In the grounds of Loxley Hall, near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, there once stood a very curious structure known as ‘the Grotto’ or ‘Robin Hood’s Chapel’. It incorporated fragments which had been salvaged from the mansion when it was ‘partially rebuilt’ early in the eighteenth century. According to legend, Loxley Hall was the birthplace of Robin Hood, or alternatively the spot where he wooed Maid Marian, and hence the romantic name given to this decidedly quirky garden building (this detail is from the only known view of the folly, read on to see a little more).

Loxley was the ancient seat of the Ferrers and descended via the Kynnersleys until 1815 when Thomas Sneyd took the name Sneyd-Kynnersley as a condition of inheriting the estate. The association with ‘Robin Hood of Loxley’ is hotly contested, with Loxley near Sheffield and Locksley in Nottinghamshire also claiming to be the birthplace of the famous outlaw. What was said to be Robin Hood’s hunting horn could be seen in Loxley Hall in living history but, like the grotto, it has since vanished without trace.

Stebbing Shaw (1762-1802) called the mansion at Loxley ‘curious’ in the first volume of his 1798 history of Staffordshire. Sadly, he didn’t live to complete the planned subsequent volumes where he had intended to write at length about Loxley Park. He did however produce an engraving of the house, then the seat of Clement Kynnersley (1744-1815)

Thomas Sneyd-Kynnersley (1774-1844) seems to have lived at Loxley during his Uncle Clement’s lifetime, but took full possession upon his death in 1815. Soon after that date Sneyd-Kynnersley began work on updating the mansion. Burke’s A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain of 1852 suggests the work was undertaken around 1817, and it was complete by 1821 when this view was engraved.

According to Burke, Sneyd-Kynnersley also made a number of improvements to the estate following his uncle’s death. This included planting, draining and improving the farmhouses and cottages.

An exact date for the construction of the folly is not known, but it is likely to date from this same period of activity. It was certainly extant before Sneyd-Kynnersley’s death in 1844, as it appears on the tithe map of 1843. The folly is shown in a long and narrow shrubbery, cut through with a ride called the Long Walk. It no doubt served as an eye-catcher along the route, and a place to stop for shelter and refreshments. How and when it acquired the name of ‘Robin Hood’s Chapel’ (some locals know the Long Walk as Maid Marian’s Way) is not clear. It seems to be an oral tradition as the building is not named on the tithe or Ordnance Survey maps, and the few references to it in print refer to it as ‘the grotto’.

The fragments are an eclectic mix: Corinthian capitals, garlands of flowers and heraldic shields – the seated greyhound of the Kynnersleys and the lion rampant of the Sneyds. The Stebbing Shaw view of the old house seems to show pilasters to either side of the door to the house, which might be the source of the capitals, and presumably some of the decoration from the tympanum was reused. The original location of the grotesque keystone remains a mystery. This grainy photograph, taken from a postcard, is the only view of the grotto that can be found.

The best description of ‘the grotto’ comes from an account of a lively fête champêtre held in the grounds of Loxley Park in 1859, when the Uttoxeter Literary and Scientific Society had a grand day out. Their report tells that the windows of the grotto were glazed with small, square panes of glass carrying emblems of the Ferrers, also rescued from the old house (a writer a few years later noted that only one piece survived intact). An elaborately carved oak door, once at the entrance to the old mansion, formed the way in to the grotto.

Once inside, visitors would have found themselves standing on a floor made of the teeth and bones of animals whilst admiring walls ‘encrusted with thousands of shells, and a variety of minerals in cement disposed in various devices’. On the back wall, the shells were arranged to look like a ‘mullioned Gothic window.’

The hall was requisitioned during the Second World War and in the years immediately after the hostilities ended it housed a European Voluntary Worker’s Hostel. In 1954 it was purchased by the local council for use as a school, and today is home to an educational trust which provides for boys with social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH).

The folly was not mentioned in the 1974 Staffordshire volume of the ‘Buildings of England’ series by Nikolaus Pevsner, but it must have been standing at that point as the structure was added to the National Heritage List for England in 1985 (grade II). It was named as the ‘Garden House’, and the report noted it was roofless at that date. In 1998 local historian Jim Foley wrote that he was saddened to see the building ‘crumbling away soon be lost to posterity for ever’ and by 2013 it was gone.

The stones of the grade II listed structure were apparently taken into storage for safekeeping (the Flâneuse is assuming that schoolboys and a mysterious derelict structure were not thought to be a good mix). However, despite appeals to various offices within the local and county councils, discovering the current whereabouts of the carved fragments seems to be as impossible as proving the identity of Robin Hood.

