The tower on Leith Hill was erected in the 1760s by Richard Hull. The hillside wasn’t actually his property, but his home was nearby and he leased the plot from the landowners, the Evelyn family of nearby Wotton. It became a popular attraction and in 1790 it was said that the view from the tower was ‘esteemed equal, if not superior, to any in the kingdom’. Hull was so fond of his tower that he designated it as his mausoleum.
Folly
The Tower, Chinthurst Hill, Wonersh, Surrey
In 1938 readers of the Surrey Advertiser were baffled by an announcement that the Earl of Inchcape was seeking permission to build a ‘Martello Tower’ on his Chinthurst Hill estate. Following up on a notice published the previous week, the paper felt the need to explain to its readers what a Martello Tower was. The article described the purpose of the defensive towers that had appeared during the Napoleonic wars, and the writer then concluded that ‘it seems improbable that Lord Inchcape’s proposed tower will be exactly similar to the coastal originals’.
The Arch, Brookmans Park, Little Heath, Hertfordshire
This fine brick arch is one of the few surviving eighteenth century features of the designed landscape of Gobions in Hertfordshire. The mansion is long gone, and much of the park has been developed for housing and a golf course, but the arch still stands – although it has come very close to collapse.
The Tower, Rookesbury, Hampshire
In 1826 Charles Heathcote Tatham exhibited a view of a ‘tower now erecting’ at the Royal Academy. The tower was a belvedere, eye-catcher and summerhouse on the Rookesbury estate, near Wickham, where a substantial new house, also designed by Tatham, was under construction.
Curiosities of Town and Countryside
In 1941 Batsford published a new title by Edmund Vale called Curiosities of Town and Countryside. With a striking cover by Brian Cook, featuring the triumphal arch at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, the jacket blurb promised the reader ‘freaks, eccentricities and follies.’
Church or Folly? Hassall, near Sandbach, Cheshire
In 1836 William Lowndes began to build a church on raised ground on his Hassall Hall estate in Cheshire. He was a man of ‘strong religious feelings’ and funded the entire project from his own pocket. But by 1900 the church remained incomplete, and was described as a folly.
The title of folly was bestowed upon the church in the Harmsworth Magazine in 1900. Oswald Marvin wrote an article on the subject with the most peculiar subtitle of ‘Stories of Bubbles in Stone’. This is not explained in any way, but did give the designer a chance to have some fun and dot bubbles all around the images.
In September 1837 it was reported in the newspapers that Lowndes was erecting a chapel, and that his ‘praiseworthy munificence deserves to be widely known’. Lowndes had the church built out of fine handmade red bricks, and there were tall stone pinnacles and a slim bell tower which could be ‘seen from miles around’. Underneath were vaults, which were presumably to become the family’s burial place. It overlooked a piece of water in the ornamental grounds of Hassall Hall called Dog Kennel Pond.
The church, by then externally complete, was bedecked with flags to mark the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 1838. But, as Marvin wrote, ‘joy was turned to sorrow’ when Lowndes died suddenly the very next day. This has no basis in fact, and Marvin had lifted his text from an earlier, and equally unreliable, source.
Lowndes death was indeed ‘awfully sudden’ – but it was some months before the coronation. One morning in January 1838 he was ‘found dead in his dining-room, being left in good health when the family retired to rest’. Curiously, Lowndes made no mention of his church, or where he wished to be buried, in his will of April 1837 and he was interred at the parish church of St Mary’s in Sandbach.
Although marked on nineteenth century maps as ‘church’ the building was never completed or consecrated, and no-one knows for sure why it was abandoned with only the interior left to fit out. It is thought that Lowndes’s heirs (he left no issue) had no desire to complete the building – but neither did they wish to fund the cost of demolition, so the structure was simply abandoned.
But the windowless shell did become something of a local landmark and tourist attraction. By 1899 it was described as ‘a singular site’ although ‘depressing to see’: it was overgrown with ivy, and the many tourists had recorded their visits by incising their names in the brick and stone. There were plans for demolition in 1915, with the materials earmarked for new farm buildings, but nothing happened. Visitor numbers increased in September 1922 after the local paper announced that it was finally going to be demolished, and people returned for one last look.
Not a trace of this fine church can be seen today, but there is still something of ecclesiastical interest in the area. A couple of miles from the lost church is Hassall Green, where this tin tabernacle is pretty in pink. A tale is told of this church which is just as fanciful as those that attach themselves to follies. It is said that in 1897 a group of farmers from Hassall Green were in Alsager, where a temporary tin church was being taken down. According to the legend they promptly bought it and carted it back to their village.
Except… the ‘iron church’ in Hassall Green was opened in 1883. It was erected by Isaac Dixon, whose Windsor Ironworks in Liverpool specialised in ‘tin’ chapels, mission rooms and schools. An ‘exceedingly large congregation’ was present for the opening service and tea party. In his speech Reverend Williams commented that the area had long needed a church, and mentioned Lowndes’s church project which, sadly, had been ‘cut off by death’.
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The Tower, Tan-y-Coed, Old Colwyn, Clwyd
This little sham castle, once on an open hillside but now surrounded by trees, was erected in the grounds of a house called Tan-y-Coed (Foot of the Woods) in Old Colwyn. It was the home of Charles Frederick Woodall, a retired woollen draper from Manchester, who settled on the North Wales coast in the 1880s for the benefit of his health. He created pretty gardens around his house, with the sham castle the most prominent feature. The tower is a prime example of a folly where the tales told about it don’t bear close scrutiny…
The House of Rock, Brighton, East Sussex
With the summer holidays in full swing, the Flâneuse is heading to the seaside for this week’s story. In the late 1960s Richard Attenborough filmed parts of Oh! What a Lovely War on the Brighton seafront. When filming was over, he donated a seaside kiosk that had featured in the film to the Brighton Festival. In May 1970 the architect Sir Hugh Casson transformed it into a ‘small folly built – or at least embellished – in Brighton rock’.
The Folly, Belchamp Walter, Essex.
Belchamp Walter, in Essex (but very close to the Suffolk border) is the quintessential English village with a manor house and church at its heart. But on a field boundary behind the hall stands a less common feature – a curious, and very clever, folly facade.
The Summerhouse, Sticklepath, Devon.
On the quiet main street that runs through the village of Sticklepath, near Okehampton, stands a former works known as the Finch Foundry. It has been redundant since the 1960s, and is now a museum. Passing through an arch to the side of the works, the visitor is surprised to find a tranquil garden and beyond it a burial ground where the only noise is the rumbling of the river Taw. In the corner of the burial ground is a little thatched shelter, and more recently it has been joined by the most perfect of nineteenth-century rustic summerhouses.