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.

In 1761, Henry Blundell was given control of the Ince Blundell estate by his father. He had recently married Elizabeth Mostyn and the couple settled into the mansion house, which had been built earlier in the century. Blundell was an avid collector, with the funds to indulge his passion, and after his wife’s early death he spent time in Italy before returning to Ince Blundell to build two temples ‘purposely for the reception of statuary’.

Blundell (1724-1810) had become very wealthy thanks to family bequests and Ince Blundell was home to an impressive collection of Old Master and modern paintings. What was lacking was a fine collection of Roman statuary, so in 1776 he set off for Italy to join his friend, fellow collector and fellow Catholic, Charles Townley. With advice from Townley, and a network of contacts, he went on something of a shopping spree. Blundell returned to Italy in subsequent years, and also continued to buy works privately and at auction in Britain, quickly running out of space to display the works.

Blundell’s solution was to display sculpture in a complex of garden buildings fronted by a classical pedimented temple. This was connected to a greenhouse and an octagonal room, all of which were filled with sculpture as well as plants (the tithe map of 1843 shows this substantial range of buildings). The temple carries a Greek inscription, shown in the engraving above, which is usually translated as ‘here spring is eternal and it is summer in months not its own’ – i.e. the heated glasshouses allowed plants to flourish in all seasons (this inscription also appears on the orangery in Clapham).

The temple is attributed to the Liverpool architect William Everard (1723-1792) on the evidence that a portrait of the architect showed him with ‘the plan in his hand’, pointing to the completed structure (the portrait was shown at a lecture in Liverpool in 1869, but its current whereabouts are unknown). The temple was extant by February 1790 when it is shown in a drawing (see below). In that same year the Polish princess Isabel Czartoryska visited – she was not impressed by the combination of sculpture and verdure. She complained that Ince was a ‘storehouse of various objects gathered without taste or choice. Plenty of ugly statues and many sarcophagi, so called antique, positioned among the geraniums in the hot houses’.

Blundell soon needed still more space, and in 1801 he discussed the creation a new gallery with Townley. He commissioned a wooden model (sadly lost) of the planned ‘room’, which took the form of a rotunda modelled on the pantheon in Rome.

Like the original, the building was top-lit although, this being Lancashire, it was glazed. When complete it was used to house his ‘choicest specimens’ and one visitor recorded how his ‘eye roved in admiration from figure to figure’. Blundell had boasted that many of the buildings on his estate were to his own design, and he may have designed this building himself, using an executant architect/mason named briefly in the surviving accounts as Hope.

Blundell carefully catalogued his collection and in 1803 he published a handlist of the works in the house and both temples, followed in 1809 by a lavish two-volume illustrated work.

Originally the pantheon was freestanding, but in the second half of the nineteenth century it was connected to the house via a single storey link.

Whilst Blundell understandably favoured classical buildings in which to display the sculpture collection, there was a gothic ornament in his park. Sometime before 1786 a prospect tower was erected east of the house (it is shown on Yates’s map of the County Palatine of Lancaster published in that year). Described in 1823 as the ‘observatory’, it was said to ‘command a very extensive view’.

Named on nineteenth century Ordnance Survey maps as ‘Blundell Tower’, it disappeared early in the next century and is known only from two artworks. The drawing above, formerly at Stonor Park (once home to Blundell’s son-in-law), is a great record of the lost tower. National Museums Liverpool was able to purchase this view for the city’s collection at Christies in 1992. The tower also appears in a painting by Charles Towne of Blundell’s horse, Duchess (private collection).

James Lees-Milne, Historic Buildings Secretary of the National Trust, visited Ince, a ‘romantic Papist establishment’ in August 1947. By that date the house had descended to the Weld family, who had added the name Blundell.  Lees-Milne found the Pantheon ‘marvellous’, and thought the displays at Ince Blundell must be the ‘finest statuary collections left in private hands’. That ownership was not to last: in 1959 the family presented many of the sculptures to the city of Liverpool, and a year later the house was sold to the Augustinian Sisters, a Catholic order of nuns, to be used as a care home.

Although the art world was relieved that the works were to be preserved as a single collection, there was sadness that it could not remain, as Geoffrey Grigson wrote, in ‘the delightful setting which Henry Blundell devised for it’. A group of ‘distinguished members of the Georgian Group’ wrote to the Times expressing their dismay that the collection was to be removed. Writing in response, Vere E. Cotton, former Lord Mayor of Liverpool, explained that the Liverpool Corporation had only decided on removing the collection with ‘extreme reluctance’. The corporation had explored constructing a new access to the Pantheon, taking a long lease on the temple and even taking down the Pantheon and rebuilding it in a Liverpool park. But none of the options was feasible.

Only a fraction of the sculpture collection can be seen in Liverpool today, with the majority of the works inaccessible in store. The Walker Art Gallery has a selection of the eighteenth century copies from Ince Blundell on display, but the city’s World Museum has no works on show,

But there is some very good news. Ince Blundell recently became a respite centre where unpaid carers can take a break and relax. As well as ensuring a future for the house, and providing a wonderful resource for the local area, this new use means that public access is possible, and pre-booked guided tours are available (and highly recommended).

The tour includes the Pantheon, which is now bare of sculpture, although some of the niches still display the catalogue number assigned by Blundell. The interior is in reasonable condition, but sadly the reliefs mounted on the exterior are badly degraded.

The Garden Temple can also be seen, but the attached greenhouse is long gone (ruins of the furthest room can be seen, although this was later remodelled as part of a range of glasshouses). The temple was restored in the late 1990s, but damp is an ongoing problem. Some wall-mounted works can still be admired, but the free-standing statuary has been removed.

The vast sculpture collection is listed in Blundell’s own publications, and more recently it has been discussed in depth in the volumes of The Ince Blundell Collection of Classical Sculpture, published from 1991.

House, Pantheon and Temple are listed at grade II*. The park is grade II* registered. Ince Blundell is north of Liverpool and, although originally in Lancashire, it became part of the new county of Merseyside in 1974. You can find Ince Blundell visitor information here. 

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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 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

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome – scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox on Saturday mornings please visit the ‘subscribe’ page.

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.

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.

Mentioned in 1788 as the ‘Cynder House at Hockley’, the earliest comprehensive reference is in rhyme. In 1800 James Bisset, the custodian of Birmingham’s Museum, published a curious hybrid, which was part poem and part who’s who of Birmingham, under the snappy title of A poetic survey round Birmingham; with a brief description of the different curiosities and manufactories of the place. Intended as a guide to strangers. […] Accompanied by a magnificent directory; with the names, professions, &c. superbly engraved in emblematic plates. Bisset invited the reader to join him on a tour of the town, and there was a pause to admire Hockley Abbey and its curious construction:

Close by the LAKE’S pellucid stream, behold
A GOTHIC PILE, which seems some cent’ries old,
VULCANIC FANCY there display’d her taste,
And rear’d the fabric on the barren waste;
The FORGE materials for the work provides,
Rude cinders clothe the front – compose the sides.

The ‘abbey’ was described in detail in by Charles Pye in his Description of Modern Birmingham. According to Pye, who toured Birmingham in 1818, Ford noticed that the workers at his manufactory spent several shillings each week in the pub. Not a drinker, Ford decided to put aside two shillings each day until he had enough money to build the house. With the funds in place, his workforce were sent to collect the ‘large masses of scoriæ’ from the Aston furnace and cart it to the building site. By the time Pye saw the abbey it was covered with ivy and he wrote that the uninformed visitor would be ‘at a loss to know what substance the walls were built with’.

Ford told Pye that Hockley Abbey was built ‘without advancing any other money than the fourteen shillings a week’. This all seems a little fanciful, and it is likely that Ford had to dip into his savings to fund the improvements on his new estate.  As well as the house, with its ‘feign’d time-shook walls’, he also laid out ‘beautiful grounds and walks, interspersed with fanciful curiosities’. These included a grot decorated with spar and shells, the ‘beauteous spoils of Neptune’s realms’.

The abbey became an object of interest for tourists visiting the area (Hockley Abbey was contiguous with Mathew Boulton’s much-admired Soho estate, where a grand manufactory stood alongside his mansion with pleasure grounds). The artificial ruins built out of ‘cinders and vitrifications’ were considered by one visitor in 1799 to be in such good taste that it would be ‘illiberal to pass by without notice’.

This 1868 photograph shows Hockley Abbey shortly before it was pulled down and the site redeveloped. Hockley Abbey is best remembered today as the trademark of John Rabone & Sons of Hockley Abbey Works, Birmingham. The measuring tools that they manufactured, and in particular spirit levels, brass rulers and tape measures, are now collectors’ items.

For more follies built out of furnace waste see this post about Morris Castle, near Swansea

The Flâneuse sends best wishes to all readers for the year ahead. Thank you for your continued support. As ever, comments are very welcome via the box at the foot of the page.