Thank you for reading. If you can solve the Mystery of the Missing Masonry please get in touch. General comments are also very welcome via the box at the foot of the page 

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Not far from the handsome village of Gifford, in East Lothian, is Broadwoodside, a small estate centred around a restored farmstead. On the edge of woodland, and with a view to the house, stands what appears to be a Georgian temple. It has actually stood on this spot for a couple of decades, having started life as a portico added to a Scottish mansion in the Victorian period. It was moved here as a landscape feature when the mansion was remodelled in the last years of the twentieth century.

That mansion was Strathleven, near Dumbarton, a house completed in the early years of the eighteenth century, and originally called Levenside. The house changed names after it was bought by James Ewing in the 1830s. Ewing extended the property and added the portico seen in this postcard view.

By the later years of the twentieth century Strathleven House was in a sorry state after years of vandalism and general neglect had taken their toll. In 1986 the mansion was bought by the Scottish Heritage Buildings Trust and a programme of restoration, which would last for fourteen years, was begun under the direction of architect Nicholas Groves-Raines. The decision was taken to return the house to its original appearance, and the planners gave consent for the Victorian portico to be taken down on condition that a new home could be found for it.

Nicholas Groves-Raines was also the architect who worked with Robert and Anna Dalrymple to transform Broadwoodside from an abandoned shell into the very attractive quadrangle of buildings seen today. Work began in 1997 to restore the original farmstead and Groves-Raines designed a vivid yellow ogee-roofed pavilion to fully enclose the inner courtyard – now a beautiful garden and home to William, the parrot with a penchant for Brahms.

How could the Dalrymples resist when Groves-Raines rang to offer them the Strathleven portico? A perfect site for it was chosen across the fields from the house, creating a feature on a circuit walk around the Dalrymples ferme ornée. Work was completed in 2000, with the temple serving the classic twin purposes of being an eye-catcher from the house, and a destination from which the view back to the steading can be appreciated.

Broadwoodside is open on a number of days each year and by appointment. A sumptuous book on the estate will be published next year (Robert Dalrymple is a noted book designer) but meanwhile you can read more here.

The Dalrymples are continuing a noble tradition of repurposing porches and porticos as garden features. To give just a few examples…

At Hodnet Hall in Shropshire the portico of nearby Apley Castle was salvaged from the 1950s demolition process by Brigadier Algernon George William Heber-Percy (1904-1961) who intended to use it as a garden feature. This did not happen in his lifetime, but his family had it re-erected in a field opposite the hall in his memory, with work complete in 1970.

When the Royal Spa Concert Hall in Harrogate was pulled down in 1939-40 the stone portico was rescued by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. After some years in storage, the masonry was presented in 1961 to the Yorkshire Horticultural Society, which was extending its show gardens at Harlow Carr on the edge of Harrogate. The idea was to erect the portico as a ‘Grecian Temple’, for the directors of the society believed ‘no ornamental garden of any pretensions should be without one’. The plan to put up the pediment was abandoned for reasons of cost, but the columns remain a popular attraction in the gardens (now Royal Horticultural Society).

On a vast scale is the landscape feature in Heaton Park, on the edge of Manchester, created from the colonnade of the old Town Hall when it was rebuilt in 1912. The local authority, tasked with the maintenance of this feature, must wish that they too had simply erected the columns.

Thanks to Robert & Anna Dalrymple for their help with this post, and thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome and you can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page. 

Nestled in woodland above a bend in the river Tweed stands what is today known as the Gledswood estate. Close to the West, or Eagle Lodge, stands a curious stretch of wall which is topped with rough stone pinnacles and cut through with an arched opening. When first built this would have framed a view across the valley of the Tweed, but it is now blocked by mature trees.

The estate was originally called Gladswood, and was known as such throughout the nineteenth century. The house was built in the first years of that century by Alexander Kinghorne (1770-1846), for the Edinburgh merchant William Sibbald (1748-1817). In 1830 Gladswood was described as a ‘charming little villa’ with a front elevation constructed of ‘neatly cut and polished stone, decorated with pillars’.

Although the view from the arch is now blocked, it would have offered a similar panorama to that seen from the famous spot known as ‘Scott’s View’ because Sir Walter Scott is said to have loved this vista. The Tweed can be seen bottom right, and Gledswood is just out of sight on the bank to the right.

Kinghorne was also responsible for laying out the grounds, which were admired by visitors. Thomas Trotter, a naval surgeon and poet, published ‘Gladswood Bank: A Song’ in an anthology of his work in 1829. He was delighted with the scenery, writing:

But Fancy’s softest, sweetest dream,
Is Gladswood’s bank and Tweed’s dear stream.

