Hubert Walter Wandesford Fenwick, architect turned architectural historian and writer, was a regular contributor to The Scots Magazine, a monthly publication that claims to be the oldest magazine in Britain still in publication, having been launched in 1739. In 1965 Fenwick wrote an article about ‘Features and Follies’, in Scotland, illustrated with his own very attractive colour sketches.

Fenwick (1916-2003) starts, as so many writers on architectural curiosities do, with the thorny question of how to define a folly. He quotes the Universal English Dictionary which states that a folly is a ‘useless, fantastic structure, built from foolish caprice’, but he does not think it is an accurate description. He then launches into an analogy which the Flâneuse rather likes: ‘… after all, most oil paintings are useless, unless they happen to cover a gap or a dirty mark on the wall. Most paintings are fantastic, some even foolish, but they, nevertheless, tend to make life more interesting and civilised, and they express an aspect of the human spirit.’ It is, he concludes, the same with a good folly. He is however strict about his classifications of what is a folly and what is a feature.

McCaig’s tower at Oban, for instance, is a feature, not a folly, as it was originally intended as an ’eminently practical’ museum. According to Fenwick’s rules, the Wallace Monument at Stirling is a commemorative tower, not a folly.

The buildings that do qualify as folly in Fenwick’s opinion are a particularly lovely bunch, and amongst his selection are The Whim at Blair which he describes as a ‘dummy fort’, the sham ruin on Balcarres Crag in Fife, the tower on Kinnoul Hill in Perth which was built to show that the Tay was the equal of the Rhine, Ossian’s Temple (aka the Hermitage) at Dunkeld, the Craigiehall Temple and Hume Castle which is a ‘magnificent fake’. The Pineapple at Dunmore is included for its ‘extremely clever and imaginative design’.

Fenwick wrote the piece in response to a book about follies which he had recently read. He felt cheated as it contained ‘less than a dozen Scottish examples’ (actually there are exactly twelve), and only two that ‘could legitimately be so designated’. He failed to name the book, but he does give the clue that it was produced by a ‘petrol firm’, so we can be sure it was Follies, written by Ella Hatt, beautifully illustrated by Paul Sharp, and published by National Benzole in 1963 (there’s more about that book here.) In case you are wondering, the two true follies that Fenwick approved of in the book were the sham on Balcarres Crag and the Hermitage at Dunkeld.

You can read more about the history of the Scots Magazine here.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome so please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page if you would like to get in touch. Don’t forget that clicking on the highlighted text will take you to further folly stories.

The Flâneuse recently attended the Garden Museum Literary Festival, the annual celebration of gardens and books organised by London’s Garden Museum. It blossoms at a different venue each year, and in 2025 it was held at Iford Manor, near Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, where stands this exceedingly pretty summerhouse.

It was built in the eighteenth century, but renovated and moved to a new location after Iford Manor was bought by the architect and garden designer Harold Peto in 1899. The simple interior needs nothing more than a good book and a pot of coffee to make it quite perfect.

Speaking of which, the lovely village of Corsham was only a few miles from the festival, and it has excellent coffee shops as well as a great independent bookshop. The Flâneuse picked up the new book by an author she greatly admires – Jenny Uglow. Her latest work is A Year with Gilbert White: the First Great Nature Writer, and White’s charming hermitage, as temporarily inhabited by his brother, is featured.

Of course the main attraction in the village was Corsham Court, where the many beauties include this Bath House. The perfect little building was originally built by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1760s, with further gothic ornament added by John Nash around the turn of the eighteenth century.

Back at the festival, the excellent speakers included Cath Kidston, who sold her chain of shops and is now producing a range of perfumed goods inspired by her collection of scented geraniums. Coincidentally, as the Flâneuse travelled to the festival she received the newsletter of the Faringdon Folly Tower Trust containing a pelargonium pronouncement. The trust cares for the tower built by Lord Faringdon in Berkshire (although it is now in Oxfordshire) in 1935. The newsletter announced that the acclaimed nursery Fibrex has created Faringdon Folly, a pelargonium in the same vibrant pink that Lord Berners dyed some of his doves. It will be available in 2026.

The Flâneuse is taking a break and will be back with a folly story in two weeks. The plan is to relax – which brings us nicely back to Iford Manor, and this verdant spot where one can sit back with a cuppa after a busy day.

Thank you for reading.

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.

