In the 1980s follies played a part in promoting a new breakfast cereal: special packs of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain contained picture cards featuring ‘Gardens to Visit’. The twenty cards were illustrated with views of gardens in Britain and Ireland, all of them open to the public, and five follies or quirky garden ornaments were among the cards to be collected. As the blurb on the box announced ‘Most of us are enchanted by the magic of a beautiful garden’.

Nutri-Grain was launched in 1987 and, as well as publishing the collectable cards, the marketing team promoted it via recipe leaflets: a ‘cosy supper dish’ of trout stuffed with Nutri-Grain was one suggestion. But the Flâneuse digresses…

Once you had the full set of cards you could send off for a folder in which to display your collection…

The album had an introduction by Clay Jones, then chairman of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and co-presenter of Gardeners’ World on BBC2. He wrote that ‘no matter where you live in Britain, there is sure to be a magnificent garden not far away’ (although the cards didn’t actually reflect this – only one was in Scotland, one in Wales and two in Ireland and the majority were in southern England). Acclaimed writer and photographer Heather Angel provided most of the photographs, including all of those featured here, and wrote that she hoped ‘this series will stimulate a greater interest in our gardens’.

The cards are small, only 58cm x 75cm, and the print quality is not the finest, but the Flâneuse would still have been very happy to discover these wonderful photographs in her cereal box…

Card three featured the Pagoda Fountain at Alton Towers in Staffordshire. The autumnal view was accompanied by text describing the ‘magical sight and sound’ of the water falling onto the tiered copper roofs and cascading down causing the copper bells to tinkle.

Number five in the series showed the Gothic Temple at Painshill in Surrey, which had been returned to its former elegance after a major restoration only a couple of years earlier. The card explained that work continued to bring Painshill back to life, and that the park deserved to be better known. Work has continued at Painshill since 1987, and the magnificent grotto, described on the card as damaged during the Second World War, once again sparkles and surprises.

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal in North Yorkshire was the focus of card eight, and in particular the Temple of Piety complete with its much-photographed reflection in the Moon Pond. The card encouraged collectors to visit and find the ‘spectacular’ surprise view of the ruins of Fountains Abbey.

Card seventeen in the set had a view of the Chinese House and Bridge at Shugborough, in Staffordshire. The card praised the ‘Chinese shrubs’ planted to complement the garden building, and recommended seeing the other ‘notable monuments’ in the park.

The only Irish garden was Mount Stewart in County Down in Northern Ireland. The card didn’t feature the famous Temple of the Winds, but instead showed the Dodo Terrace, where quirky concrete sculptures were placed in the early twentieth century.

All of the gardens remain open to the public, although if visiting the follies at Alton Towers you might be distracted by a different kind of folly – the screams of those riding the Toxicator (‘take hold and brace yourself’) or Nemesis Reborn (‘more uncontrollable than ever before’).

Thanks to Cherrill S for introducing the Flâneuse to the cards, and thanks to you for reading. As ever your thoughts and comments are welcome via the box at the foot of the page.

As with all good serials, there will be a wait until the next episode, but the Flâneuse will be back with a snap, a crackle and a pop in 2026. Until then, wishing everyone happiness whatever your plans for the festive season. Goodbye for now, or should that be Cheerios? (Apologies, but it is the season of the corny Christmas cracker joke).

With the summer holidays in full swing, the Flâneuse is heading to the seaside for this week’s story. In the late 1960s Richard Attenborough filmed parts of Oh! What a Lovely War on the Brighton seafront. When filming was over, he donated a seaside kiosk that had featured in the film to the Brighton Festival. In May 1970 the architect Sir Hugh Casson transformed it into a ‘small folly built – or at least embellished  – in Brighton rock’.

The Brighton Festival was founded in 1970 to ‘stimulate townsfolk and visitors into taking a new look at the arts’. Casson was then head of the Interior Design school at the Royal College of Art, and a member of the festival’s council of management. He was known to be a fan of follies, writing in the foreword to the National Benzole book Follies, which he edited in 1963, that he hoped the tradition would never die out. He was sure that ‘Somebody somewhere is probably nailing crockets on his cycle-shed or building an obelisk of bottle-tops and broken shards’.

Casson’s folly for Brighton was equally unsophisticated: he repurposed the kiosk as a Chinese temple, decorated with bamboo fretwork. But, in homage to one of the resort’s favourite souvenirs, the bamboo was replaced with sticks of bright pink Brighton rock.

This gave the building what the Architects’ Journal called a ‘Cecil Beaton appearance’ (sadly the Flâneuse has failed to find any colour photographs). The roof was a riotous affair with pinnacles of striped rock.