The estate was offered for sale in 1832, and the magnificent view from the property was the highlight – the panorama was said to encompass the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, as well as the Eildon Hills. The house, with ‘excellent garden’, was purchased by Lt Col George Spottiswoode.

By the 1850s the house was surrounded by ‘plantations and full grown fir and forest trees’. Ordnance Survey maps from this period show an extensive network of walks and rides through the wooded banks of the Tweed, dotted with seats. Queen Victoria paused at the mansion in 1867, by which time it was home to the Meiklam family, and their daughter presented the monarch with a posy of flowers. The estate was still in the Meiklam family in 1904 when it was let to Lord and Lady George Scott, who were no doubt tempted by the sport and by the ‘remarkably fine prospect’.

Frustratingly, what none of these early maps and accounts mention is the pretty viewpoint, so it remains unclear which of the owners or tenants of Gladswood erected it. One clue to a possible builder is that Colonel Spottiswoode of Gladswood was the ‘favourite brother’ of John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, an estate not far away near Lauder.

There are ornamental arches on that estate in a similar rustic style (above) so the family may have shared ideas (the Flâneuse wrote about Spottiswoode here). If Lt Col Spottiswoode was the builder, then the Gladswood arch was extant by 1857, the year in which he died. The arches on the Spottiswoode estate were built later in the century.

At Gledswood today mature trees block the wonderful prospect. Stones from the rustic pinnacles have fallen and can be found in the undergrowth below the arch, but it remains a wonderful tranquil spot, away from the hordes of tourists at Scott’s View.

The arch can be found on the roadside just a short distance from Eagle Lodge (originally known as the West Lodge), so named from the birds that top the gate piers. Some claim that the lodge is named erroneously, and that the birds are not eagles but kites – the Scottish word for the birds being gled (or glade), hence Gladswood and later Gledswood.

From the lodge the road leads downhill, past the arch viewpoint, until the wonderful natural scenery is interrupted by two equally attractive marvels of civic engineering – the eighteenth-century road bridge and the Leaderfoot viaduct, opened in 1863 to carry the railway over the Tweed. Both are now redundant after the closure of the railway line, and the erection of a new road bridge in the 1970s (modern visitors have to somehow erase this from their view as it could not be described as picturesque).

Thanks to Chris B for mentioning the arch and setting the Flâneuse and the Uncouth Companion the fun challenge of finding the spot. Thanks to you for reading and, as ever, your comments are very welcome. You can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page.

In the late 1730s Mark Amberley, of the Cottington Place estate in Southshire, England, built a sham castle on his estate. He also built a shell-encrusted grotto, which became home to the obligatory bearded hermit dressed in brown hessian robes. The creation of these follies is detailed in the family archive of letters and diaries, which was explored by a descendant in the twentieth century.

The book looks afresh at the murder of Mark Amberley, who was shot in the head on the very day that he returned to Cottington in 1768, after spending twenty three years in exile after the Jacobite Rebellion. The dust jacket gives a precis of the plot and notes that the story was based on unpublished material. But if one reads on to the end the truth is revealed: ‘Mr Bamford’s novel is, of course, pure fiction as are the statements in the above paragraphs’. The Flâneuse is always delighted to discover fictional follies, and the Amberleys, the murder, the sham castle and grotto are all the creation of Frances Bamford, and appear in his 1946 novel Return to Cottington.

Francis Bamford who was born on the Isle of Wight in 1905, the son of a clergyman. In his twenties he mixed with the Bright Young Things and became close friends with the Sitwell family of Renishaw and Weston. The patriarch of the family was Sir George Sitwell, and when his wife died in 1937 it was feared that Sir George’s eccentricities would no longer be checked by his spouse. Osbert Sitwell asked Bamford, who was then unmarried and in need of funds, to be secretary to his father and to accompany Sir George to his Tuscan castle of Montegufoni. When Bamford asked what the duties were, Osbert’s casual reply was, ‘Well, you must just take Mother’s place.’

In 1939 Bamford described himself as ‘Archivist, Historian and Author’, and by that date he had already published the correspondence of a Georgian lady as well as a history of Edinburgh written with Sacheverell Sitwell and a novel. With the outbreak of war, Bamford joined the Gordon Highlanders (his mother was descended from the Duke of Gordon). As the war progressed, Bamford found himself stationed at Stromness on Orkney. There he used his spare time to write his second novel, Return to Cottington, which was published in 1946 and dedicated to his friend Sir Osbert Sitwell (Sitwell’s signed copy is in the library at Renishaw, his Derbyshire seat).