George Finch (1752-1826) succeeded his uncle as the 9th Earl of Winchelsea in 1769. The Burley-on-the-Hill estate that he inherited included the elegant mansion on its hilltop site, a building which will be familiar to anyone who has driven near Oakham in Rutland.

The parkland was home to a vast wood, cut through with straight rides in a star shape by a previous generation. In one of the segments of the woodland Finch built a summerhouse in the form of a hermit’s abode. The floor was a mosaic of pebbles and the knucklebones of sheep, and featured a ‘W’ for Winchelsea and the date 1807, which is assumed to be the date of construction.

In 1858 a local newspaper described the Hermitage as ‘an object of interest and amusement’ and encouraged readers to walk the ‘narrow and meandering’ path through the woods to find the rustic cottage, which was built almost entirely of wood except for a huge chimney built of rough stones. There were two rooms – a bedroom with wooden bed and straw mattress covered with sacking, and a front parlour. The centrepiece of this room was a ‘huge block of wood’ which served as a table. The table was by that date already covered in graffiti, as the many visitors had carved their names or initials into the surface. Despite this vandalism, the Hermitage remained ‘constantly open for inspection’.

The same account introduces the first ‘history’ of the building. In brief, a man wanted by debt-collectors went into hiding in Burley Woods (he is not named in the report but locally he is remembered as a Mr Booth or a Mr Bennett). Being ‘sufficiently versed in construction’, he built the ‘humble tabernacle’ and only ventured out occasionally for provisions. Eventually, the bailiff found his secret hideout and tried to take him into custody, but the fugitive locked the bailiff in the hermitage and ran for it. The bailiff, being a stout man, was allegedly stuck in the cottage for days until rescuers found him, much to the amusement of the locals.

An alternative version of the tale has the lurid twist that the fugitive was in fact a murderer. To atone for his crime he sequestered himself in the woods and lived as a hermit, bound by oath not to speak to his fellow men. A short distance from the Hermitage was a smaller rustic shelter called Soloman’s Hut, and according to the legend this is where food was left for the hermit to collect.

Still more diabolical is the history recounted in 1911, which has an ancestor of the Finch family selling his soul to the devil. When Satan tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to keep his word, a deal was struck that the bond would be broken when a Finch had spent 7 years in solitary confinement in the Hermitage. Until this was accomplished the devil would retain his hold over the family. The report concluded that ‘within living memory’ one member of the family had managed two years of isolation before he ‘lost his reason’. Clearly the writer didn’t believe a word of the nonsense he was feeding to his readers, and he concludes with the anti-climactic ‘At any rate, it is a fact that there is at Burley to this day a Hermit’s cell’.

Barbara Jones described the Hermitage in the first edition of Follies and Grottoes in 1953. She thought it a ‘magnificent example’ of the hermitage genre of landscape buildings, and was amazed to find the interior intact. The furnishings included ‘three triangular stools of remarkable rustic discomfort’, and the vast table was still in situ. Her wonderful sketch shows just how intricate the fan-vaulted ceiling was, with branches for the ribs and huge elm bosses.

The Hermitage was visited by architect Neville Hawkes (1910-1988) in 1955 and his photograph shows that by that date the building was looking a little shabby and protected by a barbed-wire fence. Hawkes was probably accompanied on that visit by his son, William (1939-2024), and a year later William and a schoolmate returned to explore the building. Their status as pupils at the local public school of Uppingham gained them permission to visit the Hermitage, and for future historians this would be one of the best decisions the estate office ever made. Young Will, later to train as an architect, recorded the floorpan of the building in a lovely sketch.

Only six years after Will Hawkes visited, the Hermitage was set alight. On Thursday 5 July 1962 the Oakham firemen fought to save the structure, but it was totally destroyed (N.B. Barbara Jones gives the date 1965 which she was given in error by the estate office). A police investigation was launched, but it is unclear if the perpetrators were ever found and the blame is generally pinned on ‘schoolchildren’. The demise of the Hermitage caused great sorrow to an anonymous correspondent with the local paper. The writer remembered picknicking there with ‘the late Squire Finch’ and wished everyone to know that the ‘story of the Burley hermit is a myth’.

Today only a handful of photographs and sketches of the Hermitage survive to record its history, although visitors to the Rutland County Museum might see a miniature model of the building. It was made by local resident William H. Sewell, aka Billy Bennett (1912-1985). The exact date of the model is not known, but it shows the building much as Neville Hawkes saw it in 1955, with the chimney partially collapsed.

