In 1836 William Lowndes began to build a church on raised ground on his Hassall Hall estate in Cheshire. He was a man of ‘strong religious feelings’ and funded the entire project from his own pocket. But by 1900 the church remained incomplete, and was described as a folly.

The title of folly was bestowed upon the church in the Harmsworth Magazine in 1900. Oswald Marvin wrote an article on the subject with the most peculiar subtitle of ‘Stories of Bubbles in Stone’. This is not explained in any way, but did give the designer a chance to have some fun and dot bubbles all around the images.

In September 1837 it was reported in the newspapers that Lowndes was erecting a chapel, and that his ‘praiseworthy munificence deserves to be widely known’. Lowndes had the church built out of fine handmade red bricks, and there were tall stone pinnacles and a slim bell tower which could be ‘seen from miles around’. Underneath were vaults, which were presumably to become the family’s burial place. It overlooked a piece of water in the ornamental grounds of Hassall Hall called Dog Kennel Pond.

The church, by then externally complete, was bedecked with flags to mark the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 1838. But, as Marvin wrote, ‘joy was turned to sorrow’ when Lowndes died suddenly the very next day. This has no basis in fact, and Marvin had lifted his text from an earlier, and equally unreliable, source.

Lowndes death was indeed ‘awfully sudden’ – but it was some months before the coronation. One morning in January 1838 he was ‘found dead in his dining-room, being left in good health when the family retired to rest’. Curiously, Lowndes made no mention of his church, or where he wished to be buried, in his will of April 1837 and he was interred at the parish church of St Mary’s in Sandbach.

Although marked on nineteenth century maps as ‘church’ the building was never completed or consecrated, and no-one knows for sure why it was abandoned with only the interior left to fit out. It is thought that Lowndes’s heirs (he left no issue) had no desire to complete the building – but neither did they wish to fund the cost of demolition, so the structure was simply abandoned.

But the windowless shell did become something of a local landmark and tourist attraction. By 1899 it was described as ‘a singular site’ although ‘depressing to see’: it was overgrown with ivy, and the many tourists had recorded their visits by incising their names in the brick and stone. There were plans for demolition in 1915, with the materials earmarked for new farm buildings, but nothing happened. Visitor numbers increased in September 1922 after the local paper announced that it was finally going to be demolished, and people returned for one last look.

Not a trace of this fine church can be seen today, but there is still something of ecclesiastical interest in the area. A couple of miles from the lost church is Hassall Green, where this tin tabernacle is pretty in pink. A tale is told of this church which is just as fanciful as those that attach themselves to follies. It is said that in 1897 a group of farmers from Hassall Green were in Alsager, where a temporary tin church was being taken down. According to the legend they promptly bought it and carted it back to their village.

Except… the ‘iron church’ in Hassall Green was opened in 1883. It was erected by Isaac Dixon, whose Windsor Ironworks in Liverpool specialised in ‘tin’ chapels, mission rooms and schools. An ‘exceedingly large congregation’ was present for the opening service and tea party. In his speech Reverend Williams commented that the area had long needed a church, and mentioned Lowndes’s church project which, sadly, had been ‘cut off by death’.

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Sir Christopher Wren died 300 years ago on 8 March 1723. The Folly Flâneuse thought she would mark the anniversary by looking at a two examples of his work that served as garden ornaments – once surplus to their original requirements.

In 1829 the churchwardens of St Antholin on Budge Row, rebuilt to a design by Wren after the Great Fire of London, were informed that the church was in need of repair, and that it was ‘indispensably necessary to take down and rebuild the upper part of the spire’. The Bishop of London was petitioned for permission to borrow the £1,000 needed to cover the cost of repairs to the church, and an appeal was then launched allowing work to begin. An entirely new spire was erected, leaving the old one in need of a new home…

The original spire was bought by a wealthy printer called Robert Harrild (1780-1853) and re-erected as an ornament in the garden of Round Hill, his villa at Sydenham in south London. Here he was laying out ‘extensive grounds’ on land he had reclaimed from ‘wild common’. And happily there it has remained, despite much of his former estate being developed for housing in the 1960s. The spire is listed at grade II and was restored in 2019.

St Antholin’s replacement spire, as erected in 1829, did not have such a happy ending. Despite a public outcry, and an initial promise to leave the tower and spire standing, St Antholin’s was demolished in its entirety in 1875 to enable the construction of Queen Victoria Street. The tower and spire were sold to a building contractor for 5 Guineas and according to contemporary accounts he recouped his investment by selling the stone at 3 shillings a barrowload. This plaque originally marked the site of St Antholin’s on Budge Row, but was moved a short distance to the wall of St Mary Aldermary early this century.

Temple Bar, completed in 1672, was one of the city gates designed by Wren. It stood on Fleet Street for two centuries, and was the last surviving city gate until it was taken down in 1878, with the carefully numbered stones being taken into storage.

The masonry was acquired a decade later by Sir Henry Bruce Meux, who had the gate rebuilt as a feature on his estate at Theobalds in Hertfordshire. The move was unpopular, and throughout the 20th century there were appeals that it should be returned to the City of London. In 1911, following the death of Lady Meux, it was proposed to make the gate the centrepiece of a grand garden in front of the Adelphi Terrace, and in the 1950s the architectural practice of Seely and Paget proposed re-erecting it on Ludgate Hill. The eminent photographic studio of Bedford Lemere & Co. worked with the architects to create a photomontage of how the arch would look in its new location.

Each proposal failed until The Temple Bar Trust was established in 1976 with a new determination to save the deteriorating structure. With the support of the City of London Corporation, Temple Bar was eventually re-erected as part of the Paternoster Square development in 2004.

You can read more about the Wren300 programme of events here https://wren300.org

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In the middle of the 18th century, Viscount Bateman of Shobdon Court decided to remodel the Romanesque church on his estate. Demolishing all but the tower, he created an enchanting building with exquisite interiors in the fashionable gothick style. Although later accused of ‘wanton destruction’, Bateman did at least recognise the value of fragments of the earlier church, and had them re-erected as an eye-catcher at the end of an avenue in the park.

John Bateman (1721-1802), a viscount in the Irish peerage, was kept busy at court, and actually can’t take much of the blame/credit for the work. He delegated the planning of the church to his uncle Richard ‘Dickie’ Bateman (1705-1773) who had a history of building follies, and was friends with that great exponent of the gothick, Horace Walpole.

Uncle Dickie also masterminded the creation of the Arches eye-catcher, which was complete by 1752, whilst work on the new church continued. The folly was created out of the chancel arch, flanked by two further arches of carved masonry featuring many different motifs. The arches either side of the main arch are topped with carved panels which were tympana (overdoors) in the ancient church; their subjects are Christ in Majesty and the Harrowing of Hell. The pinnacles, pediments and castellations are 18th century embellishments in the same gothick taste as the new church.

The carvings are the work of what has become known as the Herefordshire School, a workshop that produced flamboyant sculpture for churches in the 12th century (best seen today at the Church of St Mary & St David in Kilpeck). Such work was out of fashion in the middle of the 18th century, and in 1756 a visitor saw the folly and declared the two relief panels to be ‘in a very bad taste’.

But by the middle of the 19th century the style was back in vogue, and of great interest to antiquarians. In 1852 George R. Lewis, an expert on the ancient churches of the area, published an account of Shobdon Church which he dedicated to Lord Bateman. He described the ‘highly interesting remains’, which had been placed in the park, as the most ‘interesting and important collection of Ecclesiastical Sculpture and Architecture’ in the county. His publication also makes clear that the arches were already firmly on the tourist trail as the ‘chief attraction of the neighbourhood’ for lovers of art and architecture.

Lewis’s publication brought the carvings to a wider audience, and they were represented at one of the most important events of the 19th century: the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace. Visitors to the 1854 exhibition were able to appreciate how the ‘richly adorned doorways’ might once have looked. Casts of the tympana had been made (and restored so that the eroded carving was in pristine condition) and were on display in the Fine Arts Courts. One of the casts survived the great fire at Crystal Palace, and was later donated to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where it can be seen today.

The last of the Bateman descendants to live at Shobdon died in 1931, and soon afterwards it was announced that the mansion was to be demolished and the service wing converted into a more manageable home. The contents were sold at auction, and then the house was pulled down: a sale of the building materials disposed of every last brick.

The Woolhope Naturalists Field Club (its members being the heroes of this tale) feared ‘that the arches will be lost as well’, and in 1933 a plan to re-erect the stones as a lych-gate to the church was explored, and then dismissed. The club continued to lobby the Ministry of Works, and in 1947 their officer suggested moving the arches to Hereford Cathedral, a plan that was voted down by the Woolhope Club members. The Society of Antiquaries was in favour of moving the stones, but most people were strongly in favour of keeping the Arches in situ if at all possible, and some kind of shelter was proposed instead. This was still under discussion in 1954, when Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, the great champion of church preservation, suggested a ‘brick and tiled building’ be constructed. Nothing happened, but the idea was revived again in May 1989 and was reported in the Observer: as a solution to the continued erosion of the stones, an English Heritage architect suggested erecting an enormous glass pyramid, 45 feet high, over the Arches. But no-one had the money to pay for a giant cloche, and the idea was quietly dropped.