Readers may wish to read the story for themselves, so we will leave the plot and consider the follies built by our protagonist, Mark Amberley. On the edge of the park at Cottington was a small hill, and upon its ‘flattened crest’ Amberley built ‘an improbable ruin consisting of twelve open arches flanked by two incomplete towers’. Work began soon after he inherited the estate in 1738, and was complete by 1742. As well as improving the view from the dining room, the family visited the folly for ‘pick-nicks’.

With the sham castle complete, Amberley began work on his ‘curious Gothick grotto’. This was a natural cave, in a disused quarry, which was extended to create two rooms – the first highly-decorated with shells and stone seats ‘carved to represent oyster-shells supported upon dolphins’. This led to a second chamber with a fireplace with its chimney ‘carried up through the solid rock’. From the grotto there were superb views to the mansion designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Peter the Hermit took up residence as soon as work was complete.

Perhaps the interior of the Cottington grotto was a little like that at Oatlands in Surrey, although that example was not built until two decades later.

In the late 1730s sham ruined castles were yet to appear in British parks, so if he had only been real Mark Amberley would have been at the forefront of folly building. We don’t know which genuine shams may have inspired Bamford, but perhaps he knew Hagley in Worcestershire…

… or Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

After the war Bamford was employed as librarian to the Duke of Wellington: in 1950 they jointly published The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, based on papers in the Duke’s archive (genuine documents this time). By that date Bamford and his wife Marianne had moved to Ayton, near Berwick upon Tweed, to open an antique shop although Bamford also continued to write. He became known as an expert on Scottish furniture, but his sudden death in 1982 meant that his research was published posthumously a year later. Bamford may also have been camera-shy, as the Flâneuse has failed to find a single photograph of him.

According to the story, the sham castle was still standing when Return to Cottington was published in 1946, although by then it loomed over modern housing built in Cottington’s park. The impoverished Amberleys had sold the estate to the County Council, and the mansion was in use as a maternity home for working class mothers. The grotto was intact, but the walls were carved with the names of young men and women ‘seeking for one reason or another its sombre solitude’. Should she ever find herself in Southshire the Flâneuse will endeavour to discover if any fragments survive today.

Meanwhile…

Researching this post was great fun so the Flâneuse will be raising her glass to a group of friends – Guy Marshall for alerting me to the book; antiquarian booksellers Adam and Marianne Naylor for rapidly posting a copy to the eager Flâneuse; Chris Beevers, Archivist at Renishaw Hall, for help with the Sitwells and Mike Cousins (aka the Garden Historian) for helping with a chronology of sham castles and grottoes.

And thank you for reading. As ever, you can share your thoughts via the comments box at the foot of the page.

A little east of the hamlet of Azerley, near Kirkby Malzeard, stands a pretty little cottage with a most unusual feature – from the back of the building rises a slender castellated tower. It was built by the Crompton family of Azerley Hall as a belvedere from which the ‘prospects of the most picturesque description’ were obtained, but it also served as a vantage point to look out for poachers.

Azerley Hall had been a seat of the Dawson family, but was offered to let in 1830 after the death of William Dawson two years earlier. It was described as a ‘Desirable Country Residence’ with outbuildings and pleasure grounds in a ‘genteel neighbourhood’. Robert Edward Crompton (1805-1840) was in residence in the 1830s, and the cottage and tower are believed to have been built soon after 1839 (the tower does not appear on the tithe map of that year, but does appear on the O.S. map surveyed between 1849 and 1853).

In 1861 the tenants were John Jackson and William Wilkinson, both described a few years earlier as ‘game watchers in the employ of Col Crompton’. This was Edward’s brother, Joshua Samuel Crompton (1799-1881). Despite the presence of the look-out tower the problems with poachers continued, particularly under cover of darkness, and being a game watcher was a dangerous job. In 1856 Jackson was pelted with rocks by a trespasser, and a year later an intruder attempted to shoot him. Fortuitously, the gun failed, and the poacher was caught and jailed.

The tower also had a more refined use as an observatory ‘from whence to survey the country, not the heavens’, and the rooftop gave a ‘most extensive and interesting view of the surrounding country’. This view often featured the Bedale Hounds in action, and the tower may have allowed the ladies of the family the opportunity to ‘accompany the sportsmen in the chace [sic] with their eyes, if not amazonially on horseback’ – a potential purpose of belvederes suggested by Francis Goodwin in his Rural Architecture of 1835.

The Crompton family opened the grounds of Azerley Hall (by now alternatively known as Azerley Chase) for charitable events such as the Wesleyan Sunday School treat of 1898. On that day there were games in the gardens and a tea, but the highlight was the chance to climb the tower and admire the ‘splendid panoramic view’.

