In the middle of the eighteenth century Ralph Allen, who had both a Bath townhouse and the Prior Park estate in a fine landscape just out of town, erected a gothic eye-catcher on high ground above Bath. The folly took the form of a turreted and castellated screen, unadorned at the back and intended only to be viewed from the city. By the end of the eighteenth century the folly had become known as the ‘Sham Castle’, and it has attracted the gaze of artists ever since it was built.
Folly
Charles George Harper: follies and foibles.
Clavell's Tower, Kimmeridge
In 1922 the writer and illustrator Charles George Harper penned a series of three articles about follies for The Architect magazine. Harper was a prolific author and had noted many follies as he toured the nation, often including them in his books on the topography of Britain. The articles were illustrated with his own vignettes of some of the buildings he admired (or censured). As for the foibles, which some may find a rather weak description of the eccentricities of Harper’s character, read on…
Pelham’s Pillar, Cabourne, Lincolnshire
In 1840 the foundation stone was laid for a column on the Brocklesby estate which can be found near Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. Eventually reaching a height of 130 feet, it could soon be seen from miles around. The plantations surrounding it have long since matured, and today you have to look a little harder to find what became known as Pelham’s Pillar.
Modern Architecture meets The British Folly
In 2006 the Royal Mail issued a set of commemorative stamps featuring ‘Modern Architecture’ in England and Scotland. Benham of Folkestone, the ‘independent collectables retailer’, spotted a link between these new buildings and some structures that might have been thought just as radical in their own day – follies. The company issued a set of first day covers juxtaposing the Modern Architecture stamps with examples of The British Folly.
Albina’s Tomb, Hedon, East Riding of Yorkshire.
In October 1834 workmen discovered a dungeon, or cell, when digging for stone on Market Hill in Hedon, in that part of the East Riding of Yorkshire known as Holderness. It was ‘several yards square’ with stone walls, and ‘a few remnants of military trappings’. James Iveson, an antiquary of the town, took possession of stone from the chamber and removed it to his nearby home. There he already had a hoard of carved stone, salvaged from the remodelling or demolition of churches in Hedon and beyond, and he used these fragments to create a sham tomb in his garden.
The Folly, Brackenborough Hall, near Louth, Lincolnshire
In 1836 General Loft, a committed church-crawler, visited Fotherby, near Louth in Lincolnshire, and found the ancient fabric of the church of St Mary’s ‘now terribly mutilated’. In the later 1850s a major rebuild was proposed, and the Bishop of Lincoln threw his weight behind the appeal with a donation of £20. James Robson, tenant and later owner of Brackenborough Hall, an attractive moated Georgian house about a mile from the church, was also a donor. As work got underway, he salvaged some of the stone from the old church and used it to build a sham ruin on a mound in the corner of his garden.
Hockley Abbey, Birmingham, West Midlands.
Hockley Abbey was built in around 1779 by Richard Ford, an ‘ingenious mechanic’, out of the waste or dross from a nearby furnace. Built in the form of a semi-ruinous monastic edifice, Ford had the date of 1473 picked out in pebbles on the front ‘as a false suggestion of antiquity’, although this was soon covered over by the ivy which he encouraged to creep all over his new home. The house was demolished in the second half of the nineteenth century, but is remembered in paintings, prose and poetry.
Follies for breakfast.
In the 1980s follies played a part in promoting a new breakfast cereal: special packs of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain contained picture cards featuring ‘Gardens to Visit’. The twenty cards were illustrated with views of gardens in Britain and Ireland, all of them open to the public, and five follies or quirky garden ornaments were among the cards to be collected. As the blurb on the box announced ‘Most of us are enchanted by the magic of a beautiful garden’.
Tower Folly, Fairseat, Meopham, Kent
It is common today to see former Oast Houses, originally built to dry hops, converted into chic Kentish dwellings. The Waterlow family of Trosley Towers, near Wrotham, are credited with being amongst the first to see the capabilities of such redundant structures when, in 1903, they converted an oast house on their estate. Half a century later the building was renamed Tower Folly, and became home to experiments in sound.
The Porch, Bourne Hill Gardens, Salisbury, Wiltshire.
In the last years of the eighteenth century, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury, commissioned James Wyatt to carry out repairs to Salisbury Cathedral. In an act that would be described as ‘outrageous’ by later generations, Wyatt removed an ancient porch. The Dean and Chapter, recognising that prominent citizen Henry Penruddocke Wyndham knew how to ‘appreciate such curious monuments of antiquity’, presented him with the ‘elegant remnant’ which he re-erected as a feature in his garden.