Eighty years ago this month Sir Osbert Sitwell and his good friend Rex Whistler were discussing how materials such as papier-mâché, much used in theatrical set construction, could be used in the ‘arts of landscaping and garden design’. Once the war was over they planned to erect a dramatic eye-catcher at Sir Osbert’s Renishaw home. But two months after their meeting came tragic news: in July 1944 Whistler was killed in action in France.

Having designed sets for drama, ballet and opera, Whistler (1905-1944) had become fascinated by the use of ‘papier-mâché and other kindred substances’ by set builders, and thought they had developed to a point where they would be durable enough to survive outside for around 50 years. He planned ‘great constructions of all kinds’ including colonnades, aqueducts, clusters of towers, gigantic statues, artificial hills and ‘panoramic visions of vast cities’. These were all ideas which he had explored in two dimensions in his art, and in particular his great murals for the Tate Gallery and Plas Newydd.

At Renishaw the men planned to test Whistler’s idea by erecting a ‘vast colonnade’ at the bottom of the garden, framing views over the lake. Sir Osbert (1892-1969) recalled that his father, Sir George Sitwell, had planned something similar in ‘bricks and rubble’, but it had never come to fruition.

As Sir Osbert believed that Whistler, a ‘wonderful and extraordinary being’, had been the only man who could ‘comprehend or undertake’ such a work, this pioneering scheme for Renishaw was abandoned after his death. As Whistler’s brother Laurence later wrote, this plan for a grand garden arcade would have been ‘magnificent in form and flimsy in magnificence: the folly of follies.’

Even if Whistler and Sir Osbert’s plan for Renishaw had been implemented, they believed it unlikely to have a long life. Sir Osbert calculated that the colonnade would have ‘dissolved’ by the end of the 20th century (if not already swept away by the successive generation).

But perhaps they had underestimated the material. Papier-mâché had been used for internal and external ornaments in the 18th century, and there were a number of manufactories in London.

The Temple of Bacchus at Painshill, in Surrey, had ornament within the pediment that was crafted in papier-mâché. It was put up in the early 1760s and, as the photo’ below shows, it was still intact, if a little decrepit, in the 1940s. Papier-mâché was also used in the construction of Painshill’s Turkish Tent. Although the Duffour family business, whose trade card is featured above, was employed at Painshill in 1752-4, no documents have been discovered to link them to the garden buildings.

By the middle of the 20th century the columns that supported the pediment of the Temple of Bacchus had been reused at the house, and the temple was shortly to collapse into total ruin. The Painshill Park Trust commissioned a new temple on the footprint of the old, and the exterior work was completed in 2019.

Whilst not quite the ‘vast city’ of Whistler’s imagination, there was once an entire papier-mâché village. It was created in 1835 by the papier-mâché specialist Charles Frederick Bielefeld for his client, Mr Seymour, who was about to start a new life in Australia. The village consisted of 10 houses which included a villa with an elaborate papier-mâché mantelpiece supported by caryatids. An early exercise in pre-fabrication, or flat-pack, the village was easy to transport and erect, and was tested at Bielefeld’s Staines manufactory. The Illustrated London News reported that during this period the site flooded, but despite being ‘nearly two feet under water’ the buildings were not damaged.

Although the Illustrated London News story was picked up by the Australian press, no further reports have been found, so sadly it is not known if the village ever reached the other side of the world.

As ever, the Flâneuse digresses…. so back to Renishaw. There may not be any papier-mâché scenery, but the estate has plenty of other attractions, including the house itself and two early 19th century garden ornaments, all the work of Sir Sitwell Sitwell (1769-1811). On a lawn near the house stands the Gothic Temple, once a glazed conservatory, and later an aviary, but now a pretty shell filled with the graves of family pets.

Loveliest of all is the Gothic Lodge, built in c.1807 to a design by Sir Sitwell himself. The lodge is now a shell, but sometime in the nineteenth century the central arch was filled to create a dwelling (the drive through the arch had by then been rerouted). In 1938 it was declared ‘unfit for habitation’ and the central room must have been demolished soon after. The lodge then took on its new role as a garden ornament, and what Barbara Jones called a ‘very pretty borderline folly’.

The gardens are open regularly. There is a weekly house tour when the many views of Renishaw by another artist friend of the family, John Piper, can be seen in the eclectic Sitwell collection. There are also fascinating displays in the Sitwell Museum in the stable block.

For more on visiting Renishaw see https://renishaw-hall.co.uk

Thanks to Christine Beevers, Renishaw’s archivist, for her help with this post, and to Michael Symes and Cherrill Sands for information on papier-mâché at Painshill.

And finally… many readers clicked on the link in last week’s post to see Portmeirion from the air with commentary by John Betjeman. There is to be a celebration of John Betjeman and his work on the 40th Anniversary of his death, Sunday May 19th, with a whole evening of films on BBC4. The rarity is The Last Laugh, the biography shown only once, in 2001. The full schedule is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/schedules/p00fzl6b/2024/05/19

High above the town of Buxton, in Derbyshire, stands a squat circular belvedere known as Grinlow Tower, after the hill on which it stands, or, more usually, as Solomon’s Temple. It was built by public subscription in 1896, replacing an earlier structure that had collapsed. But as is so often the case with folly towers, sorting the fact from the fiction is quite a challenge.