A programme of recording and consolidation of the Arches was completed in 1997, and the folly remains settled in its idyllic setting. The eye-catcher is less prominent than originally intended because of the flanking trees, but some of these were planted with the express purpose of protecting the arches from the elements.

Visitors continue to ponder whether Bateman’s 18th century work was brutal or brilliant: Shobdon gained a magnificent church in the gothick style and a wonderful eye-catcher, but lost a 12th century church with carvings of the highest order. Folly expert Barbara Jones, writing in the 1970s, called this dilemma a battle between ‘crime and creation’, and although her ‘heart sank’ when she saw the quality of the carving in the eyecatcher, she concluded that the outstanding interiors of the new church were ‘worth any vandalism at all’.

The Arches are on private land, but there is public access on a path from the church http://shobdonchurch.org.uk

The Woolhope Club has been ‘exploring Herefordshire’s history, natural history and geology since 1851’ https://www.woolhopeclub.org.uk

Thank you for reading, and do please get in touch if you have any comments or thoughts on this post. Scroll down to find the comments box. If you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox once a week, please visit the subscribe page.

As summer turned to autumn The Folly Flâneuse was reminded of a jolly jaunt to Jupiter Artland, a sculpture garden just outside Edinburgh, on a glorious day a year ago. A highlight was Pablo Bronstein’s Rose Walk, a pair of pavilions terminating a 25 metre long rose garden, their white-painted tracery magnificent against a clear blue sky. 

The Rose Walk was commissioned by Jupiter Artland in 2017. The pavilions, described as ‘imposing and elaborate follies’, lead the visitor into a small rose garden, which is enclosed by the trelliswork fences which link the two kiosks. Light streams in through the seemingly fragile, but actually incredibly solid, structure, and the standard roses are clearly very content.

Leaving the Chinese pavilion and heading towards the Gothic is like walking down the aisle of a church, and the Folly Flâneuse was soon humming the Bridal Chorus. The airy structure also reminded her of Sir James Hall’s Willow Cathedral. Hall’s theory, first published in 1797, was that early gothic architecture sought unconsciously to emulate the natural shapes of nature – the straights and curves of trunks, boughs and twigs becoming the columns, arches and tracery of the gothic. Bronstein’s site-specific Rose Walk likewise unites architecture and nature.

The gardens and parkland of Jupiter Artland surround the private home of founders Robert and Nicky Wilson, and are also home to sculptures and pavilions by artists including Antony Gormley, Anya Gallacio and Ian Hamilton Finlay, as well as a wonderful sweeping landform by the late Charles Jencks.

Pablo Bronstein, an Argentinian artist now based in London, works in a number of genres, but almost always with architecture as an influence. In 2014 he created a ‘monument to architecture’ for the Folkestone Triennial. His Beach Hut in the Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor pays homage to the great baroque architect, whose style was echoed in the design of the now lost monumental lighthouses which once stood on the south coast.

The convivial visit to Jupiter Artland was organised by The Folly Fellowship, which exists to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes, and garden buildings  http://follies.org.uk

Right now, we all need something to look forward to, so put Jupiter Artland in your diary for 2021 https://www.jupiterartland.org

The 2020 Folkestone Triennial has been postponed until 2021, so something else to dream of  https://www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/folkestone-triennial/folkestone-triennial-2020-the-plot/

One of the few upsides to the current situation is that there is time to rootle around in the attic and find all sorts of forgotten files full of treasure. Opening one box revealed this invitation to the private view of The Sitooteries, 20 years ago this month. What’s a sitooterie you may ask? Well it’s as simple as it sounds – a building to sit out in (the term is supposed to originate in Scotland, so try saying it in your best Caledonian accent).

The Sitooteries show was conceived by Judith King, who at that date must have had a huge business card to accommodate her job title of ‘English Heritage North East Regional Visual Arts Consultant’. She worked with Mark Daniels of Northern Arts to curate the showcase of ‘contemporary takes on the traditional summerhouse and pavilion’. 12 Artists, designers, and architects were invited to design a structure within a footprint of 12 feet by 12 feet (no metric in far off 2000) and with a maximum budget of £10,000.

