In 1826 Charles Heathcote Tatham exhibited a view of a ‘tower now erecting’ at the Royal Academy. The tower was a belvedere, eye-catcher and summerhouse on the Rookesbury estate, near Wickham, where a substantial new house, also designed by Tatham, was under construction.
garden history
The Obelisk, Umberslade, Warwickshire
If you have driven on the M40 in Warwickshire, you might have caught a glimpse of this obelisk in the former parkland of Umberslade Hall. In the middle of the eighteenth century Umberslade was home to Thomas Archer, who commissioned this obelisk. It was originally topped with an eye-catching golden star which, sadly, is long gone but it is known from old photographs.
The Hermitage, Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland
Hawkes 1955
In 1807 the 9th earl of Winchelsea built a rustic retreat deep in woodland in his park at Burley-on-the-Hill. The building was known as ‘The Hermitage’, and soon became the subject of tales which were somewhat fanciful, even in the fantastical world of follies.
The Tower, Tan-y-Coed, Old Colwyn, Clwyd
This little sham castle, once on an open hillside but now surrounded by trees, was erected in the grounds of a house called Tan-y-Coed (Foot of the Woods) in Old Colwyn. It was the home of Charles Frederick Woodall, a retired woollen draper from Manchester, who settled on the North Wales coast in the 1880s for the benefit of his health. He created pretty gardens around his house, with the sham castle the most prominent feature. The tower is a prime example of a folly where the tales told about it don’t bear close scrutiny…
The Monument, Lemmington Hall, Northumberland (via Surrey)
In rural Northumberland an elegant stone column rises in a field. A passer-by would guess it to be an eighteenth century ornament, and they would be right: work to erect it was completed in 1786. But it was not built in Northumberland, where it has stood for a mere century. The monument actually started its life at Felbridge in Surrey, some 350 miles to the south.
The Summerhouse, Long Melford, Suffolk
Towards the northern end of the lengthy village street of Long Melford, in Suffolk, stands Melford Hall. In a corner of the garden, overlooking the road and the green opposite, stands a rutilant brick summerhouse. Once furnished with a table and chairs, the little building must have hosted the most elegant intimate parties.
The Jungle, Swinethorpe, Lincolnshire
Early in the nineteenth century, Samuel Russell Collett moved to a farming estate at Swinethorpe in Lincolnshire. There he constructed a ‘romantic seat’, in the form of a sham castle, which by 1824 was known by the curious name of ‘The Jungle’.
Angram Dam in miniature, Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire.
Courtesy of Nidderdale Museum.
Most of the structures featured in these pages decorate vast estates or landscapes, or at least substantial gardens. But the sculpture pictured here is something a little different – it started life as a project for men building a reservoir, and later spent many years ornamenting a quiet garden in a Yorkshire village. It is a scale model of the dam and valve tower at Angram Reservoir, north of Pateley Bridge in the old West Riding of Yorkshire, and was built by two of the masons who worked on the construction of the reservoir.
Follyphilia.
In November 1960, The Queen magazine published a special issue that asked the question ‘What’s so different about the British?’ Amongst the contributors were Norman Parkinson on ‘British Clothes’, Ambrose Heath on the British and cooking and Laurie Lee on the village of Slad. And what could be more British than follies, the subject discussed by Nicholas Guppy, and illustrated in wildly extravagant fashion by cartoonist ffolkes.
Lacy’s Caves, Little Salkeld, Cumbria
Early in 1789 Samuel Lacy, a military man, bought Salkeld Lodge near the village of Little Salkeld and not far from a very beautiful stretch of the River Eden. In the 1830s he built a new home across the river, which he called Eden Lacy. On both banks of the river he created caves and seats, all carved out of solid rock – the lovely red sandstone so characteristic of the Eden valley.