In the first half of the 19th century villages and hamlets on the Lancashire coast, overlooking Morecambe Bay, grew rapidly as holiday destinations. The prosperous middle class of Manchester, and the surrounding manufacturing towns, was keen to escape the noise and dirt of urban life and took houses on the coast where the air was clear. Henry Paul Fleetwood, a prosperous Preston banker, saw the potential of Silverdale, north of Carnforth, and erected this tower on his estate there as a belvedere and summerhouse.
eyecatcher
The Tattingstone Wonder, Tattingstone, Suffolk
Squire White of Tattingstone Place in Suffolk wanted an eye-catcher to enrich the view from his mansion. Rather than start from scratch, he simply enlarged and embellished a couple of existing cottages, adding a tower and some gothic windows. He called his folly The Tattingstone Wonder, and the story goes that he declared that the local people were wont to wonder at nothing, so he would give them something to wonder at.
The Castle, Roundhay Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire
“It is a pleasant delusion to think that this is the last fragment of a noble baronial pile” wrote the author of a guide to Roundhay Park in 1872. It was, he explained, simply ‘an object of interest’, the creation of a gentleman of ‘good taste’: in short, a folly.
An Air of Detachment: Stoke Park, Northamptonshire and Mistley, Essex.
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.
St Andrew’s Old Church Facade, Bishopthorpe, Yorkshire
Bishopthorpe, a few miles outside York, has been home to the Archbishops of York for centuries. In the 1760s Archbishop Drummond added a new facade to the palace, constructed a gatehouse, and rebuilt the village church. His architect of choice was Thomas Atkinson, a respected designer but a curious choice as he was a Roman Catholic*. All three structures were built in a whimsical gothick style, much of the stone coming from the ancient former episcopal palace at Cawood, a few miles south. When first built the three buildings formed an ensemble around a small ornamental lake, sadly long since drained.
Woolbeding, near Midhurst, West Sussex
The Tulip Folly, designed by Philip Jebb, is named after a tulip tree that was felled by the storm in 1987.
The Folly Flâneuse is away, so a brief post this week to accompany some holiday snaps.
Norfolk Ziggurats
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.
Temple on Round Howe, Richmond, North Yorkshire
View of the Round Howe near Richmond by George Cut 1788. Courtesy of The Met, New York, accession 65.251.2 Gift of Mrs. William M. Haupt, from the collection of Mrs. James B. Haggin, 1965
Clarkson’s History of Richmond, revised in 1821, recounts that Cuthbert Readshaw created a ‘highly romantic walk’ by the Swale in 1760. Cuthbert Readshaw, who died in 1773 was a merchant who lived in the Bailey (ie the market place) in Richmond, and according to his will he was in ‘the business of wine and spirits and other branches of trade’.
To access the walk 18th century visitors would have travelled downhill from the town centre and crossed the river via the Green Bridge. Promenading along the south bank of the River Swale they would have encountered the picturesque scene of leafy Billy Bank Wood (aka Bordel Bank) and occasional artful outbreaks of the craggy rock face behind. Tucked in the woods was the cleft or cave known as Arthur’s Oven, conjuring romantic images of ancient and wilder times.
Bambro’ Castle, Howsham, North Yorkshire
Barbara Jones, the first person to write a comprehensive account of follies in Britain, saw this building and was underwhelmed. In the 1953 first edition of Follies & Grottoes she described it as ‘gutted’ and full of pigeon’s nests, and concluded that ‘no amount of bird life can divest this folly of its ordinariness’. If only she had seen it in its prime: a sketch by the itinerant artist and drawing master J.C. Nattes dated 1807 shows an enchanting little building.
Bambro’ Castle, as it was called, was named in honour of the Bamburgh family, former owners of Howsham. It is not recorded if the builder, Nathaniel Cholmley, was consciously allying his diminutive structure with the somewhat grander Bamburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast. It was extant by 1791, when it is named as ‘Bamburgh Castle House’. The gothic detail is similar to that on the nearby Howsham Mill which is attributed to John Carr of York. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown is known to have drawn up a plan for Howsham, and these buildings ‘punctuating’ and ornamenting the landscape may have been his suggestion. Sadly little archival material for this period has survived for Howsham.
The folly served a dual purpose. By day, it was a summer-house for refreshments when riding through the ornamental woodland on the Howsham estate. Furnished with a ‘Chintz sofa’, an octagonal mahogany dining table, painted and gilded chairs and all the paraphernalia for serving lemonade, tea and cake it must have been an idyllic retreat. As night fell it perhaps became an observatory for it housed a ‘large Tellescope’.
Jones was one of the last to record the building. Soon after it deteriorated further and was eventually demolished as the ornamental woodland gave way to commercial forestry. Visitors in the 1980s were sad to find it gone.
Surely Barbara Jones was let down by her memory? The two photos above are from from her own files (generously shared from a private collection). How could she describe this folly as ordinary?
Howsham Hall is an events venue and there is no public access. Howsham Mill is open regularly https://www.howshammill.org.uk
Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts.