Painshill, or Pains Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, was the creation of the Hon. Charles Hamilton. From 1738 he landscaped the valley of the river Mole and decorated his estate with an enchanting array of garden buildings, including this pavilion which is known as the Gothic Temple. In 1953 Barbara Jones wrote that she feared the park was ‘beyond help’, but thanks to an amazing restoration project, which began in the 1980s and continues today, it has been returned to its former beauty and elegance.

The open temple, probably one of the first ornamental buildings to be erected in Hamilton’s park (the earliest reference found to date is 1761), was constructed of wood treated to look like stone. As well as being an eye-catcher from the walks and rides in the park, its location was carefully chosen so that visitors would be led to the building from which they could admire a panorama which featured a Turkish tent, a gothic tower, a bridge, a hermitage and a classical temple. On a circuit of the pleasure grounds the visitor would also encounter a ruined Roman arch and a grotto decorated with sparkling minerals.

Barbara Jones described Painshill in Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. Her first thought was that Hamilton (1704-1786) was a visionary. She imagined him looking at the ‘naturally pretty’ valley and having the courage to turn it into ‘raw earth, puddles, planks and little naked trees’, knowing that ultimately it was ‘going to be alright’. Whilst Jones mused on the origins of the park, Rose Macaulay, whose Pleasure of Ruins was published in the same year, delighted in the decay, describing the neglected park as a ‘delicious wilderness of follies’.

A photograph of 1937, taken by Herbert Felton for the Architectural Review, shows the temple in reasonable condition. The art historian Osvald Sirén (1879-1966) explored Painshill in the late 1940s, and in his China and the Gardens of Europe, published in 1950, he described the Gothic Temple as being in a ‘better state of preservation’ than many of the other garden features (Sirén was spotted photographing the ruined buildings by a young John Harris (1931-2022). Happily for history, the nascent country-house snooper had ignored the ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs.)

Whilst some of the garden buildings were lost because of neglect, others had fallen victim to deliberate destruction: the hermitage was apparently chopped up for firewood in the 1940s. Harris saw the Temple of Bacchus as a crumbling wreck in the 1940s, and it had disappeared when he returned in 1954. When a visitor in around 1960 enquired after the temple he was told that it had ‘got a bit dicey so they took a tractor to it’.

By the 1970s the temple was rapidly falling into dereliction, and in February 1977 Elmbridge District Council served a repairs notice on the owner of the park and sent in a team to support the temple within a scaffolding shell. Two months later came big news when the council confirmed that, after some years of negotiation, they were to purchase 47 acres of the ‘much neglected Painshill Park’.

Heritage societies, including the Georgian Group, the Garden History Society and the Council for the Protection of Rural England had already been working behind the scenes to gather information, and in 1973 the historian Alison Hodges had published the first comprehensive history of the garden in Garden History, the journal of the Garden History Society. The Friends of Painshill was founded in 1975, with support from landscape architects, antiquarians, journalists, M.P.s and local residents.

It took until 1980 for the council to acquire a further 106 acres of the park. In 1981 the Friends issued their second newsletter, in which it was announced that ‘Elmbridge Borough Council have now appointed Mrs. J. Burford as the first full time administrator of the park’. One of the earliest structures to be restored was the Gothic Temple (grade II*), with work complete in 1985.

The Painshill Park Trust was founded in 1981 and work began to raise the required funds. One of the principal sources was the National Heritage Memorial Fund, created in 1980, which by 1988 had pledged £1.4 million ‘towards a management plan and towards continuing restoration work’. In 1988-89 the British Museum hosted Treasures for the Nation: Celebrating National Heritage, an exhibition showing the public how the fund was using taxpayers money to save the UK’s most important heritage treasures. Painshill was featured as an example of a garden rescued with the help of NHMF funds, and the text noted the garden as a rare example of one which ‘did not suffer violent change, but was simply abandoned to the hand of time’.

It is impossible to summarise here the vast amount of research, fundraising and building work that took place in the subsequent years (the restored and dazzling grotto alone is a magnificent achievement, and the Temple of Bacchus, toppled by tractor, has been reconstructed), so visit the website to learn more, or better still visit the park itself.

There are some who, whilst full of admiration for the restoration, have a nostalgia for the ‘mystical and wonderful’ ruinous park that they explored as a child, when it was in that condition which the artist John Piper called ‘decrepit glory’. As Henry Parr, who sent the Flâneuse the pre-restoration photographs shown here, wrote: ‘in its ruinous state, Painshill park was beautiful but mysterious, pretty but sinister, lovely but rather unnerving’.

The thrill of pushing through overgrown shrubs and stumbling across an abandoned temple might be gone but, thanks to the amazing restoration project, one once more sees Painshill as Charles Hamilton envisioned it.