The structures were placed within the grounds of Belsay in Northumberland, an English Heritage property. The estate houses an ancient castle and a stunning neoclassical mansion, both in partial ruin, as well as formal lawns and a famed woodland garden set within a former quarry. Grandest of the names on the list of designers (at that date) was Sir Norman Foster, then very much in the news in the north-east and beyond for his design for what the press release called the ‘Regional Music Centre’ in Gateshead – the building on the south bank of the Tyne better known to us today as ‘The Sage’ (or The Slug to its detractors) which was opened in 2004.

The Folly Flâneuse has completely failed to find any decent photographs in her albums, but did find photos of three of the models created by the artists during the design process.

Thomas Heatherwick’s ‘Hairy Sitooterie’, which would be perched on the edge of the haha at Belsay, was a cube pierced with 5600 spikes. Heatherwick said at the time that he really enjoyed the challenge of designing a ‘small building’, and his Sitooterie was a prototype that he went on to further develop during his career, most prominently with the UK Pavilion for the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. Heatherwick went on to found Heatherwick Studio, whose design projects include the abandoned Garden Bridge in central London.

Welfare State International designed the ‘Wishbone House’. The space was available for private contemplation or for public celebration, with visitors encouraged to use the shelter for marriage proposals or naming ceremonies.

The Romanesque church created by FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) was covered with thousands of discs which shimmered in the dappled woodland light. In 2002 the sitooterie was installed in a new home at the Grizedale Sculpture Park in Cumbria, where the two seats inside gave views of the surrounding forest. Sadly, visitors to the park were unable to resist prizing off the shiny discs, and its residence was short-lived. More recently Charles Holland of FAT Architecture worked with Grayson Perry and Living Architecture to create the holiday rental ‘A House for Essex’, which also seems to shimmer, but is clad with more durable tiles. Living Architecture describes the house, which opened to guests in 2015, as belonging  ‘to a history of follies, whilst also being deeply of its own time’. It’s well worth following the link below to learn about the whole ‘history’ Perry created for the house.

The Sitooteries show attracted almost 100,000 visitors in the 7 months it was on show at Belsay, and was widely featured in the media, including the New York Times which ran a feature headlined ‘The Summer House, Reinvented’. Further excellent art exhibitions and installations have followed at Belsay over the last 2 decades. For obvious reasons all current plans are on hold, but watch this space https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/

The full list of artists was: Inflate, Claudio Silvestrin, Simon Watkinson, Michael Anastassiades, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Welfare State International, Tania Kovats, Mosedale Gillatt/Octo Design, FAT, Julian Opie, Ashley McCormick.

For Heatherwick’s Shanghai big brother to the Belsay sitooterie see http://www.heatherwick.com/project/uk-pavilion/

For Grayson Perry and FAT’s House for Essex click here https://www.living-architecture.co.uk/the-houses/a-house-for-essex/overview/

Researching her recent post on the Monteath Mausoleum in the Scottish Borders, the Folly Flâneuse chanced upon a mention of a mausoleum at Windlestone, County Durham. Further investigation revealed that the Windlestone and Monteath mausolea are siblings, realised by the same architect and builder, at the same date. Sadly, whilst the Monteath mausoleum has been restored to its former glory, that at Windlestone was demolished late in the 20th century.

NB if you want to catch up on the Monteath Mausoleum read this post first: https://thefollyflaneuse.com/monteath-mausoleum-ancrum-borders/ 

Of the two burial places, the Monteath Mausoleum was the first born, with work commencing in 1864. It is interesting that Sir William chose J. Dick Peddie of Edinburgh as his architect, for although prolific in Scotland the Windlestone mausoleum seems to have been Peddie’s only English commission. Sir William may have been familiar with the plans for the Monteath Mausoleum, possibly from seeing Peddie’s design in the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition in spring 1865. He may also have been familiar with the new banking hall that Peddie had created for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. Opened in 1857, the extension to what had been Sir Laurence Dundas’s 18th century mansion in St Andrew’s Square was widely admired. The dome features 120 stars, and smaller versions of the design would soon feature in the plans for the Monteath and Eden mausolea.