The Burley-on-the-Hill estate descended to the Hanbury family, and by the middle of the twentieth century the woods had been closed to the public (there’s an interlude when the estate is owned by the later-disgraced entrepreneur Asil Nadir that needs only the briefest of mentions here). The house was converted into houses by Kit Martin in the 1990s, but the parkland remains with the Hanburys who are currently planning to create an ‘immersive visitor attraction’ called Wild Rutland. Perhaps the Hermitage could be recreated – what could be more wild than a solitary hermit’s cottage?

The Rutland County Museum has a fascinating collection, although please note that the model of the hermitage is not currently on display. Visit before 4 October 2025 to see an exhibition of the works of the artist Rev J.L. Petit (1801-1868) of which the highlight for the present writer was, of course, this view of the folly known as Old John in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome. Please scroll down to find the comments box.

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.

Guppy (1925-2012), writer, environmentalist and explorer, thought that ‘follies suit the British temperament’. He elaborated that there is ‘something light-hearted, whimsical and above all disorderly about many of them’ and concluded that they are ‘manifestations of eccentricity, and of rebellion’. Guppy’s article was entitled Follyphilia, the word he coined to describe those with an affectionate regard for such structures.

Some follies, thought Guppy, were built as ripostes to the ‘smug world of columned Palladianism’, (and he pointedly excluded classical garden ornaments from his article). His examples of such ‘crudely-made though often costly buildings’ included St David’s Ruin in Yorkshire, Dunstall Castle in Worcestershire and Arnos Castle near Bristol (pictured top in 1972).

‘…a crumbling edifice on the horizon’, he wrote, ‘inspired awesome thoughts about the vanity of earthly ambition, etc., or at least a fashionably genteel melancholy’.

Follies could provide an imaginary link with ‘a more heroic past’ in the form of a false-fronted cottage, a sham castle or abbey, a tower, or even an entire faux-druidical temple, such as the one near Masham in Yorkshire.

Then there were the towers that just soared higher and higher, often in a bid to outbuild the competition or to announce great wealth and position. Or, in the case of the one at Sway, to test the future of reinforced concrete in building towers.

Dank caves and subterranean passages like Sir Francis Dashwood’s at West Wycombe were too ‘curiously horrid’ for Guppy’s liking, but he did appreciate ‘gay affairs of glittering crystal-spar, of pearly shells and patterned pebbles’ such as the Shell House at Goodwood. Reaffirming his distaste for the Greco-Roman garden ornament he found the grotto at Stourhead ‘too classical’.

But for Guppy the ‘ultimate folly was the hermitage’, combining as it did the ‘picturesque features of a ruin and a grotto, the utmost eccentricity of building materials’ with a human inhabitant. Guppy gives the rustic shelter known as the Sanctuary of Hermit Finch at Burley-on-the-Hill, in Rutland, as his example, but sadly this folly was destroyed by fire in 1962, only a few years after this article was published.

The main image accompanying the article is of a structure that is unlikely to have ever graced a landscape. The cartoonist Michael ffolkes (1925-1988), conjured up a wonderful tower featuring elements of just about every British folly ever built (and a bowler-hatted Brit enjoying the view).

The article is illustrated with small black and white photographs of the follies, and no photographer is credited, so the Flâneuse has chosen to illustrate this post with better quality images of the same follies. All are roughly contemporary with the article, and all are from the Neville and William Hawkes Collection. Neville and William, father and son, were both architects and follyphiliacs, and Neville (1910-1988) took the views shown here at much the same time as Guppy was writing this article.

The Hawkes family donated the photographic archive to the Folly Fellowship, the charity which aims to to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings, and the photographs are reproduced here by kind permission.

Dunstall Castle is in the park at Croome, a National Trust property; the Druid’s Temple on the Swinton estate is freely accessible as is Arnos Castle on the edge of Bristol. The tower at Sway is private, but can be seen from miles around.

If you find the folly illustrated by ffolkes please get in touch.

Thank you for reading. The Flâneuse is always delighted to learn more, or to hear your thoughts, so please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. 

In 1839 the Marchioness of Normanby wrote to her husband from the couple’s seat at Mulgrave Castle, on the Yorkshire coast just north of Whitby. Amongst other news, she told him of progress on the ‘new hermitage’ which was then being built, and of the views which were being opened in the woodland.

Lady Normanby’s (1798-1882) ‘charming woodland summer-house’ was noted in John Walker Ord’s history of Cleveland, published in 1846. Ord describes it as a ‘pretty tasteful structure’ with a thatched roof supported by rustic oak pillars to ‘harmonise’ with the woodlands around it. The interior was elegantly, but simply, furnished and the Hermitage had views to the mansion and out to sea. Curiously, the view that Ord chose to include in his work does not reflect the summer-house described in his prose.

A family letter of 1852 records further work to create vistas from the Hermitage, and in 1858 the roof was under repair – although work was delayed when a cartload of ling (heather) was mysteriously destroyed by fire on its way to Mulgrave Woods. The charming little building is shown in an engraving dated 1854, with what appears to be a grotto or chamber beneath.

In 1887 the Hermitage was described as a ‘pretty little rustic building’. The octagonal core was said to be ‘composed of Mulgrave cement’, a kind of Roman cement which was made on the estate (although correctly the building had a brick core coated in cement). As well as being used by the family, it was also a ‘favourite resort’ of picnic parties: in the 1880s visitors could request permission to ride around the woods in their carriages.

Romantic tales are told that the Hermitage was built on the site of an ancient religious establishment. This is probably a romantic tale, and in 1897 one writer was disappointed to find that it was ‘nothing more than a summer house of modern construction’. By the 1950s a visitor was saddened by the graffiti on the Hermitage, and it was clearly slipping into decay. Today only a section of wall is still standing, but the Flâneuse knows this only from photos found on social media. Despite a valiant effort clambering up hill and down dale she failed to find it, and a subsequent email to the estate office revealed that what’s left of the hermitage isn’t on a ‘route that is available to the public’.

Nineteenth century visitors to Mulgrave Woods were able to picnic in style as they were permitted to pitch tents for refreshments by the ‘Old Castle’. This was another eye-catcher in the landscape, being an ‘interesting and somewhat extensive ruin’ – the reimagined romantic remnant of a genuine ancient fortification. Landscape designer Humphry Repton suggested in 1792 that this ‘fragment of ancient Baronial importance’ should become an eye-catcher in the landscape, and it was subsequently partially rebuilt from the scattered stones on site.

Although mature trees now block the views, there were once magnificent prospects out to sea from the woods.

Whilst carriages and tents are not permitted in Mulgrave Woods today, the current Marquess and Marchioness continue to welcome visitors to walk in the woods and visit the Old Castle. The woods are open on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays except in the month of May. (Mulgrave Castle is private and the gardens open occasionally for charity).

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome – please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

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.

Your thoughts are always welcome – just scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

John Piper’s paintings of follies and garden buildings are well-known, but less familiar are his ceramics decorated with architectural features, including a series of ‘curly dishes’ with his wonderful whimsical interpretations of 18th century designs for rustic follies.

In 1982 gallerist Dan Klein extended his space in London’s Belgravia and that October the opening exhibition featured ceramics by Quentin Bell. Bell worked with an assistant and materials provided by the Fulham Pottery, and the aim was to show the result when ‘contemporary artists are invited to turn from canvas to ceramics’. Next in line was John Piper, who had also been invited to exhibit works in this less familiar medium. In the summer of 1982 he created around 200 ceramic pieces at his home at Fawley Bottom, near Henley on Thames. 

Piper had some experience of creating pots, having previously collaborated with the potter Geoffrey Easton, who offered ‘advice and encouragement’ for this new project. But it was the young Jean-paul Landreau, recruited by the Fulham Pottery whilst on his summer break from studying at Harrow College of Art, who helped Piper realise his designs. Quentin Bell saw the work in the studio, and his first thought was ‘heavens how thoroughly John has enjoyed himself’. Piper, then 79 but described as ‘full of youthful vigour and enthusiasm’, enjoyed working in this medium, finding it ‘awfully exciting to put something that looks dull in the kiln & see it come out all shiny hot & beautiful’.

The exhibition ran for just over two weeks in November 1982. ‘Piper’s Pots’ (as the alliteratively inclined Marylebone Mercury titled their account of the show) included ceramic obelisks, candlesticks, platters and dishes in a variety of styles – some abstract, and some figurative. A selection were decorated with architectural views, including a collection of ‘curly dishes’ designed by Piper, and named for the raised lobes which gave the dishes their unusual profile.

Four of the curly dishes featured rustic follies taken from an 18th century pattern-book which went by the snappy title of Grotesque architecture, or rural amusement : consisting of plans, elevations, and sections, for huts, retreats, summer and winter hermitages, terminaries, Chinese, Gothic, and Natural Grottos, Cascades, Baths, Mosques, Moresque Pavillions, Grotesque and Rustic Seats, Green Houses, &c. Many of which may be executed With Flints, Irregular Stones, Rude Branches, and Roots of Trees. The whole containing twenty-eight entire new designs, beautifully engraved on Copper Plates, with Scales to each. to which is added, a full explanation, in letter press, and the true method of executing them. The author was ‘William Wrighte, architect’, a man about whom even the great architectural historian Sir Howard Colvin admitted ‘nothing whatsoever is known’ (although there are at present scholars doing their very best to prove him wrong).

Wrighte’s pattern book contained a series of plates which landowners could peruse before instructing capable builders to erect something similar. The four which inspired Piper were a Winter Hermitage, a Gothic Grotto, a Rustic Seat to Terminate a View and, featured here, a Hermit’s Cell. The accompanying text tells that it was to be built of large stones and trunks of trees, with a thatched roof and a floor of small pebble stones or cockle shells.

This dish, catalogue no. 56 in the 1982 exhibition, was bought at the show by the (clearly very discerning) curator of Barnsley’s fine art collections. It can be seen on display at Cannon Hall Museum, a former country house a few miles from the town.

It’s not known if the then curator of Cannon Hall was aware that the estate had its own summerhouse with rustic tree-trunk columns. Although Cannon Hall and its surrounding gardens and pleasure grounds were sold to Barnsley Council in 1951, the wider estate, including the Deffer Wood summerhouse remained with the family.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse may be the ‘root house’ to which Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall ‘retired’ in 1778 to write verses and bring solace to his ‘harassed mind’. It is certainly a very tranquil retreat today.

Sadly the centuries old Fulham Pottery did not survive for long after these excellent exhibitions were held, and all that remains today is a grade II listed bottle kiln just off the New Kings Road. The Dan Klein Gallery operated for only a few years, although Klein (1938-2009) went on to have a distinguished career as a specialist in contemporary ceramics and glass.

Cannon Hall has the double attractions of a great collection (the Piper dish is just one item in an important display of ceramics) and a lovely designed landscape. Until 30 October 2022 you can also see some wonderful family portraits which are being shown in public for the first time – including a depiction of dapper root house retiree Walter Spencer Stanhope.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse is accessible via permissive paths, thanks to Cannon Hall Estates. Its location is not widely publicised (to deter vandals) so it’s advisable to do some research before visiting.

For more on Cannon Hall and the exhibition https://www.cannon-hall.com/spencer_stanhope

Jean-paul Landreau, Piper’s assistant on the project, is still making pots (see the comments below to hear from Jean-paul himself) http://www.jeanpaullandreau.com/english.php

There’s a curly dish featuring a Welsh castle in the collection of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley on Thames. Does anyone know the location of the others?

UPDATE March 2026: at the time of writing the Abbott and Holder Gallery in London has Piper’s working drawing for the ceramics based on Wrighte.

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In the 18th century the Campbell family, Earls of Breadalbane, embellished the park around the family seat at Taymouth with temples and mock forts, complementing the natural beauties of the surrounding hills and the River Tay that flows through the estate. Just a couple of miles away, on the shores of Loch Tay, was a more dramatic feature, a rustic shelter and a roaring cascade, which added a sublime element to the beautiful policies of Taymouth.

An exact date for the construction of The Hermitage is not known, but it was extant in 1769 when the traveller and naturalist Thomas Pennant admired the ‘hermitage, the great cataracts adjacent, and the darksome chasm beneath’. Contemporary accounts suggest that the building was the creation of John Campbell (1738-1771), son of the 3rd Earl of Breadalbane, and his wife Wilhelmina (1741-1786), who were styled Lord and Lady Glenorchy. They married in 1761, so the Hermitage was most likely built soon after that date, and was quite new when Pennant saw it.

Most visitors arrived by carriage, but the more intrepid could hire a boat and sail down Loch Tay to a jetty close to the falls. A guide met visitors and led them along a wooded walk and then into a dark, rugged passage.

Senses suitably excited by the gloomy tunnel, the visitor could then gasp in awe as they entered the chamber and found a bow window framing the waterfall ‘in all its splendour’.

The Hermitage, as it has always been known, was built to appear as a cave hewn out of solid rock, although it is actually a carefully constructed sham, with thatch and moss originally disguising the mode of construction.

The earliest 18th century accounts give little mention of the interior, but by 1786 the Hermitage was decorated in a whimsical style as home to an (imaginary) hermit. The seats and bed were dressed with the pelts of wild animals, and the walls were covered in moss and ‘ornament’d with shellwork and plaister in imitation of fruit – which is supposed to be the Hermit’s food’. There was also a shelf of books, which the fictional solitary occupant could apparently peruse to enrich his mind. But this artifice was unconvincing, and in 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth was not fooled, noting that the volumes were wood wrapped with old leather covers. She did however admire the ‘quaint apartment’ and the ‘beautiful prospect’ from the window which took in not only the waterfall, but also the handsome village of Kenmore and Loch Tay (now blocked by trees, but visible from the paths up and down from the Hermitage).

Not everyone shared the general consensus that the building was ‘rural and romantic’. The Reverend James Plumptre was conducted to the Hermitage in 1799 and found the place ‘much too modern and magnificent’ to house a hermit retiring from the world, although he conceded that a ‘London Hermit’ might be quite at home. William Gilpin, the great exponent of the picturesque, was less critical, but felt the Hermitage unnecessary as the waterfall was perfectly capable of enchanting without it.

Many more visitors recorded their visit in poetry and prose, including the famed Robert Burns. On a tour of Scotland in 1787 he visited the Falls of Acharn and composed the poem originally called ‘Written in the Hermitage at Taymouth’, featuring the lines:

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,
Lone wandering by the hermit’s mossy cell…

This poem was later published as ‘Verses written with a pencil over the chimney-piece, in the parlour of the inn at Kenmore, Taymouth’.

In the middle of the 19th century these lines could still be seen by guests at the inn (as indeed they can today), but for added drama visitors to the Hermitage could hear them recited by the guide, who whilst they were distracted by a first sight of the falls, had slipped into a mask and a costume and ‘came forth personifying an eremite’. Wearing a ‘dress of shaggy goatskin’ and a ‘long and venerable beard of lichens’ the guide appeared ‘to the amusement, and sometimes the alarm, of his visitors’.

The Marquis of Breadalbane was later reported to have wanted to instal a permanent hermit, but ‘no-one could be found bold enough to act out the part’, and anyway candidates would have known that it was much more lucrative to be a loquacious guide and extract tips from the many English visitors: in 1857 it was written that ‘Milk and honey flow abundantly from the lips of the genuine Celtic cicerone; and hard-hearted must the Sassenach be who does not feel the effects of the soft sawder in the most sensitive part of his person, his breeches pocket’.

In 1842 it was reported that the Hermitage had ‘undergone a scrubbing’ in preparation for a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Sadly this work appears to have been in vain, for whilst the young queen recorded her pleasure at being rowed up Loch Tay with ‘the pipes playing, & boatmen singing old Gaelic songs’, she makes no mention of a visit to see the cascade.

The modern visitor approaches just as the early tourist did. A walk up a ‘steep and rugged path’, followed by a pause to get one’s breath back, and then a moment to gaze ‘with wonder and amazement at the ‘magnificent landscape’ before entering the Hermitage to view the cascade. Sadly, the Hermitage was damaged in a storm in the 1950s: the roof is long gone, and the shellwork interior lost, but this remains an enchanting spot.

Taymouth Castle is currently being renovated as an hotel, but visitors are free to walk in the park. There’s a delightful circular walk to the falls from the hamlet of Acharn.

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Conishead Priory, as the name suggests, was a religious house, but after the dissolution it became a private home. In the middle of the 18th century it was home to Thomas Braddyll (1730-1776) who created new pleasure grounds around the Priory, including a number of ornamental features.

The pleasure ground was described at length by Thomas West in his Guide to the Lakes, first published in 1778, two years after Braddyll’s death. West wrote that the ‘late owner performed wonders’ to create ‘the paradise of Furness’, and called the park had been ‘one of the greatest in England.’ Nature had of course been generous at Conishead, which is tucked between the hills and the sea, but as West wrote, Braddyll had consulted ‘the genius of the place’ to form a ‘magnificent whole’. 

Above the house, a lawn sloped up to woodland where in 1777 a young visitor found a ‘curious Hermitage, or Moss-House, where the Moss and Ivy are curled round by the curious Hand of Nature’.  Sadly no contemporary images have been found, and the view above is the only known record of the building intact.

West’s extravagant praise for the delights of Conishead can be seen in a different light when we learn from a visitor in 1779 that he had played a leading role in the design. The tourist wrote that the Hermitage was an ‘exact’ copy of ones seen in France, and was ‘built and furnished under the direction of Mr West’.

Thomas West (?1720-1779) was better known locally as Father West, a Jesuit priest who had returned to Britain after the closure of the Jesuit schools in France in 1765. He settled in Furness, and as well as tending to a small catholic flock, indulged his passion for history, and became friends with the principal local families: the Braddylls of Conishead and the Cavendishes of Holker Hall. West has not previously been acknowledged as a gentleman landscape designer, but that he took keen interest in contemporary design can be seen in his published works where he compares Conishead to two great landscapes: Wooburn Farm, Philip Southcote’s pastoral landscape in Surrey, and Mount Edgcumbe, overlooking Plymouth Sound in Devon.

The Hermitage was cruciform in plan and built of rustic rough stone blocks. It consisted of two rooms – a living chamber and a chapel with a painted glass window representing the Annunciation. No records of any religious activity have been found, but it would have been a place for quiet contemplation where one could appreciate the beauty of nature: visitors commented on the ‘great variety of pleasing views’ it commanded.

On Thomas Bradyll’s death in 1776 the estate was left to his cousin, or ‘the Grandson of my Aunt Margaret’ to be precise. This was Wilson Gale (1756-1818), and under the terms of the will he took the name Bradyll. The Hermitage was kept in good repair and was visited by guests exploring the ‘delightful walks’ in the park. An 1834 guidebook to the lakes mentioned the building, but found it inauthentic as it was ‘considerably more elegant than hermits are wont to construct for themselves’. Which diverts us to the question of whether it was ever inhabited: one story told in the area is that a ‘tame lion’ was kept in the Hermitage in the early 19th century. Another local legend says that a hermit was in residence for 20 years, but there is no evidence whatsoever, and as we shall see below, hermits were in short supply in the area. 

In 1843 the ‘pretty secluded retreat’ was described as ‘in perfect keeping’, but soon after this date the Conishead estate passed out of Braddyll hands. Wilson Gale Braddyll’s son and heir, Thomas, had lost money on a mining venture, and having also spent lavishly building the amazing house that survives today, he was forced to sell Conishead Priory. The estate has since had various institutional owners.

The Hermitage was intact, if overgrown, when architect and antiquarian John Flavel Curwen (1860-1932) gave a paper on it in 1902. The stained glass was gone, but he found the remains of a wooden bedstead, and on the floor of the chapel was a ‘massive cross of red sandstone, 5 feet 9 inches in length, but broken’. 

The current custodian of Conishead Priory, the Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre, is slowly restoring the house and estate. In 2009 the Buddhist community commissioned Greenlane Archaeology to investigate the landscape, including the hermitage. No interior features are intact, but the truncated walls still stand, and the cruciform plan is clear to see. 

In recent years a new ornament has been added to the pleasure grounds at Conishead Priory in the form of this wonderful temple.

A second, and sadly also lost, hermitage was built not too far away in 1795. The eccentric Joseph Pocklington (1736-1817) embellished an island in Derwentwater with follies, and later constructed a hermitage at his Barrow Cascade House estate on the shore of the lake.

Pocklington was keen to find a hermit to animate the new building, and offered a generous half a crown a day in payment. But as William Gell recorded in 1797, the terms were tough: ‘The hermit is never to leave the place, or hold a conversation with anyone for 7 years during which time he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatever, but is to let his hair and nails both on hands and feet grow as long as nature will permit them’.

Curiously, the post seems to have remained vacant.

The Hermitage at Conishead is not publicly accessible, but the Manjushri Kadampa community welcome visitors elsewhere on the estate, and it is very well worth a trip for the beauties of the architecture (old and new), the woodland and the coastline. And there’s a great cafe.  https://manjushri.org

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