There’s lots more on Painshill here. Thanks to historian Cherrill Sands for being an excellent cicerone.

Thank you for reading. As ever, the Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from readers with any thoughts or comments. Scroll down to get in touch.

Pontypool House, in the ancient Welsh county of Monmouthshire, was a seat of the Hanbury family and stood in a park that was described in 1801 as ‘pleasing, wild and diversified’. The writer of this description was taken on a ‘pleasant ride’ up to a ‘summer house’ called ‘the folly’, from which there was an extensive panorama. It was, he concluded, a ‘singular and almost boundless prospect’ which no visitor to Monmouthshire should miss.

That visitor was William Coxe, who published An Historical Tour in Monmouthshire in 1801. Sadly he gives no further detail of the folly, and few contemporary accounts of Pontypool mention it at all. A tourist in 1784 described being encouraged to visit ‘the folly’ to admire the delightful prospect, and wrote that the view ‘far surpasses my powers of description’. Sadly, he failed to describe the folly itself. Another visitor in that same year noted that it was a near two-mile ride uphill to reach the folly.

There was enlightenment from John Evans, a self-styled ‘Juvenile Tourist’ who noted ‘the Folly‘ in 1804 as ‘a summer-house of semi-circular form, built by the late Mr Hanbury’. This was John Hanbury (1744-1784) who had inherited the Pontypool estate from his father in 1765.

But this is all a little complicated. For what is known as ‘The Folly’ today is an octagonal belvedere, of which more below. In his book The Hanburys of Monmouthshire (1995) Richard Hanbury Tenison writes that the Folly was ‘substantially rebuilt’ in the late 1820s, so perhaps that is when the tower appeared?

What is certain is that by the early nineteenth century the Pontypool estate was ornamented with this octagonal prospect tower known as The Folly.  It is marked as such  on the 1st Series Ordnance Survey map, published in 1832, along with its alternative title of ‘Twr Watch’ (Watch Tower).

The estate had by that date descended to John Hanbury’s second son, Capel Hanbury Leigh (1776-1861). Capel Hanbury Leigh died in strange circumstances in 1861, having taken poison ‘accidentally administered by his valet’. The tower seems to have been allowed to decline in his later years, and a visitor in 1864 found the door locked and the seats around the tower falling to pieces. It was covered with graffiti, but the tourist could not help but admire the ‘poetical proclivities’ of the author of this couplet:

Oh, monument most melancholy
Of stupid and egregious folly.

In 1921 Pontypool Park passed into public ownership. The house became a convent and the park became a recreation ground for the people of Pontypool. In 1932 there were plans to raise a public subscription to renovate the tower, which was showing signs of decay. As a clumsy rhyme of 1937 recorded, the tower

…stares at space with a grave, octagonal frown
While winds tear and tug at his crumbling crown

Progress was slow, and as the decade progressed turmoil in Europe pushed thoughts of folly towers from the minds of the public. In 1938 Pontypudlians would have watched as a new complex was built close to the town: this was one of the new Royal Ordnance Factories manufacturing arms and ammunition for the war effort. The site for the Glascoed facility was chosen because its sheltered location meant that the enemy was less likely to be able to target it with bombs, and also because the damp climate was perfect for the handling of volatile explosives.

Sadly the folly tower was in the wrong place at the wrong time: its prominent site near the new factory was thought to make it a conspicuous landmark for the Luftwaffe, and so in 1940 it was pulled down.

After the war there were calls to rebuild the popular local attraction, but once again nothing was achieved. It was not until the 1990s that local campaigners succeeded in getting a replica landmark back onto its hilltop site. The new tower was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) on 22nd July 1994.

Pontypool Park is freely accessible and there are walks to the grotto and tower: it’s a challenging climb and you can’t just drive up in your handsome motor as in the first postcard shown above. The exterior of the tower and grotto can be viewed at any time, but the interiors are only open on designated days.

There’s a delightful 6 mile round walk which takes in the grotto and tower. After the hard work of the climb to the follies it’s a gentle return stretch downhill. You can then saunter back along the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. Allow time to explore the Torfaen Museum when you get back to the park.

Thank you for reading. Please get in touch if you have further information – you can share any thoughts via the comments box at the foot of the page.

In the 1970s the Coutts Bank building in central London was partly remodelled to a design by the architect Sir Frederick Gibberd. A new glass entrance was designed to replace the columned central section of the facade on the Strand. As work progressed Gibberd salvaged some of the redundant masonry to reuse at his Essex home. There he indulged in what the Architects’ Journal called ‘that virtuous activity’ of building follies.

Sir Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984) was the Master Planner of the new town created at Harlow, in Essex, from 1946. Needing to be close to the works, he bought a small cottage on Marsh Lane. He remodelled the house and developed the extensive garden, which had plenty of space for the sculpture and architectural salvage Gibberd collected with his second wife, Patricia (they married in 1972).

Gibberd decided to use some of the redundant masonry  from Coutts to create a ‘Roman’ Temple in the garden. His colleagues on site were apparently disgruntled by this decision, as removing the columns Gibberd had chosen was time consuming work – they would have preferred to smash the whole lot to bits.

The masonry was delivered the following year, and as Gibberd wrote ‘a huge lorry equipped with a crane drove down my lane, demolished three trees and dumped a pile of huge fragments in a ditch opposite my entrance gates’. The stone was dragged to the prepared site on a sledge with steel runners.

Three men with a crane and a digger were recruited to construct the folly. Two Portland stone columns and a section of frieze were to be erected in the form of a temple inspired by ancient Roman models. Steel rods were inserted in the columns to give support and one of the men sat in the bucket of the digger to guide the stones into place. The crane driver was asked to drop a third column, so that it would appear to have fallen and broken. The bewildered man exclaimed ‘They’ve come all the way from London and I’m to drop one of them?’, and apparently demanded the instruction in writing so that he couldn’t be held responsible for the damage.

It was, Gibberd concluded, a ‘very expensive folly’, but it brought him great pleasure. When passers-by paused at the gate and asked what the structure was, Gibberd enjoyed telling them it was a fragment from an ancient Roman temple discovered during the development of a nearby industrial estate.

Four urns from the Trafalgar Square facade of the bank, which Gibberd believed to be made of Coade Stone, were mounted on a plinth and placed at an angle to the temple to create a pleasing ensemble.

Although Gibberd claimed to have no masterplan for his garden, he did draw an exquisite plan and elevation of the temple and its garden setting. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1981 as ‘Roman’ Temple (Gibberd was elected RA in 1969).

The Architects’ Journal thought the whole of the bank’s facade should have been retained, or at least reused at another building, but as their reporter concluded, at least Gibberd had ‘tried to atone and Freddie’s folly promises to become a well-loved landmark in Freddie’s own New Town’.

Gibberd died in 1984 and left his house and garden to Harlow for the benefit of the people of the town, although initially it remained home to his widow and there were only occasional open days. Complications over his will left the garden vulnerable (a long story), but there was strong local support and in 1995 the Gibberd Garden Trust was formed to maintain the site and welcome visitors. Lady Gibberd remained closely involved until her death in 2006.

Gibberd said that the half a mile approached road gave his garden ‘a quality of remoteness’. Modern housing now stands close to the track, but is still an adventure to drive down the long lane, wondering if you have perhaps taken a wrong turn, only to suddenly spot the eagle-topped gateposts.

Gibberd’s comments on making the garden are from his lecture notes On Making Gardens and Landscapes which are in the Gibberd archive at the Garden Museum.  Sir Frederick and Lady Gibberd were early supporters of the museum where you can see a small display celebrating Gibberd’s work. The account of the bemused lorry driver is from oral histories collected by Annalise Taylor and published to mark 25 years of the Gibberd Garden Trust.

The Gibberd Garden reopens for the 2026 season on Wednesday 1 April. There’s more here.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share any thoughts please scroll down to the comments box. You can find it at the bottom of the page.

It is not everyday that someone builds a seven-storey brick tower on the edge of one of the busiest and most rapidly-growing towns in Britain, especially in the middle of the eighteenth century, so one would assume that the construction of this folly would have been noticed. Birmingham was home to one of the earliest provincial newspapers – surely the curious structure made the pages? But no, the early history of the tower seems very hard to find. The building was originally referred to as the observatory, or as Perrott’s Monument, but soon became ‘vulgarly’ known as Perrott’s Folly because it was born of an ‘insane vanity’.

John Perrott (c.1704-1776) owned the Bell Hall estate at Belbroughton in Worcestershire, and also had a house in Edgbaston, then a village near Birmingham. Near his Edgbaston home, in rural Rotton Park, he built his tower.

The first history of Birmingham was written by William Hutton and published in 1781. Hutton mentions the ‘observatory’ in passing, but makes no mention of its builder or history. William Pye made an ‘excursion round the town in the summer of 1818’ and saw the ‘observatory’. He recorded that the ‘lofty’ tower was known as the Monument and had been erected by John Perrot [sic] in ‘around 1758’: all later accounts of the tower seem to be based on this account. It was certainly extant by February 1773 when a classified advertisement in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette notes a property near ‘Mr Perrott’s Observatory’. No records have yet been found to identify the architect and craftsmen who created the tower.

Although we now think of an observatory as a building from which to regard the night skies, in this period it was synonymous with belvedere, literally somewhere from which to observe the view. The upper room is beautifully decorated with ornate plasterwork, suggesting a space where one enjoyed refined refreshments whilst admiring the surrounding countryside.

It seems likely that the tower was also used to view the chase, for the surrounding countryside was used by the hunt. More fanciful are the tales that Perrott built it to give his wife a view of her childhood home in Belbroughton in Worcestershire. Or, that it was erected so Perrott could see his wife’s grave, or the home of the daughter who had married against his wishes, both also in Belbroughton. Great as these stories are, they are pure local legend: as a plaque in Holy Trinity church in Belbroughton makes clear, Perrott’s wife outlived him for many years. But more importantly, the Clent Hills block any view of Belbroughton. His son-in-law was the beneficiary of his will, so it seems unlikely that Perrott disapproved of him. But a catalogue of tall tales is particularly appropriate for this towering folly.

In the middle of the nineteenth century the ‘lofty picturesque building known as The Monument’ was offered for sale. By that date it stood in the grounds of Monument House, a ‘commodious and gentlemanly residence’, but no further information about the tower was given in the sales particulars.

In 1907 the Birmingham Mail pondered the reasons for the erection of the tower and concluded that it was for ‘convivial gatherings’. By that date the views the folly had once enjoyed had been compromised by the growth of Birmingham, now a large city. The paper commented on the contrast between the ‘crisp clear country air on one side and the thick smoky acid-laden cloud which hangs like a pall over the city on the other side’. The paper also questioned the mental stability of folly builders, concluding that the tower was ‘erected to gratify an ill-balanced mind’.

The smog was clearly not an issue for meteorological types and from the late nineteenth century until 1979 the tower was used as an observatory to record weather conditions. Emergency repairs to save the tower from collapse were carried out by Birmingham Conservation Trust, with work completed in 2005.

The tower has since had a number of uses, including as an art gallery and a party venue. Today it is home to Re.Future Collective, an arts and architecture collective formed in 2012 to ‘deliver arts, health and heritage activities to connect communities and to help address disadvantage’. Current projects include an Art Youth Club, workshops for adults experiencing loneliness or isolation and working with asylum seekers to create a mosaic for Perrott’s Folly. The collective is also actively researching the history of the tower, and paint samples are currently being analysed to see what they reveal – these are vibrant and exciting times for the folly.

It is not possible to discuss the tower (grade II*) without mentioning J.R.R. Tolkien. The author grew up in Birmingham, and fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy believe that the folly, and the tower of the nearby waterworks, inspired The Two Towers, the second volume in the series.

Perrott’s Folly and the waterworks tower are easy to find – head to the helpfully named Waterworks Road, just off  Monument Road.

Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts or further information you would like to share, please scroll down to find the comments box.

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.

In 1755 the architect Sanderson Miller, known for fashionable landscape ornaments, was mooted as the ideal candidate to design Allen’s proposed ‘considerable Gothic Object’. However the folly was claimed as his own by Allen’s Clerk of Works, Richard Jones. In an account of his life Jones, wrote ‘in 1762 began the Castle in the warren, and was built in a quarter of a year to my plan’. To further complicate matters, the folly appears on an engraved prospect of Bath published in 1757. Hence the Flâneuse settling for mid-century as a date, and hoping for further evidence to emerge in due course. What is certain is that Allen died in 1764, so he had little time to enjoy his new landscape ornament.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the folly ‘had been allowed to fall into decay’. The two end towers were crumbling and this was blamed on boys who used the castle as a ‘rendezvous for games’.

The estate was still owned by the Allen family at this date, but financial aid to save the folly came from a different source. In 1880 a local paper noted that restoration was underway thanks to help from an unnamed female benefactor. It was only on her death in 1891 that the identity of the philanthropist became widely known: Mary Downing Russell Elliott (née Scott) had quietly, and unbeknownst to even her closest friends, funded a number of civic projects over the years.

Mrs Elliott’s investment allowed the two end towers of the Sham Castle to be rebuilt and the centre towers to be restored. She also funded the restoration of the obelisk and gardens in Orange Grove, next to Bath Abbey.

The Allen family sold the ‘remaining portion’ of their Bathampton estate at auction in March 1921. This included the Sham Castle and around an acre of ground. This parcel was bought by a Mr Candy, who purchased it with the farm he had tenanted, and from the start he was clear about his intentions of selling the folly soon after. That auction of the Sham Castle was held in June 1921, and various uses for the folly were suggested: a tea garden was a tempting proposition, but one rather alarming suggestion was that an ‘asbestos back’ might be added behind the facade to ‘convert the structure into a bungalow’.

Happily (in the latter instance) there was little interest, and the castle didn’t sell, but good news was soon to follow. In July the local paper reported that ‘Bathonians must have noted with much pleasure the announcement last Thursday that the Sham Castle has been purchased by two gentlemen for presentation to the City’. Mr Candy was given due credit for selling the folly at ‘preferential terms’.