Sir William commissioned Peddie to design a ‘chapel-tomb’ in which could rest the remains of his four children who had died in their infancy. In plan the building was cruciform, and like the Monteath structure it was surmounted with a dome pierced with star-shaped openings. Each arm of the cross was terminated with a pediment, that at the entrance being supported by columns. Advertisements were placed to recruit workmen in June 1765 and, as in Scotland, the work was superintended by James Harkness of Hawick, who must have found the commute to Durham somewhat more cumbersome. Tragically for Sir William and Lady Eden, two daughters died just before work began, and 12 year old Blanche and 8 year old Rose were buried together at the parish church in nearby Merrington until the vault was ready.

Peddie’s initial designs show that, as at the Monteath Mausoleum, sculpted angels were to watch over the dead, although at Windelstone there were to be four on the exterior of the building. They do not appear on the updated design of September 1865 and were probably never implemented.

The ‘mortuary chapel’ at Windlestone was consecrated in May 1868 and in July Sir William noted in his diary that ‘during the night the remains of our six dear children’ were moved into the new building from their previous resting places at St Helen’s, St Helen Auckland, and St John the Evangelist, Merrington. In the pediment was carved a child shepherd with his crook, and a small pelican tearing its breast to symbolise paternal piety. An inscription read ‘Ego sum pastor bonus et agnosco oves meas’: ‘I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep’. Sir William himself was interred there on his death in 1873.

Peddie was clearly proud of the building and a sectional view was published in The Builder in 1880. Two years later he showed a work called  ‘Windlestone Mausoleum’ at the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition, current whereabouts unknown.

In 1911 the gardens at Windlestone were in their prime and a later Sir William was praised as an ‘expert in horticulture’ who had created ‘numerous well-planned walks which are edged with beds filled with an astonishing variety of flowering plants’. Such a walk led to the chapel, as seen in the view above. Curiously it does not show the stars in the dome so either the roof  had been replaced, or it was never built to Peddie’s design. No descriptions have yet been found to provide any firm evidence.

Family financial problems, and the toll of the First World War, saw the estate slip into decline soon after the war ended. The most famous member of the family, Anthony Eden who was the British Prime Minster 1955-57, was born at Windlestone in 1897 and remained a frequent visitor. Eden visited his mother in the Dower House there at Christmas 1935, shortly after he had been made Foreign Secretary. They must have discussed the grave family news that Windlestone was to be sold the following year. The chapel and burial ground were exempt from the 1936 sale, but without the family present the mausoleum attracted the wrong kind of attention. In 1954 the building made headlines across Britain when thieves smashed their way into the underground vault. As they escaped with a lead-lined coffin the body of Robert Eden, who had died aged 9 in 1856, was exposed. The thieves, miners aged 21 and 15, escaped but were arrested when the body was discovered. Guilt got the better of the younger of the party and he confessed.

Further ‘disturbing incidents’ led Sir Timothy Eden, Anthony’s brother, to seek permission from the Diocese of Durham to demolish the chapel, which was now ‘almost ruinous’, and seal the vault. The faculty was granted in November 1957 and local builders were given the contract to start work. The memorial plaques were removed, and taken to Sir Timothy’s home in Hampshire for safekeeping, and the lead was stripped from the roof to deter thieves. The door to the vault was then securely sealed. Revisiting late in life the former prime minister Anthony Eden, now 1st earl of Avon, was shocked to see the mausoleum derelict: ‘I looked along the avenue that led to the chapel. Here was frank ruin. The building lay open to the sky…’

In 1983, accepting that the mausoleum remained a target for vandals, and was at risk from the elements, the Eden family began the process of arranging for the coffins to be removed to St Helen’s, Bishop Auckland. It took over a year to get permission from the Church of England, and then the Home Office, and moving the remains was one of the most unusual jobs handled by Sydney Pearson, Manager of the Co-operative Funeral Service of that town. On December 10th 1984 a short service was held at St Helen’s and the remains were reinterred in the churchyard underneath the east window. Lines from Longfellow, which had previously been on a memorial in the chapel, were added to one of the stones marking the graves:

Oh! not in cruelty, not in wrath
The Reaper came that day
An angel visited the green earth
And took the flowers away

The chapel was demolished to ground level soon after. St Helen’s, St Helen Auckland, is now the Eden resting place, and memorial plaques from the mausoleum have been returned to County Durham and can be seen in the porch. The gate piers from the entrance to the chapel, were given to the town of Rushyford by the Eden family, and re-erected at the entrance to the recreation ground on West Chilton Terrace.

On recent sedate tours of Britain The Folly Flâneuse was intrigued to find two pairs of pavilions which had sadly lost their principal part. Near Towcester in Northamptonshire are the Palladian pavilions that once flanked a fine house. Meanwhile at Mistley in Essex the twin towers of a Robert Adam church have long since lost their linking nave. The surviving pairs are, however, far from forlorn and seem to be throughly enjoying their independence.

