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.
country house
The Obelisk, Woolverstone Park, Suffolk
On the banks of the river Orwell in Suffolk there once stood a lofty obelisk. It proclaimed to all the filial piety of Charles Berners, who erected it in 1793 in memory of his father, William. At 96 feet tall, and topped with a golden sun, it was a prominent landmark but sadly it came to a sorry end when it was damaged by fire and then demolished in the middle of the 20th century. But as the image above shows, fragments were salvaged and survive today.
The Gothic Temple, Wentworth Castle, South Yorkshire
In the middle of the 18th century the Earl of Strafford was embellishing his seat at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. A new wing was added to the mansion and the grounds were decorated with temples, columns and garden seats. Strafford asked his lifelong friend Horace Walpole for advice on an ornament for his menagerie, and this little gothic temple was the result.
Agatha Christie’s ‘Dead Man’s Folly’
In 1954 Agatha Christie wrote a novella which was intended to raise money for her local church. Upon completion she was so taken with the story that she decided to develop it into a full novel, and submitted a different story to the fundraising effort. The work she had originally written was called Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, and this work was expanded and eventually published in 1956 as Dead Man’s Folly.
The Temple of Venus, Harewood House, West Yorkshire
Until the middle of the 19th century visitors to Harewood House, near Leeds, could open the doors of the Saloon (today known as the Main Library) on the piano nobile and ‘walk out upon the fine portico’. From there they could admire the lake and plantations created by the finest landscape designers of the 18th century, and on the horizon they would glimpse a fine domed temple.
Grimsbury Castle, Hermitage, Berkshire
On a hilltop near the village of Hermitage, a few miles from Newbury, are the remains of an early Iron Age hillfort which became known as Grimsbury Castle. Close by is a battlemented structure, also called Grimsbury Castle, but this one only pretends to antiquity, being a diminutive sham castle built to house a gamekeeper.
The Wedding Cake, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
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.
Jack the Treacle Eater, Barwick Park, Somerset
This unique structure, topped with a statue, stands close to Yeovil, in Somerset, one of a small group of curious constructions erected in Barwick Park. The folly was probably built by John Newman (1717-1799) in the middle of the 18th century, but by the early 20th century it had become know as ‘Jack the Treacle Eater’ and strange stories were told about Jack’s career and nocturnal activities.
The Summerhouse, Yealand Conyers, Lancashire.
High above the village of Yealand Conyers in Lancashire could once be found this pretty little summerhouse. It was built to take advantage of the ‘extensive and picturesque views of the adjacent bay of Morecambe, and the bold and much admired Mountain Scenery of Cumberland and Westmorland’.
The Clock Tower, Little Ellingham Hall, Norfolk
In the 1850s John Tingey, a Norfolk merchant with a passion for agriculture, began to develop a small estate in the village of Little Ellingham near Attleborough, in Norfolk. Despite investing heavily in new buildings and technology, he was not the owner of the land, and claimed his vast complex of farm buildings was the largest range ‘ever erected by a tenant farmer in England’. But the practical Tingey wasn’t averse to a little bit of ornament, as this clock tower/cottage curiosity attests.