Unlike Mrs Elliott, these donors were happy for their identities to be known, and a plaque was erected acknowledging their generous gift to the city. As the inscription records, some further restoration work was carried out in this period.

The Sham Castle has continued to catch the eye of artists. Richard Guyatt chose it as his subject when commissioned by Shell to produce an image for the ‘To Visit Britain’s Landmarks’ poster series, displayed on the sides of the company’s delivery lorries in the 1930s.

And completing four centuries of views of the landmark, Christopher Gee painted this view of the folly…

… and Ed Kluz depicted the folly in a vibrant collage.

If you are in Bath before 10 May, as well as climbing up to the folly for magnificent views (it is publicly accessible – just follow Sham Castle Lane) you can see Richard Guyatt’s view of the Sham Castle in Poster Power!, an excellent exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery.

Thank you for reading. Comments, as ever, are welcome – just scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. 

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…

As ever in a feature on follies, the author had to deal with the question of a definition. Harper (1863-1943) concluded that a folly was a ‘pleasant fancy’ in the shape of a garden-house, a gazebo or perhaps even a ‘skyline freak’. As he continued, ‘now we have settled the nature of follies, the next thing will be to find some’. This, he thought, would be far from difficult, as the ‘land abounds with them’. Harper was sure that once a folly had been found, ‘the traveller who happens to be of a speculative turn of mind will find his curiosity greatly piqued to learn the story’.

Harper began with the building which he thought was ‘architecturally the most interesting’: the Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire. This was, he wrote, a building in which ‘Sir Thomas Tresham gave full outlet to his peculiar bent of mind’ by building a structure in which all measurements and decorations were governed by the ‘mystic three’.

In Cornwall Harper visited a ‘prime curiosity of the gruesome kind’ in the form of the mausoleum of Sir James Tillie. The monument was then derelict, but peering through a small gap the statue of Tillie could be seen – a ‘ferociously ugly man, with scowling countenance and great protruding paunch.’

Jack Fuller of Sussex (best known as Mad Jack Fuller) was described as ‘one of those squires who could not leave a hill-top alone in its natural beauty, but must needs place on it something in the way of a building, generally something ugly’. This was illustrated with a view of the Sugarloaf, supposedly erected to help Fuller win a bet that he could see Dallington church spire from his home. In fact he couldn’t, and the story goes that the cone was erected in a great hurry to ensure he won the wager.

William Beckford was noted as a man who frittered a fortune building towers, and an elegant sketch of his surviving tower in Bath was included in the article.

Harper was known for his strong opinions, and wasn’t afraid to air them in print. An anonymous review of his The Marches of Wales in The Athenaeum in 1895 noted how he went into ‘rhapsodies on discovering a Conservative cobbler’ but ‘shrieks against Dissenters, teetotallers and Radical politicians’. He was also accused of passing a ‘somewhat unjust judgment on the character of the Welsh people’.

To this list of pet hates might be added the women who were (to his mind) threatening the established order. In particular, Harper was no fan of the increasing numbers of female journalists who had ‘invaded newspaper offices’ and who were all more interested in the ‘cut of a dress’ than the ‘fall of a statesman from office’. He makes this sweeping statement in 1894, in a book that was a curious departure from his usual travelogues: Revolted Women: Past, Present and to Come. After what Harper called Eve’s ‘stupendous faux pas‘, he wondered why womanhood wasn’t content to ‘sit, for all time, humbly under correction, satisfied with her lot’ instead of aspiring to rule men while they had ‘no efficient control over [their] own hysterical being’.

But back to follies…

Harper also noted that not everything called a folly was actually a built structure with an interesting history. As an example, he gave the hilltop clump of trees in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) which had long been known as Faringdon Folly. One wonders what he made of the tower that Lord Berners erected on the summit only a decade or so later: no doubt it would have fallen into the ‘skyline freak’ category.

All of the follies mentioned are publicly accessible. Most have been covered in these pages – the search function will take you to the relevant posts.

Assuming she can control her own emotions (Harper didn’t think this possible of any females, especially writers) the Flâneuse will be back with another folly story next week. Thank you for reading.

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.

Charles Anderson (1749-1823) succeeded to the Brocklesby estate of his great uncle, Charles Pelham, in 1763, and added the Pelham name to his own. Pelham, created Baron Yarborough in 1794 greatly improved the vast estate, ornamentally and productively, with advice from Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Building work on his monument was begun by his son, Charles Anderson Pelham (1781-1846), created 1st Earl of Yarborough in 1837, and the column commemorates the 12,532,700 trees planted by his father between 1787 and his death in 1823. Construction was completed by his son, Charles (1809-1862), 2nd Earl of Yarborough, after he succeeded in 1846.

The architect was Edward James Willson (1787-1854) of Lincoln and the builder was Mr Tomlin of Grantham (probably John Tomlin, stonemason). Work was well underway by 1844 when ‘many workmen’ were reported to be on site. By 1845 it was rising above the trees and visible from boats on the Humber. The urn was fixed on the top in autumn 1847, and by 1848 it was said to be ‘now completed’. The lions that guard the entrance were carved by William Day Keyworth (1817-1897) of Hull.

The inscription on the column gives 1849 as the official opening date and one of the first to see the new column was Prince Albert, who was staying at Brocklesby in April 1849 when on official business in Grimsby (noting Albert’s visit to Lincolnshire in her diary, Queen Victoria wrote ‘I always miss him terribly when he leaves me’).

The Prince was driven around the park, where large groups gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal visitor. Elizabeth Dixon, a local farmer’s wife, watched the procession from the Newsham Lodge and then followed the Prince to the pillar where she had ‘an excellent view of the whole party’.

Even before it was complete the pillar had become not just a landmark for travellers on the roads and river, but a prominent spot for the Earl of Yarborough’s hounds to assemble before the chase.

Brocklesby was already home to other ornaments, including a garden temple, a hermitage and an exquisite mausoleum of 1787. In 1844 it was noted that visitors were welcomed into the park. There they could ‘wander in extensive and beautiful plantations’ and take refreshments in a woodland cottage ‘built in the Swiss style’ which stood near the rising column. In 1885 the Brocklesby estate was described in a tourist guide as a ‘place of holiday resort’, with the pillar and the Swiss Cottage amongst the highlights.

Unfortunately some of these tourists were not on their best behaviour, and in 1849 the estate office offered an ultimatum: if the carving of names in trees and the disfiguring of seats did not stop, then access to the park would be limited. The announcement continued that in future access to Pelham’s Pillar and the mausoleum would be by ticket only, obtainable on application to the estate office. Once access to the column had been gained, the message was reiterated on a plaque requesting that persons visiting the pillar refrain from writing or cutting their names or ‘otherwise disfigure the walls’.

For generations the men of the Jackson family, who lived at Pelham Pillar Lodge, were both woodsmen for the adjacent plantations and custodians of the monument. Their address was often abbreviated, making it appear that the family inhabited the column itself:

Happily the behaviour of the visitors must have improved, and the estate continued to allow access. In 1889 the Primitive Methodists met at the pillar for a bank holiday gathering, perhaps tempted along by the ‘meat tea’ that was provided. In that same year, a local cycling club visited Pelham’s Pillar and the Swiss Cottage with their ‘wives, sisters, and lady friends’. Fear not any frail female readers alarmed at this exertion: the ladies were ‘conveyed in wagonettes’.

But sadly history repeats itself: in the late twentieth century the Brocklesby estate created a popular permissive path which took in a number of the monuments, many of which had been restored. In 2021 it was announced that the route was to be permanently closed after several incidents of ‘anti-social behaviour’. Pelham’s Pillar too is out of bounds, but it can be glimpsed through trees (in winter)  from the adjoining road.

The Flâneuse climbed the tower many years ago when public access was allowed, but has no decent photographs, so thanks to the Garden Historian for the photo of the lions, and to Mike Booth of M.A.B. Media for the title image and the view above. His excellent film showing the detail of the architecture and the landscape setting of the column is well worth a look and can be found by clicking here.

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are very welcome and you can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each Saturday morning please click the ‘subscribe’ tab. 

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.

The company linked each modern building with a folly in the same general area and called the series Architecture: the changing face of Britain. The brief summary of follies on the back of the envelope ended with a sentence with which readers of these posts will concur: ‘The British love of the eccentric statement of individuality still, thank goodness, thrives’.

The 1st class stamp featured 30 St Mary Axe in London (architect: Sir Norman Foster), better known by its nickname of The Gherkin. This was paired with the Chinese pagoda in Kew Gardens.

Next up was the 42p stamp with a photograph of Maggie’s Centre in Dundee (architect: Frank Gehry), a specialist cancer care centre. This was pictured alongside the tower and temple on Calton Hill in Edinburgh.

Birmingham’s new Selfridges department store (architect: Future Systems), clad in silver buttons, shared an envelope with Perrott’s Folly in Edgbaston, Birmingham and the 44p stamp.

The Downland Gridshell (architect: Edward Cullinan Architects) at the Weald and Downland Living Museum, near Chichester in Sussex, was paired with the Nore Folly on the first day cover for the 50p stamp.

On the 64p stamp was An Turas, a ferry shelter/landscape ornament (architect: Sutherland Hussey Harris) on the Isle of Tiree, and this was shown alongside McCaig’s Tower in Oban.

Finally, the 72p stamp showed The Deep, the aquarium in Hull in Yorkshire (architect: Sir Terry Farrell). This was paired with a folly many miles away, but still in Yorkshire: the sham Stainborough Castle at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley.

The text on the Royal Mail’s own first day cover for the Modern Architecture collection suggested that ‘buildings now can shimmer like beetles, wriggle like serpents, rise above the clouds. Anything that can be imagined can be built’. But as the structures pictured on Benham’s covers show, folly builders have been doing just that for centuries.

The advantage of writing about modern architecture is that the architect is known. Of the follies featured here the pagoda at Kew is by Sir William Chambers; the tower on Carlton Hill in Edinburgh was begun to a design by Robert Burn but completed by Thomas Bonnar and the Greek-inspired National Monument is by C.R. Cockerell and W.H. Playfair. The designers of the other structures are yet to be identified with any certainty.

Thank you for reading. As always, any thoughts or comments are very welcome. Scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

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.

To tell the tale the Flâneuse is delighted to be joined by Holderness historian and writer Lucy Brooke…

The mausoleum purports to be that of Albina, a fictional niece of William the Conqueror. The tale (succinct version) goes that in the eleventh century William rewarded Drogo de la Bevrière (there are variant spellings), a loyal follower, with the title of Earl of Holderness and the hand of his niece in marriage. His bride, Albina, was a ‘young lady of extraordinary beauty’, but Drogo was an insanely jealous man, and he accused Albina of infidelity. Although she was proved innocent, Drogo poisoned her and left her to die in a dungeon. When her ’emaciated remains’ were eventually discovered, and Drogo was found to have fled, the local populace razed his castle to the ground.

Not content with simply erecting a sham tomb, Iveson (1770-1850) even commissioned a play telling the story of the doomed Albina. His chosen playwright was the prolific writer John Galt (1779-1839), but the two men were not acquaintances, and it is not known why Iveson chose Galt. Iveson sent him a set of illustrated notes, and this document (a brilliant find by Lucy) gives a firm date of 1834 for the construction of the tomb. The notes were accompanied by ‘three beautiful illustrative sketches’: the tomb, Hedon’s church of St Augustine, and an imagined view of Drogo’s castle in Holderness.

Galt was bed-bound when Iveson’s proposal arrived, but having read the outline with ‘thrilling interest’, he completed The Demoniack of Holderness: an Historical Drama in Three Acts in six sittings, and sent it to Iveson in November 1836. Although largely true to Iveson’s outline, for dramatic effect Galt has Drogo murder Albina with his sword when she refuses to drink a cup of poison.

The document tells that the ‘pilasters, columns and the segments of the front of the arch’ of the folly had only travelled across the road from St Augustine’s church when it was renovated. The floor, front walls and wings were built of stones from the excavated dungeon on Market Hill.

Iveson’s notes record that the two figures of King Athelstan and St John the Bishop were taken from the east end of Beverley Minster when ‘two modern figures of these personages were substituted’. Modern carvings added to Albina’s tomb included ivy leaves, a pun on Iveson’s name.

Iveson died in 1850 and Ivy House (as it had became known during his period of residence) became home to another historian, Godfrey Richard Park (1818-1907). Park wrote of ‘the pleasure and interest attending visits to the abodes and sepulchres of our ancestors’, so Albina’s tomb was in safe hands, and it was probably Park who extended it into a considerable garden room, as shown below. Park was the author of a history of the town, published in 1895. The volume included a few lines of verse about the tomb which begin:

Within a cell a corpse was found
Which told to all the lady’s doom,
And now, upon that spot of ground
Is built an arch, ‘Albina’s Tomb’.

Park opened his garden for charity events and in 1894 ‘The Ruins’ were ‘utilised for the Vicar’s stall’ at the Hedon Bazaar. The local paper noted that the vicar shared the space with the ladies of the town’s Sewing Meeting, although sadly it is not recorded what wares he and the ladies were selling. Rather more exotic was the fortune teller who had set up stall near the re-erected ecclesiastical fragments called the arcade. This sage had travelled ‘all the way from Egypt’ or, as the reporter thought more likely, ‘somewhere else’.

The enlarged tomb was still standing in the 1980s, but by the time the present owner, Greg Butterworth, bought Ivy House in 2016 the upper section had collapsed, the tomb was completely hidden in a dense web of ivy and thorns, and the interior was filled with rubble.

With Lucy’s help this has since been cleared, and the collapsed masonry rescued for safekeeping, but the folly (grade II) remains fenced-off until funds are available for further consolidation. But the tomb does have regular visitors – the ghosts of Albina and Drogo are said to haunt the ruin.