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.

The porch is said to have started life as part of a cross in Old Sarum, and was reused as the north porch when the present cathedral was constructed in New Sarum, or Salisbury, in around 1250. According to local histories, the ‘miserably truncated’ cross was covered with a flat roof of lead and functioned as a porch for five centuries until Shute Barrington’s renovations in the late eighteenth century.

As the title photograph shows, the garden ornament is looking a little battered in its old age, but happily an enchanting array of images record its appearance when first moved to its new home.

Wyndham’s family home was St Edmund’s College, a former ecclesiastical building later converted into a private residence. The garden had been laid out to an undated plan by the landscape designer Richard Woods (1715-1793). Woods had suggested that a summerhouse might be placed in a corner of the garden, with a view to the house and church, so Wyndham (1736-1819) knew the perfect spot for the summerhouse and eye-catcher he created by embellishing the ancient cross.

It was Wyatt himself who oversaw the taking down of the porch and its re-erecting in Wyndham’s garden. The porch was dismantled in May 1791 and carted to Wyndham’s grounds. During the summer Wyatt’s masons carved 2 pinnacles (the others were presumably salvaged from the cathedral works) and cut stone to make the spire, with work complete by September when Wyatt submitted his bill for £33.7.6.

A Latin inscription on a sheet of lead was placed over the east arch inside the building. It is long gone, but it is known to have recorded that the porch was rebuilt in Wyndham’s garden in 1791, having formerly stood in Old Sarum and then at Salisbury Cathedral.

Wyndham’s house and grounds were sold in the late nineteenth century, with much of the land being developed for housing. The house and ten acres of garden were purchased by the Reverend George Hugh Bourne, who lived there until his death in 1925.

In 1927, on the 700th anniversary of Salisbury receiving its charter, the house and grounds on Bourne Hill were purchased by the city to create new municipal offices. The park was opened to the public and the porch, by now shaded by trees, became known to some locally as the Devil’s Arch.

Earlier this year work was carried out to restore the porch (grade II). Rusting iron clamps were removed, and old cement repairs were replaced with lime mortar. Note that although local histories date the porch to the days of Old Sarum, the information boards in Bourne Hill Gardens call it the ’15th Century Porch’.

This remarkable survival deserves to be better known, so do visit if you are in the area. Bourne Hill Gardens (grade II) are always open. Bourne Hill continues to house offices of Wiltshire County Council. St Edmund’s Church is now an arts centre.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page and the Flâneuse is always delighted to receive further information or hear your thoughts on follies. If you would like a folly story in your inbox each week please visit the subscribe page.

In the 1740s William Kent designed a new garden ornament for Thomas Coke of Holkham. An artificial hillock was constructed on which the temple was to stand, giving it the name the Seat on the Mount. The temple was later pulled down, but fragments of the four busts which once decorated it were salvaged, and incorporated into a cottage in a nearby village. The Flâneuse has written about follies built from the remnants of houses, but a cottage decorated with the remnants of a garden temple is something new.

The ‘New Mount’ at Holkham was constructed in 1742, and the Seat on the Mount the following year. The sculptor Peter Scheemakers provided the four figures, two female and two male, that decorate the front elevation. Coke (1697-1759), created Baron Lovell in 1728 and 1st Earl of Leicester in 1744, could visit the seat and from its elevated site he is said to have watched as his new house was constructed.

The architect Matthew Brettingham Senior, who had overseen building work at Holkham, produced a volume of views which included an engraving of the Seat on the Mount. His text tells us that the temple was home to a ‘small antique figure of the Nile’ and a ‘Coro Marino’ (Sea Chorus) of sea nymphs, centaurs and cupids in alto relievo. The figure of the Nile was added to the earl’s collection in 1752, and the bas-relief panel of sea creatures was bought by Coke in Rome in 1716, and was originally part of a sarcophagus. It was noticed by a visitor in 1767 who saw the summerhouse with an ‘ancient Bass-relief in the wall’.

It would seem likely that the Seat on the Mount was taken down when parts of the garden were remodelled in the late eighteenth century. The figure of the Nile had been moved into the house by 1817, and the summerhouse does not appear on nineteenth century Ordnance Survey maps. The art historian Adolf Michaelis complicates matters by mentioning the ‘Seat on the Mount’ in his Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, which was published in 1882. Perhaps he was using outdated information? What is certain is that by 1907 the heads from the Seat on the Mount had been used to embellish a simple cottage in nearby Burnham Overy Town (actually a village, but thus named to distinguish it from Burnham Overy Staithe).