Later still the tower was used by the Corps of Signallers as an army training camp: in 1911 they practised signalling between Ripon Cathedral, Kirkby Malzeard church and Azerley Tower. In the 21st century the top of the tower was put to a novel sporting purpose as a stand for firing clays at a charity clay pigeon shoot.

The whereabouts of a small stone model of the tower, which apparently once stood in front of the full-size version, remains a mystery. It was last seen in situ in 1978 but, despite an appeal for information via the local paper some 20 years later, no trace can been found today.

The cottage and tower ensemble is listed at grade II. It is a private home and there is no public access but the top of the tower can be glimpsed from public footpaths and from the road between Kirkby Malzeard and Ripon (with great care).

Thank you for reading. If you know more, or would like to share any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page. If you would like to receive further complimentary folly stories, please sign up via the subscribe button.

On a wooded eminence on the Foxley Estate, Herefordshire, stands a tower that was built as a belvedere by the Price family in the first half of the eighteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century it had fallen into disrepair, but was restored in the 1970s with the guidance of an impressive group of experts in the field.

The Foxley estate is best known as the home of Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829), the writer on the picturesque, but the belvedere tower was built before he was born. A letter of 1714 notes that ‘Mr Price is resolved to have a Summer House on top of the mount’. The Mr Price in question was either Robert Price (1653-1732) who built a new mansion at Foxley after he inherited the estate upon the death of his father-in-law in 1691, or his son Uvedale Tomkins Price (1685-1764). Both were keen improvers.

An exact date for the construction of the tower has not yet been found, but it was extant by 1738 when a visitor noted the ‘Room’ which had been erected ‘upon the top of a very pretty Hill of a great Hight, from whence you have also a vast variety of Views for a prodigious Circle round’.

The Castle and Mount at Foxley sketched by Robert Price in 1744. Courtesy of Hereford City Library.

A tourist in 1752 also admired the ‘Prospects’ from the ‘Summer House’, but after that date the building seems to have been ignored, or perhaps it was by then hidden by maturing trees? Visitors instead were shown Lady Lift (sometimes Lady’s Lift), a loftier hill north of the house, which had been laid out with winding walks to the summit and allegedly gave a view of nine counties.

In the nineteenth century the estate was purchased by the Davenport family, who are still the owners today. By the 1880s the folly, called simply ‘The Castle’ on a sketch taken in the middle of the eighteenth century, had become known as ‘Ragged Castle’ and is marked as such on the Ordnance Survey maps.

The mansion was occupied by the American and Canadian military during the Second World War. Presumably they were not good tenants for the house was pulled down in 1948 as beyond repair, although the Davenport family retained the estate and continued to live locally. The folly was largely intact until 1955 when the lead was stolen from the roof.

In September 1974 Major D. J. Davenport wrote to the Georgian Group asking if anyone could help him find out more about his folly, which was ‘somewhat of an enigma’. The Georgian Group forwarded the letter to architect and folly aficionado Neville Hawkes, who in turn requested the assistance of Dorothy Stroud (curator at the Soane Museum and author of books on Capability Brown and Humphry Repton), Mavis Batey (leading light of the Garden History Society) and Marcus Binney (contributor to Country Life and co-curator of the exhibition The Destruction of the English Country House, which would open at the Victoria & Albert Museum less than a month after Major Davenport’s letter). Sadly, the responses of this learned trio have not been found.

Hawkes, a passionate recorder of follies, was particularly intrigued by Major Davenport’s description of the tower as being diamond-shaped in plan, and confessed that although he had a huge collection of photographs of follies, he had ‘no diamond’. Keen to fill the gap, Hawkes visited the Ragged Castle in October 1974 and snapped the derelict folly.

The Major, obviously impressed by the enthusiastic architect, asked him to draw up plans to restore the little tower in memory of his father who had ‘loved these woods’.

Hawkes believed that the gothic window frames, fragments of which remained in situ, were later additions as they could be seen to be a poor fit. He therefore proposed restoring the tower with 12 paned sash windows.

The restored tower (which sadly the Flâneuse could not gain permission to see) is listed at grade II and is now a Davenport family memorial. There is no public access.

The Flâneuse is grateful to Dr Michael Cousins for sharing the accounts of early visitors to the castle and to the Folly Fellowship for permission to publish the photographs.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox every Saturday morning please click the subscribe button. 

In the village with the simple name of ‘Hill’, near Sutton Coldfield in what was then Warwickshire, lived retired pawnbroker Hugh Lewis. At the time of his death in 1908, Lewis was remembered as ‘a man of very eccentric habits’ and chief amongst these were the building of a high wall around his house and the erection of a ‘Look out Tower’ on Hill Village Road – inevitably it became known as Lewis’s Folly.