The gardens were also home to a rustic tea-house (only the tiled floor survives) as well as the arcade mentioned above. This was a substantial structure built out of fragments of masonry from churches in the district. It too has been rescued from the brambles and awaits further research and restoration.

Ivy House (grade II), a handsome red-brick Georgian residence, is a private home but the garden is opened regularly for Heritage Open Days in September.

There are no records of The Demoniack of Holderness being performed in Iveson’s lifetime, but a manuscript copy survives in Hull History Centre should anyone wish to bring it to the stage. Thanks to Martin Craven, Greg Butterworth and the team at Hull History Centre for their help with this post.

Lucy writes about the history of Holderness at her new website theholdernesshistorian.com

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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.

James Fowler of Louth was chosen as architect for the new church at Fotherby, and with funds in place it was agreed that work could begin in 1861. The crumbling old church was pulled down and, after a period of worshipping in nearby barns and meeting rooms, the congregation assembled in the new church in May 1863. Fowler was congratulated on the ‘imposing appearance of the edifice’.

At Brackenborough the folly was built on a mound in the corner of the moated enclosure that surrounds the garden. It was probably built contemporaneously with the new church at Fotherby, in the first years of the 1860s, but no records seem to survive to confirm an exact date. Robson (1820-1899) was a churchwarden and contributed to the cost of the new church, but no records of him acquiring the stone have yet been found. The folly no doubt functioned as a belvedere, summerhouse and eye-catcher, and in what was described in 1887 as ‘fine hunting country’ it may also have been a landmark for the hunt. When first built the south elevation was higher than the other sides and incorporated further recycled masonry, as seen in this 1907 view. No architect is associated with the folly: Fowler may have given advice, or it may have been Robson’s own design.

Brackenborough stands in an elevated position (relatively, in the flatlands of Lincolnshire), and before the plantations matured the view from the folly would have taken in local churches: there is still a vista to the elegant parish church of St James in Louth, with its spire said to be the highest of any parish church in Britain (the church was restored by Fowler in the 1760s).

Robson was declared bankrupt in 1887, after a collapse in the prices of agricultural produce, and the estate was put up for sale. Frustratingly, the sales particulars for the auction of the estate that year make no mention of the folly, although it was certainly extant a year later when the 25″ Ordnance Survey map was surveyed (published 1889) and the square tower is shown on its mound. The earliest written description found to date is in the sales particulars when the estate was again put up for auction in 1907. The folly was then noted as a ‘picturesque keep erected from stones from an old Ecclesiastical house’ (with house used in the sense of a church, or house of god). The estate was purchased by Frederick W. Bennett, whose family remain at Brackenborough today.

In the first edition of the Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, published in 1964, John Harris described the garden ornament as a ‘felicitous folly concocted from the remains of Fotherby church’ (for the Lincolnshire volume Nikolaus Pevsner concentrated mainly on churches and left secular buildings to Harris). Harris identified the fragments incorporated into the little tower as a thirteenth century arch, a three light Perpendicular window and a Decorated window ‘all built into a rugged ruin’. Photographs taken by Harris in 1959 during his research (Historic England collection) are similar to that shown above, and show that the south elevation was largely intact at that date.

The folly was ‘toppling precariously’ by the time Barbara Jones saw it in around 1970. The building was listed at grade II in 1986, by which time the upper section of the south elevation must have collapsed and it is not mentioned in the description. For years afterwards the folly was smothered in ivy and brambles and a large sycamore had taken root within the structure: it had become what Jones called a ‘ruinous sham ruin’ (Follies & Grottoes, 1974).

In 2015 Paul and Flora Bennett commissioned a structural survey from Capstone Consulting Engineers which concluded that the options were to repair and consolidate the folly as a ruin, or to repair and restore the folly creating a more ‘robust structure’. In 2020, after discussions at local and national levels, the Bennetts were given listed building consent to dismantle and reconstruct the badly listing folly under the supervision of Historic Building Consultant Liz Mayle.

The folly was dismantled, the stones numbered, and the folly rebuilt on secure foundations with new oak lintels and steel ties to support the structure. Flora even trawled the moat in search of stones that had toppled from the folly. In 2023 the restoration was recognised by a Pride of Place award from Louth Civic Trust.

Brackenborough Hall is a private residence, but the folly can be seen from a public footpath through the park. Or you could celebrate your wedding there, with the folly as a backdrop to your photographs, or stay in one of the holiday lets on the estate (which include an apartment featuring both the workings of the Coach House clock and a grain winch). To find out more visit brackenboroughhall.com.

Thanks to Steffie S. for alerting the Flâneuse to the restored folly, and to Paul, Flora and Poppy the exuberant labrador for a tour and a welcome coffee on a frosty morning.

Thank you for reading. To share any thoughts please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each Saturday morning please click on the ‘subscribe’ tab.