The hero of this tale began life in 1787 as Thomas Monteath. By the time he died in 1868 he had taken the name Douglas as a condition of an inheritance, advanced in the military ranks, and been knighted, thus ending his life as General Sir Thomas Monteath Douglas. He had plans to ensure that he would not quickly be forgotten, and had this extraordinary mausoleum constructed.
eyecatcher
Grimston Park Tower, near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire
Grimston Park was rebuilt by the Hon. Colonel Caradoc, later 2nd Baron Howden, from around 1839, transforming a ‘plain country house’ into a ‘splendid chateau’. New offices and estate buildings were also erected, including this ‘object tower’.
Culloden Tower, Richmond, North Yorkshire
On Sunday, The Folly Flâneuse was one of the happy few who discovered the location of the Secret Salons, three venues which combined the finest music and architecture. As part of Richmond’s annual festival celebrating all things Georgian, the evening was a fundraiser for the town’s Theatre Royal, a unique intact survivor from that era. Participants promenaded between three lovely venues, but of course the one that gave the greatest joy to the present writer was the Culloden Tower.
Lindeth Tower, Silverdale, Lancashire
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.
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.