The plans for the tower, dated 1892,  survive, and they show that Lewis (1832-1908) asked Noah Deeks junior to draw up a plan for a five storey tower with a flat roof for the prospect. Deeks was variously described as architect, surveyor and Inspector of Nuisances (a large and unappetising category that included sewers and toxic soups).

Another interesting survival is the document announcing Lewis’s intention to build the ‘Look out Tower’ which was submitted with the plan, and approved on 26 August 1892 – planning permission was not yet a universal requirement, but some local authorities checked plans on grounds of public health and sanitation. At that date Lewis gave his address as Boswell Road in Sutton Coldfield, but he would soon move to Woodfield House on Hill Village Road, and the tower was erected a short distance from his new home. The bricks were said to be destined for a new church in Birmingham, but when the plans fell through they were acquired cheaply by Lewis for his new project.

Lewis died in 1908, leaving a brief handwritten will in which he left his entire estate, estimated at £80-£90,000 (before duties), to the Guest Hospital in Dudley. This was a substantial sum for Lewis had reportedly speculated ‘with great success’ in his retirement. Affairs were almost settled when Lewis’s estranged wife appeared and challenged his will: the hospital trustees agreed to pay Mrs Lewis an annual allowance, allowing the hospital to benefit from the bulk of the bequest. Lewis was buried at St Peter’s, Little Aston, where an inscription records only his dates and his benevolence to the hospital.

Woodfield House and adjoining parcels of land were offered for sale in 1909. Lot 8 was a field, with frontage onto both Hill Village Road and the Lichfield Road (now the A5127), on which stood the ‘brick erection know as The Tower’. A clue to the tower’s chance of survival is given in the auctioneer’s description of the field as ‘absolutely ripe for immediate development’. The tower was apparently unpopular with the locals (although they had apparently been happy to watch fireworks set off from its rooftop), and within days of Lewis’s death the local paper reported that the ‘hope has frequently been expressed that it may not be long before this not altogether picturesque landmark is razed to the ground’. The unloved (and, in fairness, unlovely) tower disappeared soon after and, as expected, the land was developed and Hill Village Road is now lined with houses.

Woodfield House is also gone, replaced by flats, but you can still see part of its high brick wall. According to local legend this was built by Lewis to alleviate poverty. The Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group’s website records that Lewis had ‘acquired a large quantity of bricks cheaply. At that time there was a steady trickle of workmen tramping along Lichfield Road hoping to find work and a better life in Birmingham, but rather than give them charity Lewis would offer them a square meal in return for a stint on building the wall.’

This stretch of wall is today the only reminder in Hill village of the benevolent and eccentric Hugh Lewis. Thanks to the Garden Historian for suggesting the tower as a subject.

Thank you to all of the readers who sent congratulations to the Flâneuse on the 400th post on this site. Your kindness made it all the more frustrating when the technology failed last week. This, after a brief hiatus, is post number 401. Thank you for reading. 

Close to Prestwick Airport, a few miles from Ayr, a handsome monument stands on high ground. It was erected in the middle of the eighteenth century to commemorate a local boy, of very humble beginnings, who had made a fortune in the service of the East India Company. The monument came close to total collapse before, hurrah, a local campaign secured its future.

Macrae is said to have left his native Ayr when little more than a boy and found work on boats leaving the busy port. He worked his way up the ranks to the influential position of Governor of Fort St George, a British power base at Madras (now Chennai) in India. In his time as Governor (he held the position from 1725-1730), Macrae ‘acquired a handsome Estate’, and he returned to Britain a wealthy man in around 1731. In 1736 he was said to be laying out his fortune in ‘purchasing Lands’ and this included an estate at Monkton, near Ayr, which he called Orangefield in honour of William III – Macrae also funded the erection of a statue of William of Orange in Glasgow in 1735.

Four years after Macrae’s death in June 1744, work began on his monument. No records have been found to explain the planning behind the structure – there is no inscription and the architect is unknown. We don’t even know who commissioned the monument, although Macrae’s sole heir and executor the Countess of Glencairn, née Elizabeth Maguire, seems likely. Whilst there has been speculation that the structure was intended as Macrae’s mausoleum, his will simply requests that he be ‘decently buried’.

John Swan began work on the monument in 1748, but the near complete structure is recorded as having collapsed the following year before being rebuilt in 1750 (and this is corroborated by the discovery of damaged stone in the rubble infill during the restoration). This information, the only early history of the monument the Flâneuse can find, is recorded in the second volume of James Paterson’s History of Ayr, published in 1852, and all later descriptions of the fine monument rely on his account.

A century after it was built surveyors mapping the county of Ayrshire noted ‘Macrae’s Monument’ as a ‘very prominent object’ (earlier maps simply mark the structure as ‘Monument’). It is unsurprising then that in the second half of the nineteenth century it was used as a landmark for the hunt, with many reports of the hounds and their prey racing by. Robert Bryden (1865-1939) took this view in 1912, and by that date the monument was ‘in a rather dilapidated condition’, although no major issues can be seen in his fine etching.

In 1967 an officer from the National Monuments Record of Scotland visited the site. He wrote that the ‘small pylonic monument’ was ‘well executed’ and noted the maritime motifs which featured on the four faces. There was however ‘considerable decay of the stonework’, although some repointing was underway when he visited.

These motifs include a shell, dolphins, a stylised castellated building on a rock, a trident and an anchor. Mr Hay’s detailed investigation of the monument took longer than expected, with an added delay caused by his Land Rover getting stuck in a stony patch. Disgruntled and hungry, he finished his report with the note ‘No lunch’.

The tower continued to decay, and by the end of the twentieth century it was in a most precarious condition, having been damaged in a storm. The monument was restored in the early years of the current century under the auspices of the Three Towers Trust working with Ayr-based ARPL Architects. There was strong support from the landowner, Glencara Estates, and from the local community, as well as funding from Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The obelisk had to be taken down to enable the rebuilding of the square base, and the shaft was re-erected once that had been consolidated.

Macrae was buried in Monkton churchyard, but no stone marks the spot (although a modern headstone records that he is interred somewhere in the churchyard). The story is told locally that a group of Macrae’s friends, in high spirits after a two-day drinking spree, exhumed his body from the churchyard and re-interred it in the newly-completed monument. Human remains of four adults and two children were found in the monument during the restoration work, but were thought to be of a later date. Like much else about the monument, the identity of those whose remains were found remains a mystery.

In the jet-setting 1940s Macrae’s former estate became home to Prestwick Airport, with the mansion as its centrepiece – Orangefield is probably the only country house to end its days with an air traffic control tower plonked on its roof. The building is sadly no more.

The monument (upgraded to Category A in 1994), was once a distant landmark, but is now on the edge of a new housing estate and is easy to reach from the road named…

The Flâneuse thanks Susan Kellerman for sharing her research into the monument, undertaken at the time of its restoration. Thanks also to Peter Drummond, of Peter Drummond Architects. Peter was part of the ARLP team at the time of the restoration.

UPDATE: thanks to John Malaiperuman for the fascinating observation that the monument echoes the tower and spire of the church of St Mary at Fort St George, a building that Macrae would have known well.

This is the 400th post to be published after 8 years of the Folly Flâneuse. Thank you for reading!

Late in the eighteenth century, the Grant family lost their livelihood in their native Scotland and set out to find work in the rapidly developing industries of Lancashire. Pausing to rest on their journey they admired the ‘beautiful valley’ of the River Irwell, which reminded them of Speyside. Decades later they bought the ground, and erected this tower to commemorate that moment.

William Grant (1769-1842) recounted this history in a letter of 1839. He told how he found work in Bury, historically Lancashire but now Greater Manchester, and with his brothers became ‘very successful’ in the textile business (the ‘rags to riches’ story of the brothers is said to have inspired the characters the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens). In 1827 the family added the Park Estate to their considerable land holdings, and there, as Grant wrote, they erected a ‘monument to commemorate my father’s first visit to the valley’. Almost immediately the building became known as ‘Grant’s Tower’.

The architect is not known, and few early descriptions of the tower can be found, but we can assume that the Grants used the tower as a belvedere and party venue. There were wedding festivities at John Grant’s Nuttall Hall in 1848 and banners were hoisted on Grant’s Tower, high above the house (Nuttall Hall was demolished in 1952 and the grounds are now a public park).

The public were initially invited to visit on set days, but by 1892 it was open daily and a popular destination for picnic parties. Refreshments were available, and no doubt picture postcards were also sold – many different views of the tower were in circulation.

In the early years of the twentieth century the tower could be discovered in many kitchens  as it featured on the label of a ‘delicious relish’ called Tower Sauce. Manufactured by Scott & Rosse of Bury, this condiment could, if one believed the advertisements, aid digestion, produce an appetite and ‘please every palate’.

It is first mentioned in newspaper ads in 1904, and the marketing department hit their stride in 1905 when a housewife could send the company three one penny stamps and in return receive a free sample of the sauce and six picture postcards. The cards were ‘guaranteed to be free from advertisements’ – were they perhaps views of the tower?