How the figures came to be moved to Burnham Overy Town to decorate the little cottage remains another puzzle, and many passers-by must have wondered about the history of the carved heads.

One such curious tourist was the late follyphiliac Jeffrey Whitelaw, and in 1960 he wrote to Country Life magazine asking if anyone knew the origins of the statuary. Whitelaw questioned if the busts were artificial stone from the Pulham factory, but the mystery was solved a couple of weeks later when the Duke of Wellington replied via the magazine’s letters page. The Duke confirmed that the ‘canephoræ’ originally decorated the temple at Holkham. Arthur Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington (1885-1972) was an architect, and is of course famed in follydom as the designer of Lord Berners’ tower at Faringdon. Canephoræ are caryatids bearing a basket on their heads that serve as a capital (although strictly speaking canephoræ are female, and two of the figures here are male).

In the later years of the twentieth century the fragments were moved to new positions in the tiny front garden, where they remain today. The cottage is now called ‘The Images’ and can easily be seen from the road through the village, and here’s a rather appealing view of it by artist Richard Swallow.

Holkham may have lost the Seat on the Mount, but other fine garden buildings can still be seen including the Obelisk (see the plate above) and the Temple. The latter was built in 1734 after a sketch by William Kent.

And of course there is the mansion itself and the wonderful collection it holds. The statuette representing the River Nile and the bas-relief panel remain in the family collection (not currently on display), although the latter has fallen apart and is now incomplete.

Coincidentally (i.e. the Flâneuse is not on commission) the cottage is currently on the market. There’s more here. Everything you need to know about Holkham can be found on their website.

For information on sculpture at Holkham the Flâneuse is indebted to The Holkham Collection of Classical Sculpture by Elizabeth Angelicoussis.

Further information is always very welcome. You can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page (only your name will appear – your email address remains private). Thank you for reading.

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The Flâneuse recently puzzled over this black and white photograph of a tall archway that is annotated ‘Breedon-on-the-Hill’. Internet searches using every combination of the village name with ‘arch’, ‘gate’ and ‘folly’, and as many other ideas as the Flâneuse could come up with, drew a complete blank. But driving into the village there it was, just to our right, and unchanged since the older photograph was taken.

A little way further along the wall from the gateway three letters are created from a patchwork of stone blocks near the entrance to a busy quarry. They abbreviate the former name of the works, the Breedon and Cloud Hill Lime Works Company: Breedon has been the site of quarrying and lime extraction since the eighteenth-century.

Aerial photographs of the quarry, taken in the middle of the twentieth century, show the gateway standing in what appears to be a bare plot, but it is still not immediately clear what purpose the arch serves.

Happily the excellent Breedon-on-the-Hill parish website has links to two volumes of pictorial history which explain that the ‘gateway’ was the centrepiece of a rockery, one of a number built by the owner of the quarry to beautify the village. By the late 1950s the village had become known for these rockery gardens of ‘artistic stonework’ which were planted with flowers and full of ‘vital colour’. According to the history, much of the rockwork was created freehand by Lawrence Wakefield, although the archway is not specifically attributed to him.

For much of the twentieth century the quarry was owned and/or managed by the Shields family. In 1959 Captain C.F. Shields, Managing Director of the works, told a reporter from the Leicester Evening Mail that providing good houses for workers, and ornamenting the village, was ‘making a return’ for ‘despoiling the rock that gives the village its name and character’. And of course the stonework was a great advertisement for the company’s products which included ‘rockery and grotto stone’.

Through the archway, which stands on the village’s Main Street, are steps leading up to the quarry offices, although sadly they now terminate in a ‘keep out’ sign.

If visiting Breedon-on-the-Hill don’t miss the village’s other attractions which include an eighteenth century lockup and the very pleasing War Memorial to those lost in the First and Second World Wars.

Take time to explore the church of St Mary and St Hardulph, which stands high above the village close to the quarry face (it is just out of shot in the aerial photo’ – it stands on the plateau above the quarry face on the right). As well as important Anglo-Saxon sculpture there are also fine tombs, including a vast monument to Sir George Shirley and his family, dated 1598, which features this intricate life-size memento mori.