The first tower on the site is said to have been built by one Solomon Mycock. Some accounts state he was a local farmer who built the tower in 1840, and others that the folly was erected in around 1800 when he was the landlord of the Cheshire Cheese Inn, and that he had it built to alleviate unemployment in the area. The census returns show that Solomon Mycock, born in 1788, was both an innkeeper and a farmer so there is some substance to the stories. But Solomon rented the land on which the tower stood, and thus it acquired its biblical nickname, but the actual builder lived just down the road at Chatsworth: in his Gem of the Peak, published in 1838, William Adam described the tower as ‘lately built by the order of the Duke of Devonshire’. The Duke’s motive was probably the philanthropic one attributed to Mycock – providing work for local men.

In around 1846 the self-styled ‘Wandering Poet’, James Bannard, wrote Views and Reflections taken from Solomon’s Temple, in which he admired the panoramic view from the tower:

To Solomon’s Temple I repaired,
To take a wider view;
And as I was a stranger there,
All things appeared new.

Built of ‘loose stones’, the tower soon deteriorated, and by the 1890s all that was left was a pile of rubble. The hilltop site, with its extensive views, was still a popular destination, and visitors were able to picnic in a tent erected by Mr Turner, who would collect your hamper and deliver it to the summit. Towards the end of the 19th century the great and the good of Buxton began to plan a more permanent shelter for the townsfolk and tourists.

In February 1894 a committee was formed, and at the first meeting it was unanimously resolved ‘that it is desirable to restore Solomon’s Temple’ (although the ‘restoration’ would in fact be a totally new building). Two local architects submitted plans: W.R. Bryden and his former pupil George Edwin Garlick (1863-1935). It was Garlick’s design for a round tower that could be built for less than £100 that was favoured by the committee, although it was later tweaked. The tower was designed as a shelter and belvedere, with a rooftop viewing platform and flagpole.

An appeal was launched, asking for funds to help ‘make the prominent land-mark worthy of its name’. The 8th Duke of Devonshire set the appeal in motion with a pledge of £25, and donations of various sizes were made by the people and businesses of Buxton. Garlick’s design was displayed in the various banks in town, to encourage donations, and a flyer was distributed encouraging ‘everyone interested in making the surroundings of Buxton more attractive’ to support the campaign. A fund-raising concert was held in the town hall, and by May 1896 sufficient money was available for work to start, and Mr A. Wild was awarded the contract to build the tower.

Meanwhile, the Duke of Devonshire had given permission for local archaeologist Micah Salt (1847-1915) and his son to investigate the site. Their dig confirmed that the tower stood on a barrow, a Bronze Age burial site, and human remains and grave goods were discovered. Salt was an amateur archaeologist (as were most antiquarians at this date) but unusually he was a tailor, rather than the usual leisured clergyman or squire. Although some were a little sniffy (one account called him ‘an intelligent tradesman’), the Salts were respected by the Society of Antiquaries. Their findings were reported in the society’s journal, where they were described as having ‘rendered great service to local archaeology in their excavations’. The antiquities they found at Grinlow, and other Buxton barrows, were displayed to the Fellows of the society in December 1896.

The foundation stone was laid by Col Sidebottom M.P. at the beginning of June 1896, and by September the work was complete and Victor Cavendish M.P., representing the Duke of Devonshire, declared the tower open. The weather was not kind on the opening day, and it was a sometimes undignified walk in the slippery mud to the summit, but in his speech Cavendish hoped that future visitors would enjoy better weather, and that their health might benefit from the ‘invigorating’ air. He praised the tower as an excellent addition to the attractions which Buxton could offer.

The committee tried hard to encourage the locals to call the building the ‘Grinlow Tower’, instead of the ‘common but misleading title Solomon’s Temple now in vogue’, but with limited success, and it remains better known as the latter today.

The tower was hugely popular, and was recreated as one of the crested china ornaments that were so in fashion at the time, as well as featuring on countless picture postcards, including one with a fascinating history. W. Reginald Bray became known as the ‘Autograph King’ on account of his mania for sending postcards to all manner of people, asking them to return the card duly autographed. In 1909 he took an interest in Solomon’s Tower, and the card tells the story:

With the outbreak of the Second World War there were some who thought the tower might be a guide to enemy aircraft. Others disagreed, pointing out that Buxton was home to many more significant landmarks such as John Carr’s 18th century Crescent and the vast dome of the Devonshire Hospital. The little tower was reprieved, and (somewhat ironically) was painted by Karl Hagedorn in 1940 as part of the Recording Britain project, which sought to celebrate Britain’s architecture and countryside at a time of low morale.

Possibly the most curious incident in the life of the folly was featured in a newspaper in 1933. So odd is the report that the Folly Flâneuse had to double-check the paper was not dated April the First. ‘During Whitsuntide’, a reporter from the Nottingham Journal interviewed two Americans, who refused to give their names, but who had come to Buxton with the ‘express purpose of buying the Temple and taking it back to their country to erect there’. Clearly their mission failed, and they must have sailed home empty-handed.

Almost from the start the tower was subject to the usual mindless vandalism. Over time the door was knocked in, the walls covered in graffiti, the windows smashed (those on the upper level have long been blocked up), and the flagpole torn down. In 1987 the Buxton Civic Association led a restoration project with the comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor, who grew up in the town, leading the fundraising campaign. The grade II listed tower remains a popular destination for locals and tourists to the spa town.

Thanks to Ros Westwood, Buxton Museum, for her help with this post.

For walks and access see https://poolescavern.co.uk/woodland-walks/solomons-temple/

For more on W. Reginald Bray, the ‘Autograph King’, who even ‘posted’ himself on occasions, see this fascinating website http://www.wrbray.org.uk

Some of Salt’s finds can be seen in the excellent Wonders of the Peak display at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/buxton-museum/buxton-museum-and-art-gallery.aspx

For more follies painted for the Recording Britain project see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/recording-britain/

Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts, or can share further information, please scroll down to the comments box. 

High on Stanton Moor in Derbyshire stands an austere square tower. It was built sometime after 1832 by the local landowner, William Pole Thornhill (1807-1876), to commemorate Earl Grey, the politician who successfully fought for the reform of Parliament in the early 19th century. 

The Thornhill family lived at Stanton Hall, on the edge of the village of Stanton in Peak, from where the ‘lofty monumental tower’ could be seen ‘rising out of the dark woods’ on the moor. These plantations were fairly new, having been planted after the enclosure of the wild moorland in the first decades of the 19th century (and recognised by a gold medal for planting by the Society of Arts in 1815). William Pole Thornhill inherited the estate at Stanton in 1830, and is remembered as a benevolent landowner, who built a new church for the village as well as modern cottages which he embellished with his quirky monogram. On the road to Rowsley he built a viewing platform and seat where travellers could rest and admire the view of the Wye valley.

Thornhill was a Whig, and a strong believer in reforming parliament by getting rid of rotten boroughs and allowing more people (for which read ‘men’) the vote. The leader of this campaign was Earl Grey (1764-1845), the Whig Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834. Thornhill wrote to Earl Grey on behalf of the people of Bakewell and district in 1831, after Grey’s Reform Bill had failed to pass, urging him to ‘persevere with your endeavours’. This was in contrast to the neighbouring Tory landowner, the Duke of Rutland, who in February 1832 expressed his ‘deep sense of gratitude’ that the House of Lords had ‘refused to pass the bill’ (this is a very simplistic view of the politics, but here we are concerned with the tower).

The Reform Tower (aka Stanton Tower or Earl Grey Memorial Tower) was built soon after The Representation of the People Act finally passed into law at the third attempt in 1832, and originally had a plaque above the ‘oak, iron studded door.’ The tablet was carved with a coronet in ‘bold relief’ and the wording ‘Earl Grey, 1832’. The tower was Thornhill’s very prominent celebration of the success of Earl Grey, and it may be no coincidence that it was visible from the Duke of Rutland’s adjacent estate (although his principal seat was Belvoir, in Lincolnshire, the Duke’s Derbyshire properties included Haddon Hall and, very close to the tower, a hunting box called Stanton Woodhouse).

Until the 1950s it was possible to climb the tower and admire the extensive view. Sadly, continued vandalism forced the owner to close the tower to prevent further damage or accident. The inscribed stone above the entrance shattered and fell in the 1980s. In 2005 the landowner and the Peak District National Park discussed the future of the tower: it was hoped that funds could be found to replace the stone panel, and this was written into the Stanton Moor Conservation Plan of 2007, but sadly there has been no progress and the gaping space remains empty.

Elsewhere in the woodland the Thornhill family had a number of rocks carved with initials, crests, and dates. These are wonderful curiosities, all the more intriguing as their history seems to have been lost (as might you be if you try to find them). One is thought to commemorate Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, and another the Duke of York. But exactly what they did to earn the Thornhills respect is not known.

The slopes below the tower are full of industrial remnants of the quarrying industry, developed from the middle of the 19th century. But here too art has played a part…

A large part of Stanton Moor was given to the National Trust in 1934, but the tower remains in private ownership. There is a network of footpaths allowing access.

Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts, or can add any further information, please scroll down to the comments box below. 

Having fallen in to serious disrepair, the Hermitage at Kedleston was restored by the National Trust in 2016. The project was made more difficult because a large, and very lovely, plane tree has established itself alongside the building, which also makes (non-professional) photography something of a challenge.

In the 1760s Lord Scarsdale and Robert Adam conceived a circuit walk around the park at Kedleston, with views in to the house, and out into the country beyond. The three mile gravel walk was bordered by flowering shrubs, and punctuated with buildings including a Turkish Tent; but only the Hermitage survives today. There’s no evidence that a hermit was ever employed to inhabit the folly, and as it was furnished with a tea table it is more likely that it was used as a tranquil spot for refreshments.

The Folly Flâneuse followed in the footsteps of 18th century visitors and stayed at the inn designed by Robert Adam.