By 1911 the tower was ‘showing signs of neglect’ and in 1914 the interior of the tower was said to be in a ‘ruinous condition’. There were plans to repair the ‘famous Lancashire landmark’, but the outbreak of the First World War meant that plans were shelved.

Around 1940, with another war underway, Ramsbottom Urban Council began negotiations with the tower’s owner, Sir Peter Lawson, to take control of the tower as soon as the hostilities were over. No agreement was reached, and soon after the tower was closed to the public as unsafe. In September 1944, when ‘Ramsbottom’s weather beaten landmark’ collapsed, the local paper reported that this ‘did not come as a big surprise’. The more dangerous walls of the truncated tower were demolished, and only the roofless lower storey was left standing.

In 2017 Bury Council granted the owner of the tower (it had by now changed hands) permission to repair and reroof the remains of the tower to prevent any further damage to the interior. The renovated remains can be seen from the public footpath that passes the tower.

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In 1823 the Rev. Oliver Raymond was instituted into the Rectory of Middleton, a village which although very near Sudbury in Suffolk, just sneaks over the boundary into Essex. On 9 November 1841, Queen Victoria gave birth to her first son, Albert Edward (the future Edward VII). Almost immediately he was given the title Prince of Wales, and Raymond marked the occasion by planting an avenue of trees which became known as the Prince of Wales Avenue.

Partway along the avenue Raymond (1794-1889) erected a ‘handsome entrance gate’ of brick and flint, inset with older carved stone which is thought to have been salvaged from local church rebuilding projects. The fragments carry a star, emblem of the De Veres of Hedingham Castle, so the stone is said to have been salvaged from a church under their patronage, but no firm evidence has yet been found.

Around the arch is the inscription: PLANTED BY OLIVER RAYMOND LLB RECTOR OF THIS PARISH IX NOV MDCCCXLI THE DAY OF HRH THE PRINCES BIRTH.

By the time Barbara Jones saw it in the middle of the twentieth century, the arch had become a picturesque ruin. It is not clear if this was as a result of natural decay or of vandalism, but the arch was certainly the haunt of those intent on carving their names in the stone, with graffiti evident today from within the first decades of the arch being completed.

Raymond remodelled his parish church of All Saints and improved the graveyard. In September 1853, a newspaper report likened the burial ground to a ‘miniature Pere-la-Chaise‘. Raymond had apparently removed years of accumulated soil and trimmed back the overgrown cypresses and laurels to create a park-like setting.

A contemporary poem entitled ‘Middleton Church-Yard’, questioned why a burial ground should only display ’emblems drear to view’, and praised the planting of flowers at Middleton:

Then there let many a flower unclose
Its blossom to the Spring,
There let the Lily and the Rose
Round them their odours fling.

Raymond had built a new rectory, in white brick, where he and his family lived. The rooms were hung with a number of works by Raymond and his family, and he also built up a substantial art collection of Old Masters and works by contemporary artists, including local boys Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable.

In 1853 the ‘picturesque little church’ and the rectory were described as amongst the ‘most attractive objects in [the] neighbourhood’. Two decades later a visitor wrote that ‘around this bijou of a church Mr Raymond has lived to see noble oaks arise, planted by his own hand, and vistas flourish, looking over a great extent of country’.

Church and rectory were approached along a drive which curved past an ‘ornamental sheet of water’, seen in the engraving above. In Raymond’s own words, the view from the rectory across the pool was ‘unusually imposing and picturesque’.

In January 1881, in ‘blinding sleet’, a cab driver swerved on the Rectory’s drive and skidded onto the frozen pool, where the ice gave way. The driver and horse were rescued, but the partially submerged vehicle had to be hauled out the following day.

Raymond quickly erected a string of pedestals by the lake, each topped with an urn and connected by iron fence-panels.

One pedestal carries a carved inscription reading CAVE STAGNUM – beware of the pond. A ‘time-stained’ notice, in which Raymond explained his actions, was reportedly discovered by a workman in the 1950s: it read ‘To prevent a future accident of the kind this Barrier was erected by Oliver Raymond, L.L.B., R.D. Rector of the Parish of Middleton, Essex, February 17 1881. GOD save the Queen!’.

Raymond died in 1889, having lived in Middleton as curate from 1818 and then as Rector from 1823. His children erected a new reredos in the church in memory of his seventy years as priest in the parish.

The rectory is today a private home but the church and pool can be seen. The arch stands on a public footpath across the field from the lane leading to the church. Remnants of the avenue survive.

The Rev. Oliver Raymond was a younger son of the Raymonds of nearby Belchamp Hall, where another curious arch was erected and architectural fragments were reused.

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