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.

The Thornton Hall estate came into the possession of Thomas Sheppard after his marriage to the heiress Elizabeth Cotton in 1774. Sheppard considered the church of St Michael and All Angels, close to the hall, to be outdated and cluttered. As part of a major restoration he dismantled an ancient tomb, with the ornate side panels becoming features of a grotto in a sequestered spot in the gardens.

The church had been home to the ancient tomb of the Ingylton family, described in the 1755 county history of Buckinghamshire by Browne Willis as a ‘very handsome Altar Tomb of Stone’, for centuries. The tomb featured reliefs of Ingylton himself (he died in 1472) accompanied by his three wives, six sons and ten daughters.

In 1783 Sheppard (1741-1821) asked permission to demolish parts of the church and rebuild it in a ‘more regular and commodious’ manner. This he did out of a ‘pious and charitable disposition’, and at his own expense, with the ‘unanimous consent’ of the Rector and parishioners. A faculty was granted to allow the work to proceed. Sadly there is no mention of the tomb in the legal papers, and the plan shown to the Archdeacon does not seem to survive, but it would seem likely that the tomb was moved around the same date.

In 1801 it was recorded in The Gentleman’s Magazine that the church had been ‘repaired and beautified’ and was now a ‘neat uniform building’. In 1806 Daniel Lysons wrote in Magna Britannia that the church had been ‘neatly and commodiously fitted up’, but he thought that ‘the antiquary will regret the removal of the ancient monuments’.  At that date all that was left of the Ingylton tomb were the brass figures of Ingylton and his family that had decorated the top of the tomb. These were now set into the floor of the church, and Lysons thought that the ‘remarkably fine’ effigies would soon suffer wear.

Neither of these early histories records that the ornate carved slabs, which formed the sides of the tomb, had by that date been carted to a corner of his grounds where they became features of a building known as the ‘Grotto’.

Thornton Hall was remodelled by Sheppard’s descendants in the first years of the 1850s, and remained with the family until towards the end of that century. It passed through further owners until in 1917 it was purchased for use as a convent school for girls. On occasions Benediction was given from an altar in a shrine in ‘one of the loveliest settings’, but it is impossible to be certain that this was the grotto.

It was not until the later years of the 1940s that antiquarians from the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society set out in search of the lost tomb. They had been alerted to its presence by Major Henry Owen Evans (1898-1966), an authority on monumental brasses. On Boxing Day 1945 he visited the church to see the brass from the Ingylton tomb and locate the ‘grotto’ where the rest of the tomb was reputed to be found.

Intrigued, the formidable Miss Cicely Baker (1900-1980), stalwart of the archaeological society, made her own arrangements to visit. Accompanied by one of the order, she and a friend waded though ‘yards of nettles’ to find the ‘summer-house’. Her bare-legged companion ‘suffered agonies in the name of archaeology’, whilst the nun simply strode through in her long habit.

The grotto was found to be ‘semi-ruinous’ and it was decided that the tomb must be returned to the church. Miss Baker was worried that ‘an army of Bishops’ would be required to gain permission, but things moved quickly and, with the Mother Superior at Thornton College amenable to the plan, the Bucks Archaeological Society launched an appeal for funds. Thanks to the Morris Fund of the Society of Antiquaries meeting the entire costs of around £70, the restoration was carried out under the superintendence of the archaeologist and writer E. Clive Rouse (1901-1997). By the end of 1948 the work was finished ‘with complete success and spectacular effect’.

With the ancient tomb the focus of their efforts, no-one seems to have been troubled by what might happen to the already deteriorating grotto, which was presumably further weakened by the removal of the carved slabs. The photograph at the top of the page accompanied an article in Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship, more than thirty years ago in 1991. At that date the author, Tom Sargant, recorded that the grotto was ‘unloved and falling slowly into the bushes’. The roof of the semi-circular room at the back of the grotto, which was originally topped with a pinnacle ‘like a witch’s hat’ had collapsed (when Miss Baker visited she thought that this curious design was a sure sign that this was a folly, or ‘somebody’s whim’).

It is heartening to report that the grotto, protected within the grounds of the school, has not suffered from further degradation, and remains much as it did in 1991 – although action is needed to secure it for the future.