The mansion at Stoke Park  was built for Francis Crane in c.1630 and is attributed, with some authority, to Inigo Jones. It is claimed as the first house in Britain to use the Palladian model of a central villa with two flanking pavilions linked by colonnades. This is of course ironic, as the main block was destroyed by fire in 1886 leaving only the pavilions. Curiously, when a new house was built a few years after the fire, it was constructed on a virgin site behind the eastern pavilion rather than on the footprint of the lost house. Stoke Park was requisitioned by the military during World War Two, and allowed to fall into decline when the war ended.

Robert Duff Chancellor became the saviour of Stoke Park when he bought the estate in 1954. He demolished the derelict Victorian house, leaving only a very pretty service wing, and put all of his efforts into restoring the pavilions, with one being converted into a private home. The setting, with ornamental pond and overflowing borders is fabulous.

Until 1928 the estate had stayed in the hands of the same family for around 300 years, but had never once passed from father to son.  Stoke Park then had a number of commercial owners until Robert Chancellor bought it in 1954. He bequeathed it to his nephew, Alexander Chancellor, and as he and his wife Susanna have only daughters the pattern looks set to continue for another couple of generations at least.

At Mistley in Essex two elegant towers look out across the estuary of the River Stour, close to the border with Suffolk. These towers are also the work of a major architect, in this case Robert Adam who designed only one other church: Gunton in Norfolk.

Robert Rigby of Mistley Hall had grandiose plans to turn Mistley into a spa and attract prosperous visitors to the area. The mediaeval church was not considered an attraction so Rigby asked Adam to come up with something a little more modern and elegant. Sadly, Rigby’s plans came to nothing, and by the mid 19th century Adam’s design was in turn considered dated.  Another new church was built nearby, but the towers of the Adam church were remodelled to make them symmetrical and left standing as seamarks for ships on the river.

The towers were sold to local families who planned to use them as mausolea but this plan also failed*. The pavilions were restored in the 1950s and are now in the care of English Heritage.

The Stoke Park Pavilions are used as a stunning wedding and events venue, but are open to the public from 24 July to 20 August 2019 between 3pm and 6pm. Don’t miss this chance to visit. http://www.stokeparkpavilions.co.uk

The exteriors of Mistley Towers can be visited at any time, and the key to one of the towers is available locally, for more information see https://www.englishheritage.org.uk/visit/places/mistley-towers/

* There is however a very curious black granite mausoleum in the churchyard, the resting place of the Norman family.

Not folly, but definitely landscape ornament, The Folly Flâneuse was surprised  to find two ziggurats on a recent damp, but exhilarating, jaunt to East Anglia. Built more than two centuries apart, both were influenced by the architecture of Mesopotamia where the ziggurat was a temple in the form of a stepped pyramid, each level raising it closer to heaven. 

The earlier structure was built in around 1790 by Samuel Boycatt and takes the form of a most unusual church tower. Boycatt was the rector of St Mary’s and is said to have rebuilt the church tower, in the form of a stepped ziggurat pyramid, based on a drawing sent home from Mesopotamia by his son William, who was on the Grand Tour. The tower was to be the family mausoleum, but also proclaimed the importance of the family from afar and became a landmark for sailors on the River Waveney which passes close to the church. The Boycatt name had become Boycott by 1841, and entered the British language soon after when William’s descendant, Charles Cunningham Boycott, increased the rent of tenants on the Irish estate he managed. In response he was ostracised, or as it came to be known, boycotted.

Further north is Gunton Park, a wonderful estate with stunning mansion, Robert Adam church, and acres of deer park. It is also home to one of The Folly Flâneuse’s favourite hostelries, The Gunton Arms. Owned and restored by art dealer Ivor Braka, it is furnished with an amazing selection of artworks from his collection. There are pieces outside in the park too; deer saunter nonchalantly past a lone Gormley figure, and show little interest in a Caro. Often a group can be seen close to a Sol LeWitt structure, a five metre high four sided pyramid built of concrete blocks. LeWitt designed a number of such structures from the 1960s onwards and, like Boycott, drew some inspiration from ancient Mesopotamia.

The Folly Flâneuse does not usually address matters of exact location in these pages, as the thrill of the chase is an essential component of folly-spotting, but in this case a word of warning is required. Check a map. Burgh St Peter parish church is not in the village of the same name but a good two miles away.