It was reported that 2,500 children aged eight and under had been invited to ‘demolish’ the kiosk in an ‘orgy of eating’. As the Architects’ Journal columnist noted, they stripped the folly in ‘eleven minutes flat’, although ‘not so much by eating, more by harvesting, consumption presumably being done later at leisure’.

No doubt the children loved this sweet treat, and the only sour note came from ‘Mr Manchester’, who wrote a diary column for the Manchester Evening News: ‘it all sounds very unhygienic to me’, he grumbled.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts or observations.

In December 1888, a ‘good property of modest pretensions’, with about 30 acres, was offered for sale near Hythe, on the Hampshire coast. Forest Lodge was marketed as a ‘most enjoyable residence for a yachtsman’ and was purchased as a country base by John Beach Fleuret, a London auctioneer and noted sailor. Fleuret immediately set to work remodelling the house and ornamenting the grounds. The major feature was a lake with a boathouse and bridge, both in a Chinese style. The only reminder today is a couple of blurry, but invaluable, photographs.

Fleuret (1840-1904) was active in local affairs and frequently opened his garden for public events. In 1902 he engaged the ‘celebrated pyrotechnists’ Brock & Co. to give a grand firework display to celebrate the Coronation of King Edward VII. Ordnance Survey maps confirm that the existing ‘fish pond’ was enlarged, and the bridge and boathouse were constructed, during Fleuret’s ownership of the estate.

The ‘pagoda’ was extant by 1904, but little else is known about Fleuret’s landscaping works. What we do know is that Fleuret started his working life at sea, having been ‘possessed of a burning desire to be a sailor’. He quickly moved up the ranks and remained at sea for seven years. For two years he served on a transport ship ‘on the China and Indian seas’ during the war with China, and thus participated in ‘many stirring scenes’. We can only wonder what he saw as a young man that influenced his decision to add Chinoiserie ornaments to his garden many years later.

Back on dry land Fleuret trained as an auctioneer, building a business of ‘gigantic proportions’, and his sailing was restricted to the more leisurely variety on the Solent, or Thames. Fleuret died in December 1904, and there was a flurry of excitement the following year when the contents of his will were announced. He was lauded in the press for his skill as a yachtsman, but of most interest to the newspapers was the story that he had bequeathed his dogs and parrot, together with a sum for their maintenance, to one Maria Campion Poole. Leaving no stone unturned, the Flâneuse tried to identify this lady: she appears to have been a solicitor’s wife from Erith in Kent.

A county history of 1908 mentions the ‘Chinese pagoda and bridge’ in the beautiful grounds of Forest Lodge, and also an observatory with a fine view over Southampton Water. By this date Forest Lodge was leased (by the late Fleuret’s trustees) to Alexander Baring (1848-1932), who had been looking for a ‘suitable country place’. In his memoirs Baring records that Fleuret had ‘practically rebuilt the place’ and, having added substantial parcels of land to the estate, had made it ‘one of the most beautiful and valuable small places in the South of England’. When Baring was not out sailing in his new yacht, he could play golf on the 9 hole course within the grounds. Sadly, Baring fails to mention the garden buildings.

The 1911 edition of Kelly’s Directory of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight suggests that the Chinese pagoda was ‘used as a dining room’, and also mentions a Chinese bridge and boathouse – but photographic and cartographic evidence suggests that the pagoda and boathouse were one and the same, with a banqueting room above, and space for the boat below.

Forest Lodge was sold by Fleuret’s trustees in 1950. The sales particulars described the ‘charming wooded grounds and lake’, by now extending to some 100 acres, but the garden buildings are not mentioned – probably because by this date they were decaying rapidly.

According to Barbara Jones, writing in Follies & Grottoes (1974), the boathouse was an ‘utterly derelict pavilion’ which was sinking into marshy ground on what was by then a farm. Nothing is known of the observatory, although it was probably the octagonal building which is shown on the 1909 25″ OS map. Jones wrote that it was demolished during the First World War (presumably it was a landmark for enemy planes), and this is backed up by map evidence: the building had disappeared by the time the revised OS map was published in 1932.

At pretty much the same date as Fleuret was erecting his Chinese-inspired features at Forest Lodge, the Scottish architect Robert Weir Schultz was working on a Chinese Bridge for the Earl of Bute at Dumfries House in Ayrshire. In 1899 he submitted this drawing of a bridge, although there is no evidence that it was ever built.

Inspired by the earlier design, a new bridge over the Lugar Water was opened at Dumfries House in 2017. It was erected to a design by Keith Ross in collaboration with the Duke of Rothesay, the title used by the then Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) when in Scotland. You can read more about the bridge here.

With apologies for the poor images of the lost structures – they fall into the category ‘better than nothing’ as they seem to be the best that survive.

Thank you for reading. You can scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to share any thoughts, and do please get in touch if you can add any further information.