which reads ‘Henry and Julius Caesar Rustic House builders to the King and Royal Family, Knutsford, Cheshire’. There was even one in the garden of the Governor’s House at Reading Jail, although for reasons unknown it rapidly became surplus to requirements and the ‘almost new’ summerhouse was offered for sale in 1899.

A late example can be found at Tudor Croft in Guisborough, Yorkshire. Known as The Hideaway, it was probably erected soon after the house was built in 1934. It has been fully restored and re-roofed, and can be visited on charity open days (see below) when a hidden sound system plays 1930s music to add to the atmosphere.

By this date the company had changed hands. Jane Caesar sold the business in the first decade of the 20th century, and with her three unmarried daughters set up a confectionery business in Barrow in Furness. Later owners continued to trade as Henry and Julius Caesar of Knutsford, and in 1939 were awarded the Gold Medal for a Rustic Summer House at the Southport Flower Show. Sadly, the company ceased trading soon afterwards.

Many Caesar summerhouses will have been discarded as fashions changed, and although the structures were robust if cared for, if neglected they rotted away. Those that survive remain popular today, and models occasionally appear at auction or in the catalogues of specialist garden antiques dealers. There were of course other manufacturers designing and building rustic structures, but the Caesar company ensured their name was not forgotten by adding a plaque to many of the summerhouses, cannily also reminding the owner that they were available to execute repairs in the quieter winter months.

Tempted? Move fast; at the time of writing there’s one for sale on eBay.

UPDATE JULY 2021: thank you to everyone who got in touch with information about further extant summerhouses. The Knutsford Heritage Centre has added them all to its records, and the team there continue to research the Caesar business.

For more on the Himalayan Garden, which features a number of unusual garden structures, visit https://www.himalayangarden.com

Tudor Croft is open in aid of charity on a number of weekends in 2021, subject to Covid restrictions: 22-23, 29-30 May, 26-27 June, 3-4 July. See their Facebook page for more information https://www.facebook.com/TudorCroftGardens/photos/a.111875330351585/251624659709984/

The Knutsford Heritage Centre has a display on the work of ‘Henry and Julius Caesar’. For updates on opening visit http://www.knutsfordheritage.co.uk

Thank you for reading. If you know of any Caesar summerhouses, or would like to add any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box below.

The sham castle folly on Mow Cop was built by Randle Wilbraham of Rode Hall in 1754 as a summerhouse to which the family could ride for picnics. Its elevated position meant it could be seen from the mansion, some three miles away on the Cheshire side of the county boundary.

The folly became famous in 1807 when it was the site of the meeting that launched Primitive Methodism. Since that date there have been regular assemblies at Mow Cop to mark the anniversary. The centenary celebrations in 1907 led one journalist (whom we can assume to be a member of the established church) to comment that Mow Cop looked like ‘a gigantic ant-hill’ which crawled with ‘thousands and thousands of pilgrims’.

Local people had always enjoyed access to the folly and the surrounding land, and there was an outcry and public demonstrations in 1923 after an entrepreneur bought the site from the Wilbraham family, and began quarrying. Public access was once more secure when in 1937 the land and folly were given to the National Trust (although in 1945 the trust’s James Lees Milne would dismiss it as ‘the ridiculous castle folly’). https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/alderley-edge-and-cheshire-countryside/features/mow-cop

It used to be possible to climb right up to the tower, but it is now fenced off for the inevitable health and safety reasons. The wall’s rugged ruined outline has sadly been rebuilt into neat right-angles, but it remains the most perfectly designed and situated of follies, and surely the inspiration for Old John Tower in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire and St David’s Ruin in Yorkshire https://thefollyflaneuse.com/the-ruin-bingley-west-yorkshire/

Jessica Hallen (née Brooke) grew up locally and after attending art school in Burslem and London became a ceramicist. She was employed by Wade’s Pottery in 1930 and became acclaimed for her figurines, which were affordable versions of those produced by grander firms such as Doulton. Her employment terminated in around 1940, when the outbreak of war meant that the factory produced ceramics for the war effort rather than fancy goods. She continued to freelance for the major potteries and in 1957 she designed a ceramic model of the folly on Mow Cop. There’s very little information on Jessie (who styled herself ‘Jessie van Hallen’ for reasons unknown), but this was perhaps in celebration of 150 years of the Primitive Methodist movement. The Dilford Pottery produced further issues from her moulds after her death. Jessie died in 1983 and was buried at St Luke’s, on the hillside below Mow Cop.