There is no public access to the grounds of Thornton College, but the church of St Michael and All Angels is now vested in the Churches Conservation Trust and can be visited.

Thanks to the team at Thornton College for their help with this post. The Flâneuse also acknowledges the work of the Milton Keynes Heritage Association, whose website pointed her in the right direction.

Your comments are always welcome, and you can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page. Thank you for reading.

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.

Little is known about Lacy (1766-1847) other than that he was born in Northumberland to what must have been a family of some wealth, for he was admitted to Queens’ College Cambridge as a Fellow-Commoner in 1785. After Cambridge he joined the army, ending his career as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Cumberland Militia.

Records don’t seem to survive to give an exact date for the creation of the caves on the bank of the river, of which there are five in total. They were described as ‘lately scooped out and formed’ in 1836 and a map of 1841 shows ‘The Grotto’ in ‘Grotto Plantation’. Across the river from the caves, and also on Lacy’s land, is another curiosity – a table, and seats all carved out of the solid rock and known in the 19th century as ‘Benson’s Chairs’. There is no explanation for this name, although the Benson family were quarrymen in the Salkeld area, and may have worked the stone for Lacy.

The only early history of the caves discovered is anecdotal: the story is told that Lacy’s former batman was a deserter who came to Lacy for refuge. Instead of turning him in Lacy is said to have set him to work hollowing out the caves. More likely (but sadly without evidence) the projects might have provided work for men from Lacy’s regiment when they returned home from war, and were unable to find employment: such ‘job-creation’ schemes led to the Druid’s Temple on the Swinton estate, and the Three Stoops at Pateley Bridge, both in North Yorkshire. In 1883 it was admitted that no-one knew for ‘what purpose’ Lacy had the rock carved in such a way, and it was concluded that it must have been to ‘satisfy a mere whim’. Although marked on maps as the ‘Grotto’, the rocky chambers soon became know as the Lacy Caves, or Lacy’s Caves, after their creator.

The chambers are made all the more mysterious by the curious markings on the stone. These are apparently an ‘intense network of highly inclined veins of secondary silica in which the sand grains are bleached’ (thanks to the Cumbria GeoConservation website for that enlightenment).

Oh to have been by the Eden in March 1847 when the Kirkoswald Choir of Singers were rowed over to sing hymns in the sublime and sonorous setting of the caves. Colonel Lacy died only two months later, but hopefully he was present to hear the performance. Lacy’s heirs, his natural daughter Caroline Sanderson and later her son Samuel Lacy William Sanderson, continued to allow access to the estate on special occasions, although trespassers were not tolerated at other times. Throughout the 19th century Lacy Caves and Benson’s Chairs were the location of many a picnic party frequented by ‘young men and women with light hearts and smiling faces’. Brass bands played and there was dancing, refreshments and boating.

Also on Lacy’s land was the ancient stone circle called Long Meg and her Daughters, a site which in Lacy’s time was believed to be the work of Druids. A tale told in an 1857 guide to the county is that Lacy planned to blow up Long Meg, but just as the blast was about to be detonated ‘the slumbering powers of Druidism rose in arms against this violation of their sanctuary’ and a violent storm broke. The labourers fled for their lives and, as the story goes, Lacy never again meddled with Meg.

What makes this story seem unlikely is that Lacy appears to have had great respect for the ancient Druids. He incorporated acorns and a sprig of mistletoe into a reworked family crest, writing that he had chosen the design ‘from my being in possession of Long Meg’.

…and in 1832 he commissioned the artist Jacob Thompson (1806-1879) to paint a work called The Druids cutting down the Mistletoe, with Long Meg and her Daughters in the background.

Today Lacy’s Caves are a popular attraction and can be visited from the riverside path on walks from Little Salkeld or Long Meg (but see below). Benson’s Chairs are on private land and there is no public access.

The Eden valley is full of treats. Even the road signs were perfectly picturesque when the Folly Flâneuse visited in May 2023. At that date the footpath to Lacy’s Caves was closed because of flood damage, and the Flâneuse was unable to visit. Two years on, she decided to see what was happening: the footpath closed signs are still up, but the footpath closure notice has long since expired. Taking advice from the folly-spotter’s greatest resource – a friendly local walking their dog – the Flâneuse set off and the footpath is fine (in dry Spring conditions, at least) and there were plenty of walkers enjoying the route.

Thank you for reading. There’s a comments box at the foot of the page – the Flâneuse is always delighted to receive your thoughts and any further information.

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. 

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.

Beckford (1760-1844) had been the subject of gossip and press speculation throughout his adult life. He was initially of interest simply because he was immensely rich from his family’s interests in the Slave Trade. Then, in 1784, came accusations of sexual activity with a 16 year old boy which soon became the talk of the town, and Beckford and his wife fled to the continent. He would later be famed for his exuberant and extravagant building projects.

On his return to England Beckford built the gothic palace called Fonthill Abbey, in Wiltshire, to a design by James Wyatt. The magnificent house was widely known from prints and books, and so there was much interest in December 1825 when the fall of the ‘fine (but flimsy) architectural structure’ was announced in the press. Although Beckford had sold the estate some three years earlier, it would forever be known as his creation, and Wyatt would be blamed for the inadequate foundations.

After selling the Fonthill estate Beckford moved to Bath. In 1823 the newspapers were reporting that Beckford had three or four hundred men enclosing his estate with a wall, and laying out grounds for plantations where upwards of two hundred trees were to be planted. As the finishing touch, Beckford was said to be intending to build a lofty tower. Progress was slow, and in January 1825 the papers were wondering why it had not materialised. In the autumn of 1826, work eventually began to a design by H. E. Goodridge (1797-1864), a Bath-based architect.

There were those who questioned Beckford’s decision to ‘make new efforts to scale the skies’, given his experience at Fonthill, and in October the papers reported that ‘Mr. Beckford, undismayed by the falling of his celebrated tower at Fonthill, has now above a hundred men employed in the erection of a somewhat similar edifice on Landsdown [sic] Bath’. But some lessons had been learned, and work on the tower was paused in November and not recommenced until all risk of a frost was over.

In 1841 the newspapers, interested in every move Beckford made, reported that he was planning to pull the tower down and sell the collection, as he was so fed up of thieves and vandals breaking in. Happily, the tower was given a reprieve, but the contents were dispersed only a few years later following Beckford’s death in 1844. The tower too was sold, but soon afterwards Beckford’s daughter, Susan, Duchess of Hamilton, was horrified to learn that the grounds were being used as a beer garden. She repurchased the tower and presented it to the parish for use as a cemetery and chapel.

The chapel remained in use until the 1960s, when it was deconsecrated and put up for sale. It was bought by Drs Elizabeth and Leslie Hilliard who established a museum of Beckfordiana in the tower and set up the Beckford Tower Trust to secure its future. Major restoration was carried out in 1997-2000, and again in 2022-2024.

William Beckford and his buildings have been the subject of many excellent books and papers, and this brief account is really just an excuse to say that the newly-refurbished tower is well worth a visit. See the fascinating museum, now with many new items of Beckfordiana on show, then limber up and climb the spiral stairs to the belvedere for views over the city and countryside. You can then enjoy wandering in the cemetery to find both Beckford’s and Goodridge’s resting places, and walk down to the newly-revealed grotto tunnel which Beckford built on the carriage drive to his home in the valley below.

There’s lots more on the Beckford’s Tower website and if you’d like to linger a little longer the Landmark Trust has an apartment in the tower to rent.

Comments are always welcome and you can get in touch via the box at the foot of the page. Thank you for reading.

Just over the river Ure from the market town of Masham is this unusual rotunda sitting on top of a rustic grotto. It was designed to take advantage of the view over the river to the church and the attractive little town. An engraved stone near the temple tells us that in 1770 ‘Samuel Wrather built this grotto’.

Samuel Wrather (1727-1806) was a wool-stapler of Masham. In 1773 he married Miss Spence, a ‘young lady of merit and fortune’, and he died in 1806 ‘at an advanced age universally respected’. He was succeeded by his son, Samuel junior (c.1778-1854), who is best known today as the owner of Nutwith, the champion racehorse bred by his late brother, which won the St Leger in 1843. The family had a small estate at Beggars Bush, in nearby Grewelthorpe, and also owned property in Masham town.

The early history of the Grotto Temple is unclear, and apart from the stone near the building there is little to go on. Late 18th century maps show that Samuel Wrather owned the strip of land now called Grotto Plantation, but the Grotto Temple itself is not marked.

The earliest image of the Grotto Temple found to date shows it as the property of Samuel Wrather junior. An engraving after a sketch by the artist George Cuitt (1779-1854), who moved to Masham in 1821, was made in 1837. It was published a year later in a fashionable pocket diary called Le Souvenir, or Pocket Tablet and captioned ‘Temple in the Grounds of S. Wrather, Masham’.

The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1859, shows the structure as ‘Pavilion’, within woodland called ‘Grotto Plantation’. At that date there was no house nearby, suggesting that this was a detached pleasure ground (another unnamed building and bridges over a stream can be seen on the map), perhaps to be visited by the ferry which crossed the river not far away. There was certainly inspiration nearby: Hackfall, the famed woodland landscape with buildings created by William Aislabie of Studley in the 1750s and 60s, did not have a principal house attached and is only a short distance away.

A rare lithograph of the pavilion, of which only one copy has been traced, attests to its lost fame. It was published by C. M. Dydynski in around 1850 and was inserted into an extra-illustrated copy of Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s Richmondshire in the collection of Leeds Libraries. Extra-illustration, or Grangerisation, was a fashionable hobby in which prints and original sketches were interleaved into a text to enhance the content. The process took its name from the clergyman and print collector James Granger (1723-1776) who published a biographical history and encouraged readers to embellish it with engraved portraits of his subjects.

The Grotto Temple then featured on a number of picture postcards which were probably produced for the tourists who arrived after the opening of the branch line to Masham in 1875: visitors would have passed the grotto grounds on their way from the station to the town.

Sometime between 1890 and 1905, a house was built which took its name from the existing pleasure grounds: ‘The Grotto’. In the 1910s it was home to Arthur Atkinson, a haulage contractor, but by 1921 it had been renamed ‘The Greens’ and was home to the Burrill family. The engraved stone by the pavilion records that Edward Burrill restored the Grotto Temple in 1935, perhaps in preparation for the wedding of his daughter Lucy in 1936, when the reception was held at The Greens.

A fleeting mention of the ‘grotto in the plantation’ can be found in local novelist and writer Mary Elizabeth Stevenson’s guide to Masham, published in 1919. On Summer Roads in Mashamshire suggests rambles for the visitor to the area, including a walk from Masham town over the bridge towards the weir (since destroyed) to appreciate the views of the church from across the river.

Mrs Stevenson (1853-1935)  introduces the interesting idea that the grotto was a favoured viewpoint of the artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817), who settled in Masham in 1805. Stevenson wrote that Ibbetson painted ‘many fine views of the Church from this side [of the river]’, and this 1816 view certainly looks to have been taken from within the Grotto Plantation (Stevenson would have known the history of this painting, for it had hung above the fireplace in her childhood home overlooking the Market Place in Masham). The Ibbetson and Wrather families were friends, and in September 1813 they and a party of friends spent a day sketching before partaking of ‘tea and syllabub’ at Wrather’s Beggars Bush home.

Sadly the current condition gives great cause for concern: the pavilion’s pretty roof, with its wide overhanging eaves, has fallen and the grotto is overgrown. The structure is not listed and therefore has little protection, an omission that should be rectified urgently.

Grotto Plantation is private property and there is no public access, but the Grotto Temple can be seen through the trees from a public footpath.

Huge thanks to Alison Brayshaw and Gail Falkingham for their help in compiling the history of the Grotto Pavilion. There are still gaps in our knowledge – do get in touch if you can help.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the bottom of the page to share any thoughts or comments.

This stone shelter, grandly titled ‘The Hermitage’ stands in the former grounds of Newton House, a few miles from Whitby. Newton House was built in the late 18th century as the seat of Jonas Brown a Whitby ship-owner and merchant. Brown (1717-1799) is commemorated by an obelisk near the house which records that he built Newton House and tamed the surrounding wild heath to create arable land and pleasure grounds.

The early history of the cave, likes its interior, is a little murky and no contemporary account of its construction seems to exist. There’s no explanation why a hermitage was built here, although such solemn structures were a fashionable addition to landscapes at this date. The builder might have been inspired by the local ‘romantic fable’ of the Hermit of Eskdaleside, which is just a few miles from Newton House. The story goes that a monk from Whitby lived as a recluse in the woods, and one day an exhausted wild boar ran into his dwelling and expired. The monk slammed the door on the hunters who charged their way in and, furious, attacked the hermit and left him for dead. With his dying words he forgave them but imposed a penance (see the link at the end for the full story).

In the grounds of Newton House a huge boulder was scooped out to create a cavern, with a stone bench running around the interior. Across the path from the hermitage is a walled viewing platform looking down to the May Beck in the valley below. There would have been no shortage of qualified workers to excavate the Hermitage, for the area was already extensively quarried for sandstone, and to provide materials for the local alum industry, in which Brown had an interest. The Hermitage is assumed to have been part of Brown’s landscaping works, but it does not bear his name. Instead is inscribed’ The Hermitage’ and ‘G + C’ and dated ‘1790’.

Identifying the person behind the initials ‘G+C’ is not easy. The first description in print seems to be in Whellan’s History & Topography of York and the North Riding which was published in 1859, almost 60 years after the cave was created. Whellan states that the Hermitage was built by George Clubb in 1790. A year later Francis Kildale Robinson’s 1860 guide to Whitby, its abbey, and the principal parts of the neighbourhood claims that the Hermitage bears the inscription ‘George Chubb, 1790′. Robinson is incorrect as the carving does not give a full name: there are simply the deeply-incised initials ‘G + C’. Later histories rely on Robinson and perpetuate the incorrect name of Chubb – but he shall be Clubb henceforth (conclusive evidence will be provided in due course).

George Waddington (1821-1898), a Whitby antiquary, amassed volumes of notes and clippings on the area, many based on the oral histories of local residents (now in the collection at the excellent Whitby Museum). In 1880 he noted that George Clubb had been factotum to the Brown family of Newton House, and also designer of ‘the stonehouse or hermitage’. Waddington was told that the hermitage was hollowed out by one Christopher Jeffrey, and that it had housed a stone table until a ‘young beast’ ran in and destroyed it (the species of this brawny brute is not specified). The roof of the cave is home to two stone chairs, one a simple stool, but the other a rather grand, although perhaps not hugely comfortable, armchair – were they for George and Christopher (G+C) creators of the cave?

Waddington was also told that Clubb had a school in nearby Littlebeck, and this part of the story at least appears to be verifiable. Whitby parish registers note that George Clubb, a Schoolmaster who lived to be 75, was buried at St Mary’s in Whitby (of Dracula fame) in November 1812. His dates are therefore c. 1737-1812, but no other trace of the enigmatic schoolmaster/factotum/hermitage designer has yet been found.

Jonas Brown died in 1799 and Newton House remained with his descendants until 1812, before passing through a number of owners. During the Second World War the house was requisitioned and in 1967 the estate was sold to the Forestry Commission. Having been a field studies centre for some years Newton House is now a private home.

The Hermitage stands a little way from the popular natural attraction of Falling Foss waterfall (and the equally popular Falling Foss Tea Garden). It can be easily accessed from the Falling Foss car park, or there is a lovely walk from the pretty hamlet of Littlebeck to Falling Foss, with the mysterious Hermitage, and a much more recent addition, as objects along the route.

For the tale of the hermit and the boar see https://www.whitbyonline.co.uk/whitbyhistory/thepennyhedge.php

There’s more on Littlebeck Wood nature reserve here https://www.ywt.org.uk/nature-reserves/little-beck-wood-nature-reserve

If you have any other thoughts or comments, please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

Barbara Jones is best known to readers of these pages as the author of Follies & Grottoes (1953, revised 1974), the first book to consider the subject of garden and landscape buildings in any detail. She also wrote books about popular art, erotic postcards and furniture amongst other subjects, and as an illustrator and designer her work appeared in magazines, on calendars, dustjackets, greetings telegrams and much, much more.

One of the more unlikely places where her work could be found was in an elegant little magazine called Pan. Published on behalf of the pharmaceutical company Schering A G Berlin, Pan was sent to doctors and medical professionals and featured advertisments for the company’s ‘sex hormone preparations’ alongside medically themed cartoons by the likes of Michael Heath. Issues were compiled and produced by Napper Stinton Woolley, an advertising agency based in London’s Soho.

Magazine number 61 appeared in January 1969 and contained a very entertaining review of the spoof ‘Post-Op Art Explosion’ exhibition at the fictitious ‘Medic’s Gallery’ (very clever) by the Yorkshire GP Leonard Rosenthal. There was also a most peculiar short story about aphrodisiacs, and then, incongruously, an article by Barbara Jones about Follies with a wonderful title illustration:

The brief editorial introduction suggested that readers might like to take a ‘cosy afternoon run in the car’ to find a hermitage, or ruined tower, or counterfeit castle, and then Jones is given three pages to elaborate.

She began with a definition, describing a folly as a ‘largely pointless fantastic structure built by a fashionable land-owner in the eighteenth century’, and concluded that they were ‘a very clear manifestation of a certain quirky streak in the English character and they may look something like this:’

Jones picked out some of her favourites: the Sham Castle on the Bath skyline (top picture), the Pineapple at Dunmore in Scotland, Clytha Castle near Abergavenny and Jack the Treacle Eater in Somerset (all of which have featured in these pages – use the search button to find out more).

Moving on from the curious tales attached to Jack the Treacle Eater, Jones recounted the then recent story attached to the monument to William Pitt at Burton Pynsent, also in Somerset: in 1948 a cow is said to have climbed the spiral stair and, after rescue attempts failed, fell to its death from the top. (There has been some debate about the veracity of this tale: newspaper reports in 1947 and 1948 tell of heifers climbing the tower, but on both occasions with a rescued cow and a happy ending).

After describing the thrilling chill of grottoes Jones declared that ‘the Hermitage type of Folly is much more cheerful’. Her accompanying sketch illustrated how they were ‘picturesquely confected from rocks, branches, moss and bark, with a simple room or two, a rustic sacking bed, tables and chairs made from tree stumps…’

Jones ended her brief introduction to follies with some words of advice that remain pertinent for anyone embarking on a folly-finding expedition today – take a map, a torch and a flask of tea.

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In 1950 Barbara Jones sent this feline-themed Christmas card to her fortunate friends. Christmas Day was an auspicious date for the artist and writer, for it was also her birthday: Barbara Mildred Jones was born on 25 December 1912.

Jones (1912-1978) was fascinated by popular culture, and wrote widely on the subject, but she is particularly remembered here as the author of Follies and Grottoes, the first extensive study of the subject. Her book, first published in 1953 and greatly augmented in the 1974 second edition, combined her own drawings with a delightful and divertive text. The revised edition was published in November 1974, and many lucky people must have received a copy as a Christmas gift (if you don’t have a copy it should be on your Christmas list).

This is the last post of 2022 so as a festive treat here are wonderful watercolours of two follies which have featured in these pages. The first is with Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art, and is by Jones herself. It is a 1940 view of the interior of the exquisite grotto at Oatlands in Surrey, which would be demolished only a few years after she visited.

And Guy Peppiatt Fine Art has this charming 19th century view of Farley Mount, the pyramidal hilltop horse monument in Hampshire. There’s a prize to anyone who can tell the Folly Flâneuse what the curious pole/sign in the foreground is.

If you move very quickly you could see both works on display at 6 Masons Yard, St James’s, London until 21st December.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to these posts in 2022, and thank you for reading. Sending everyone best wishes for the festive season and a happy and healthy 2023.

P.S. Reviewing Follies and Grottoes in 1974 the Birmingham Daily Post suggested that this new edition was ‘surely the last word on the subject’. The Folly Flâneuse begs to differ and will be back in January.

At Rydal Hall in Cumbria is an unassuming little garden building. It was built by Sir Daniel Fleming, in the last years of the 1680s, as a summerhouse from which to view of one of the series of cascades on the Rydal Beck that flowed though his estate.

Sir Daniel’s accounts show that the summerhouse was built in 1668-9, and it was described only a few years later as ‘a little grotto [for] retirement’. But its big secret was the ‘very surprising’ view of a tumbling cascade, framed by the window of the ‘Grot-house’. The interior did not have the expected decoration of shells and minerals usually associated with grottoes, but was expensively fitted out with wooden panelling, sadly now lost. Just upstream Sir Daniel added a rustic arched bridge, which gave a view down onto the cascade and to the grotto.

Many descriptions of the grotto were written in the 18th and 19th centuries, when travellers and writers arrived first in pursuit of the picturesque, when Rydal was a ‘must’ on the tourists’ itinerary, and then in reverence of the romantic after William Wordsworth made his home at nearby Rydal Mount, generating another tourism boom (the cascade is mentioned in the poet’s An Evening Walk).

Visitors record being led along a shady walk by a guide who then opened the doors to the simple ‘Rugged House’ to reveal the cataract. In 1812 the guide was ‘a woman bent nearly double with age, who with astonishing alacrity stumped up the hill in a pair of wooden shoes’. (It is a curious characteristic of ‘tourist attractions’ in the 18th century, that the guides were elderly ladies – examples are recorded at the Claife Station and the Bowder Stone in the Lakes, where a blunt tourist found his guide ‘rather deficient in understanding’. At Roslin Chapel in Scotland,  it was noted in 1788 that the ‘old woman who shows it […] is as great a curiosity as the chapel’.)

William Gilpin, famed for his pontificating on the picturesque, found the scene enchanting, and described the beautiful view from the summerhouse window as ‘like a picture in a frame’. A visitor in 1791 appreciated the carefully composed effect seen through the window: ‘over the head of the cascade is an old bridge, and over that a thicket of tall trees – and over that a dark mountain – and over that perhaps a dark cloud’. To the holidaying Londoner this was all very striking, and filled his mind ‘with terror and amazement’. After all this excitement guests could relax and dine in the little room: in 1795 Harriet Clarke recorded in her journal ‘in this grotto we ate, with much pleasure, our morning’s repast’.

Many artists delineated the scene. As well as the views shown here, other works include a John Constable sketch (Abbott Hall, Kendal) and an oil painting by Julius Caesar Ibbetson (Liverpool Museums). But as the keen-eyed will have spotted, they mainly painted the view from inside the grotto, so views of the building itself are scarce.

Many gardens and landscapes would go on to use the concept of the ‘surprise view’. For example at Studley Royal in Yorkshire doors were flung open for the grand reveal of the ruins of Fountains Abbey, and in Scotland the hermitages at Acharn and Dunkeld were both designed to allow a first sighting of waterfalls, but Sir Daniel Fleming’s predates these curiosities by almost a century, and was a ‘picturesque’ viewing station way ahead of its time.

In 1980 the grade II* listed grotto was described as ‘forlorn and neglected’, with the roof falling in and only a fragment of the wainscot surviving. Happily, it was restored in 2005-2007 as part of a major project to renovate the Rydal Hall gardens and park.

The falls are best seen after heavy rain. The Folly Flâneuse, with her usual impeccable timing, chose to first visit in autumn of 2021 during heavy rain, but it was worth getting soaked to see the cascade in full flow. This is the view from a bridge just downstream, not extant when the grotto was built, which enables the grotto and cascade to be seen in one view. Happily a return visit in spring was a brighter experience.

And of course if one visits Wordsworth country in April, one can’t miss the last of the …

Rydal Hall is now owned by the Diocese of Carlisle and is a conference and retreat centre. The grounds are open to visitors throughout the year, and you can continue the more than 300 year old tradition of viewing the cascade from the grotto window. As a visitor wrote in 1799, the ‘lower cascade must ever delight’. https://www.rydalhall.org

For the full history of the construction of the grotto see Blake Tyson’s article in Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, Vol 24, 1980.

For Wordsworth Grasmere see https://wordsworth.org.uk

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