In the Victorian age, many churches were rebuilt or renovated in the very latest taste. One of these was St Augustine’s at Hedon, east of Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Here, the architect G.E. Street oversaw the work, part of which included the replacement of the window in the south transept. But the ancient traceried window removed during the works was to get a second and even a third life elsewhere…
garden history
The Gothic Cottage, Stourhead, Wiltshire
Wandering in the glorious landscape that is Stourhead in Wiltshire there are vistas to grand classical temples and gothic monuments, but there is also a pastoral scene featuring a pretty little rustic cottage which has inspired artists – from painters to designers of tourist souvenirs – over the centuries.
Cook’s Castle and the Obelisk, Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight
Sir Richard Worsley inherited his father’s baronetcy, and the Appuldurcombe estate on the Isle of Wight, in 1768. The following year set off on the Grand Tour, and on his return in 1770 he turned his attention to remodelling the house and park. In the next few years he erected two eye-catchers to be seen from the mansion: an obelisk and a dramatic hilltop sham ruin called Cook’s Castle.
‘Towering Dreams’ at Compton Verney, Warwickshire.
A new exhibition has just opened at Compton Verney in Warwickshire: Towering Dreams: Extraordinary Architectural Drawings explores how architects in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ‘understood the world around them and the ideas and cultures that inspired them’. The majority of the wonderful drawings in the exhibition are on loan from Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, and the subjects include structures we would know today, as well as extraordinary designs that never made it off the drawing board.
Lord Littlehampton’s Folly.
In 1949 Osbert Lancaster published a history of the town of Drayneflete, with illustrations showing its development from the Bronze age to the then present day. His detailed research took him to rare historical volumes, archaeological reports and contemporary prints and photographs. With help from the Earl of Littlehampton, and local historian Miss Dracula Parsley-ffigett, he set about recording the town’s past in print. As the admiring visitors above have spotted, an interesting architectural ornament could be found in the park of Drayneflete Castle, which stood on the edge of the settlement.
Appley Tower, Ryde, Isle of Wight.
Close to the little town of Ryde on the north coast of the Isle of Wight stood Appley Towers, a fine seaside villa with views across the Solent to the mainland of Britain. In the later decades of the nineteenth century its new owner added a belvedere on the shore, which he called the Watch Tower.
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.
Darnley Mausoleum, Cobham, Kent
John Bligh, 3rd Earl of Darnley of Cobham Hall, Kent, left instructions in his will that a ‘Chapel or Mausoleum’ be built on Williams Hill, an elevated site on his estate. The building was to receive his body, and those of other family members if they should ‘desire it’. It was to be constructed of the finest materials, and the Earl suggested it ‘might be of a kind with four fronts supporting a pyramid in the middle high enough to be conspicuous’.
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.