In 1839 the Marchioness of Normanby wrote to her husband from the couple’s seat at Mulgrave Castle, on the Yorkshire coast just north of Whitby. Amongst other news, she told him of progress on the ‘new hermitage’ which was then being built, and of the views which were being opened in the woodland.
Folly
The Temple of Theseus, Exmouth, Devon
In the early decades of the nineteenth century Lord Rolle of Bicton House in Devon, developed land by the sea in Exmouth in a bid to attract tourists. He made ‘commodious gravel walks’ and created gardens with rustic benches, as well as building elegant marine residences. Lord Rolle also granted a lease on a plot of land to one William Kendall, who in 1824 built a ‘very pretty’ house modelled on the Temple of Theseus in Athens.
Blaise Castle, Bristol.
In the first half of the 1760s Thomas Farr, a Bristol merchant, bought land at Henbury near Bristol, which included the prominent eminence called ‘Blaize Hill’. In 1766 he commissioned designs from the architect Robert Mylne for a sham castle eye-catcher to top the hill.
Tortoise Temples
This 1831 illustration of the ‘Tortoise’s Grotto’, at the then brand new Surrey Zoological Gardens, is currently on view in Lost Gardens of London, the latest exhibition at The Garden Museum in Lambeth. As the show’s title hints, the zoo and the tortoises’ rocky home are long gone but, almost two centuries later, miniature follies are still being built to house chosen chelonians.
Alan Terrill has kept tortoises since he rescued a stray as a child, and as an adult he has created quirky homes for the creatures wherever life has taken him.
In the 1970s home was Sheffield and there were three tortoises in the family. Alan built an octagonal castle out of brick – each one cut at an angle by hand – which was then rendered. Set in elegant ornamental grounds, the tortoises soon got the hang of climbing the steps and passing through the portcullis to get to bed each evening.
From there the Terrill family moved to an old Methodist chapel in Kent. Alan set to work to build a miniature replica to house the tortoises, but reimagining the chapel as a ruin. The 1980s saw a fashion for fireplaces built of small bricks, and this was the ideal building material. The roof was made from tiny tiles created from a full-size roof slate. This home was taken down and travelled with the Terrills to their next home.
There it was joined by a second tortoise house exclusively for the boys (who tended to give the females a hard time in the warmer weather). Also in brick, this shelter had an Egyptian doorway and was topped with a pyramid. The finishing touch was a suitably macho tortoise sculpture.
In 2001 the family moved to Shropshire, leaving behind the tortoise houses. For some years the tortoises made do with makeshift shelters whilst Alan pondered what form their new home should take (and he was otherwise occupied building full-size follies in his new garden).
In January 2022 the Folly Flâneuse featured the recently-restored shell temple at Leigh Park (now Staunton Harold Country Park) in Havant, in Hampshire (above). Alan’s wife Claire instantly declared it just the model for a new tortoise house.
Alan set to work to design and build a miniature version in their tortoise enclosure. Pondering a design issue, Alan recruited restoration architect John Malaiperuman, who worked on the restoration of the 19th century original, for help. The temple has an internal wall to separate the males and females, and is decorated with shells bought on eBay. The tortoise folly is currently home to Diogenes (who has been part of the family for 47 years), Loosestrife and Ephebe.
Lost Gardens of London, guest curated by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, continues at The Garden Museum until 2 March 2025. The view of the ‘Tortoise’s Grotto’ has been adopted for display by the Folly Fellowship, the charity founded in 1988 to preserve, promote and protect follies, grottoes and garden buildings (when Alan is not busy building tortoise houses and full-size follies he maintains the Fellowship’s excellent website).
The trustees of the Folly Fellowship have asked the Flâneuse to invite readers to join their members at a private view of the exhibition on Friday 31 January. To find out more click here.
Thank you for reading and please get in touch via the comments box below if you wish to share any thoughts.
Happy New Year
The Folly Flâneuse sends best wishes to all for a happy and healthy New Year.
Stark’s Folly and The Girl Who Wasn’t There
Luna and Aurora explore the crumbling folly tower.
Follies occasionally appear in literature, but seldom in works aimed at a younger readership. So it was hugely exciting to find that one of Britain’s best-loved writers of children’s fiction had featured a folly in a recent work. This year, a new work by the acclaimed writer Dame Jacqueline Wilson (100 plus books and counting) was published. The Girl Who Wasn’t There is a ghost story within a tale of family life and is beautifully illustrated by Rachael Dean. The reader is only a few pages in when young Luna and Aurora are first introduced to the dilapidated Stark’s Folly, somewhere on the south coast of England…
Captain Fraser’s Folly, Uig, Isle of Skye.
Captain William Fraser purchased the Kilmuir estate in the north of the Isle of Skye in 1855. For £80,000 he was reported to have acquired an estate which was ‘one of the most susceptible to improvement in the Highlands’ and one which was sure to be a ‘profitable investment’ – a euphemistic way of saying that the tenants could be evicted and the land used for more lucrative purposes. Soon after purchasing the estate Captain Fraser erected this round tower overlooking Uig Bay.
Black Dick’s Temple, Whitley Beaumont, West Yorkshire
Many follies have lurid tales attached telling of wicked acts and/or ghostly goings-on and a classical temple, high on the Whitley Beaumont estate near Kirkheaton, doesn’t disappoint. It is known locally as Black Dick’s Temple, after Whitley Beaumont’s owner in the early seventeenth century, Sir Richard Beaumont. Local legends tell that Sir Richard ran up such huge debts gambling that he had to live a double-life as a highwayman. He is said to haunt the site and, of course, there are whispers of a network of secret tunnels under the building.
Barbara Jones, ‘Follies & Grottoes’, 1974.
Jones's view of Clytha Castle, near Abergavenny.
In 1953 Barbara Jones published Follies & Grottoes, a ‘handsome book on a fascinating subject’. It was the first book to look at follies in any depth, and was well-received. Almost twenty years later it was announced that there would be a revised edition, for whilst the first edition was remembered as a pioneering book, it was ‘not a comprehensive survey’. Upon publication in November 1974 (fifty years ago this week) the new edition was judged ‘double the size and more than twice as good’.
Beckford’s Tower, Bath, Bath & North East Somerset.
In April 1826 a visitor to Bath noted that William Beckford, a ‘wealthy and capricious voluptuary’, had bought land on Lansdown Hill ‘with the design of erecting a magnificent tower with drest grounds about it’. The visitor knew that this had been planned since soon after Beckford’s move to the city in 1822, but he could see no sign of any progress on the project. Had he arrived just a few months later he would have found builders hard at work.