Thank you for reading and do please get in touch if you know more about the arch, or would like to share any thoughts. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

P.S. A well-known landscape ornament has been in the news this week and deserves a mention. Beckford’s Tower, near Bath, won the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in a Landscape at the Georgian Group Architectural Awards 2025. Congratulations to all the team at the Bath Preservation Trust

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 exact early history of the arch is not known, but it is generally accepted to have been built for Jeremy Sambrooke (died 1754), who bought the estate in the first decade of the eighteenth century. It is attributed to the architect James Gibbs, who is known to have designed garden buildings for Gobions (also often referred to as Gubbins), but to date no documentary evidence has been found.

The arch straddled an entrance which led to a tree-lined drive down into the park, laid out to a design attributed to Charles Bridgeman, although Sambrooke himself probably made a significant contribution. By 1726 visitors could admire woods cut through with walks and ornamented with canals, statues and an ampitheatre.

Although a number of contemporary accounts describe the fine park in some detail, the arch is not mentioned and hence it remains something of a mystery, although it is clearly shown on a map thought to have been drawn before Bridgeman’s death in 1738 (above).

John Hunter, a wealthy merchant, bought the Gobions estate in 1777. It seems that he removed the formal gardens admired by earlier generations and naturalised the park, his principal interests being ’tillage and grazing’. Early editions of Ambulator: or, A pocket companion in a tour around London, describe the delightful formal pleasure grounds, but by the time the 6th edition appeared in 1793, Gobions was described as ‘once famous for its fine gardens in the ancient taste’. Happily, the arch survived under the new owner.

In 1786 the Brookmans estate, which stood adjacent to Gobions, was bought by Samuel Robert Gaussen. His descendant Robert William Gaussen added the Gobions estate to his land holdings after John Hunter’s death in 1827, and in 1842 the Gobions mansion was dismantled and sold for the materials after Gaussen decided to ‘throw Brookmans and Gobions parks into one’. By this date the tithe map shows that the arch was known as the ‘folly’ and the open meadows beyond as ‘Folly Park’.

A fire in 1891 destroyed the Brookmans house, and the Gaussens created a new home in the stable block. In 1911 the estate, now known as Brookmans Park, was home to Hubert Gaussen, and he gave permission for the Herts County Open Speed trials to take place in his grounds. This wonderful photograph captures Jack Holroyd, on his Motosacoche motorcycle (described in 1911 as ‘The Motorcycle that is Booming’), setting off over the starting line. Although Holroyd was not the fastest on the day, he did go on to have great success, and later manufactured his own models as well as running a motorcycle shop on Regent Street, London.

The Gaussen family offered the estate at auction in 1923 and it was bought by developers to create the ‘Brookmans Park Estate’ in the ‘gently undulating and well-wooded country on the borders of Middlesex and Hertfordshire’. The rural setting was always emphasised in advertisements, and a 1929 sales pitch made the rash promise that the ‘Home Farm will always supply Grade A milk, real new-laid eggs, and fresh butter to residents’ (today a trip to Sainsbury’s at Potters Bar is required). The Brookmans Park railway station opened in 1926, and a golf course in the former parkland in 1930. Meanwhile ‘Country Homes 35 Minutes from Town’ were snapped up by buyers keen to live in bucolic Brookmans Park, for as the sales brochure noted ‘under the strenuous conditions of modern city life, country surroundings are becoming not so much a luxury as a necessity’.

Happily the arch and its lodge were left in peace on the edge of the estate, although the lodge had fallen into disrepair. In the early 1990s the lodge, complete with folly arch, was offered for sale: although the Gobions Woodland Trust, already custodian of parts of the park, was keen to buy the arch, it went instead to a private buyer who built a new house to replace the derelict lodge.

Meanwhile the grade II* listed arch, patched up on a number of occasions over the centuries, had fallen into a very poor condition, with a huge crack above the arch, and the North Mymms Greenbelt Society appealed to English Heritage to take action and save the folly from collapse. The arch was propped up whilst discussions continued between English Heritage, the private owner of the lodge and arch, and local amenity societies. It took four years to resolve the situation and for work to begin. The restoration was completed in 2023.

The arch remains in private ownership, but can easily be seen at the junction of Swanley Bar Lane and Hawkshead Road: the pretty old sign in the postcard above has gone, but you can’t miss the mailbox at the lodge.

You can also walk in the former parkland (listed grade II) and enjoy views back to the arch. The woodland is now managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.

For lots more on Brookmans Park see the excellent North Mymms History Project website. You can read more about the nabob John Hunter here.

The Flâneuse must conclude with the story that a farthing was placed between each pair of bricks when the arch was constructed. No evidence of this extravagance has yet been found.

Thank you for reading. As ever, you are encouraged to scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts.