It is common today to see former Oast Houses, originally built to dry hops, converted into chic Kentish dwellings. The Waterlow family of Trosley Towers, near Wrotham, are credited with being amongst the first to see the capabilities of such redundant structures when, in 1903, they converted an oast house on their estate. Half a century later the building was renamed Tower Folly, and became home to experiments in sound.

Sir Philip Waterlow (1847-1931) restored this building on Millers Farm in 1903. It soon became the subject of picture postcards, such as this one with the wonderfully twee title of ‘Ye Olde Hop Oaste’. The Trosley Towers estate was dispersed after Waterlow’s death in 1931, and The Grange, as it is known today, has since had a number of owners. In 1959 a new resident arrived, complete with some ultra-modern technology.

This was Daphne Oram (1925-2003) who promptly renamed her new home Tower Folly. Oram was a pioneering electronic composer who had co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. In the seclusion of her studio in the folly she invented the ‘Oramics Machine’ a means of synthesising sound by drawing waveforms, pitches, volume envelopes and other properties on film (the Flâneuse highly recommends clicking the links at the bottom for a full account of Oram’s pioneering work).

A Daily Herald journalist visited Oram in 1962 after she had been awarded a grant of £3,550 by the Gulbenkian Foundation to ‘further her research into electronic music’. The journalist, yet to be converted to ‘space age music’, was relieved to find that ‘blue-eyed’ Miss Oram was ‘not in the least like a crank or an egghead’. Baffled by what he heard, the reporter went for the human interest angle: the local policeman had been told to ignore any ‘shrieks’ coming from the ‘house of strange sounds’ – they were not the cries of Oram in distress, but indicated that she was hard at work on her latest composition.

The windows have been replaced since the postcard view was taken, and sadly the pretty pinnacles on the gable above each window have been truncated, so the building has less of the air of a ‘Swiss pagoda on ecstasy’, as it was so memorably described by Headley and Meulenkamp in Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings in 1999.

31 December 2025 is the 100th anniversary of Daphne Oram’s birth. Her archive is now in the care of The Daphne Oram Trust and you can see and hear more about her fascinating life here and watch a wonderful short clip from the BBC archive here.

Thank you for reading. As always, you can find the comments box at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts.

John Bligh, 3rd Earl of Darnley of Cobham Hall, Kent, left instructions in his will that a ‘Chapel or Mausoleum’ be built on Williams Hill, an elevated site on his estate. The building was to receive his body, and those of other family members if they should ‘desire it’. It was to be constructed of the finest materials, and the Earl suggested it ‘might be of a kind with four fronts supporting a pyramid in the middle high enough to be conspicuous’.

The earl died in 1781 and was interred in Cobham church. The contents of his will were soon being discussed in polite society, and newspapers across the country reported that the late earl had himself chosen the spot for his resting place, and that the Bishop was to consecrate the ground. The commission to design the structure was given to James Wyatt and his drawings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1783, but the project was managed, and possibly tweaked, by George Dance the younger. Work took some time, and the Kentish Gazette noted in April 1787 that the ‘Mausoleum at Cobham-hall is at length near finished’ .

Darnley’s heir, his son John, was still a teenager at the time of his father’s death, and came of age in 1788. In 1790 he asked the landscape gardener Humphry Repton to give advice on modernising the grounds at Cobham.

Repton produced one of his famous Red Books, and the section on the mausoleum and its surroundings makes it clear that at that date the building was still intended as a burial place. Repton recommended planting trees of the ‘funereal kind’ to help ‘inspire the solemn ideas which such a magnificent Record of Mortality is intended to awaken’.

In 1793 Samuel Ireland published Picturesque Views on the River Medway, in which he suggests that the 4th earl was unhappy with the building built for his father. Ireland wrote that the ‘pyramid finish is both ponderous and unmeaning’ and added that he was ‘informed that this angular top is to be removed’. Allowing his readers to judge for themselves on the merits of the structure, he included an engraving. Ireland calls the building the ‘mausoleum’, suggesting it was still intended for this purpose. The plans must have changed, for that ‘ponderous’ pyramid roof remains.

Curiously, the completed building was never consecrated, and so could never function as a mausoleum. This was even explained in verse by H.G. Adams in 1836:

Emerging from the grove, now do they stand
Before a pile of architecture, plann’d
To be the Darnley’s last sad resting place,
The Mausoleum! of that ancient race;
But never had the consecrated rite
Been here performed, nor must their bodies rest
On ground, save that by the holy Prelate bless’d.

The stories differ: one says that the Bishop of Rochester refused to consecrate the building as the earl had treated a parish priest badly. Another account states that the earl’s descendants refused to pay the exorbitant fee demanded by the Bishop, and so the building remained empty, and a further story states that the earl and the bishop argued over the payment of tithes. John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester at the time the mausoleum was constructed, is remembered as a moderate man with a love of the fine arts and architecture, and contemporary evidence for a feud is hard to find, so the true history remains a mystery.

But whatever the reason, the 3rd earl remains in his ‘temporary’ grave in Cobham church. His wife died in 1803, and in her will, written three years earlier, she had stipulated that she was to be buried in the churchyard at Bidborough, near Tunbridge Wells, where she had lived since soon after her son reached his majority. The 4th earl and his countess died only months apart in 1831, and they too were interred in the vault in Cobham church, leaving the mausoleum empty.

The Darnley Mausoleum, as it has continued to be known, suffered appalling vandalism after much of the estate was sold in the 1950s (the house is now a school). Without a resident family, mindless damage soon became a chronic problem. There appeared to be a solution in the later 1980s, when a plan to restore the folly as a family home was announced. The very first newsletter of the fledgling Folly Fellowship contained an article with an illustration of the proposal by Sell, Wade and Postins (a second design by Paul Dyson was admired but not thought economically viable). It would have seen two low arcaded wings added to the existing mausoleum, each terminated with a pedimented pavilion. Planning permission was granted after a four day public enquiry, but the ambitious project never progressed.

In 2001 the Cobham Ashenbank Management Scheme was formed with representatives of the family, heritage bodies and local authorities joining forces to save the building. The Heritage Lottery Fund once more saved the day with a £5 million contribution towards the £8 million restoration costs, with the proviso that the property was placed in the care of the National Trust. The exemplary restoration won a number of awards.

The Folly Flâneuse walked to the mausoleum with a friend who was enjoying a stay in another beautifully restored ornamental building on the estate – the exceedingly cosy Cobham Dairy.

Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship, the charity founded to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings,  is available to consult online thanks to an excellent digitisation project. You can see that very first edition, and many others, http://follies.org.uk/

You can read more about the Cobham Dairy, a Landmark Trust property here https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/cobham-dairy-27098

The exterior of the Darnley Mausoleum can be visited at all reasonable times. For information on seeing the interior visit the National Trust website.

For another mausoleum that never served its purpose see this post on the lost Cranbrook Castle in Essex.

The Folly Flâneuse wishes all readers a jolly festive season. She is now taking a short break, but further folly ramblings will be forthcoming in 2025

In 1837 George Jones opened a pleasure garden by the Thames at Gravesend. It was a great success, and new features were quickly added to tempt visitors. By 1849 it was said that the gardens were ‘sweet, safe, shady and salubrious’ and the ‘prettiest thing’ between the Thames and the Tiber.

Formed as the Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens Company in 1837, the animals soon ceased to be the focus, and over the years the gardens were home to attractions including theatres, cafes, an archery ground and a lake. The extensive ornamental grounds, admired for the botanical specimens, featured a maze. There was dancing and fireworks, and special guest performers included singers, musicians and daring performers such as tightrope walkers.  Quick to capitalise on the success of the famed funambulist Charles Blondin were similar acts, including the imaginatively-titled ‘Female Blondin’, ‘Young Blondin’ and ‘African Blondin’, all of whom appeared at Rosherville Gardens.

Right at the start a tower (above) was built on high ground ‘to point out the Gardens from the River’: initially most guests arrived by boat at Rosherville pier. In May 1868 the foundation stone was laid for a new clocktower, and a grand banquet was held to celebrate the occasion. When complete for the 1869 season the ‘observatory and clocktower’ stood, according to the newspapers, ‘nearly a hundred feet high’. It formed part of a new entrance into the gardens, as shown below (note the rather dapper young man on the steps). Bells were ordered from the famed Taylors of Loughborough, and it was planned that they would play a different tune, on the hour, every day. A clock had dials on four faces of the tower, each of which was illuminated at night.

The tower was a success with the public, but not so much so with the Mr Simpson whose house it overlooked, and who found the ‘melodious peal of bells’ a nuisance. He took Jones to court but the parties reached an agreement just before the case was heard. The judge raised a laugh when he said that as Rosherville was marketed as a ‘place to spend a happy day’ the defendant and plaintiff should return to Gravesend and ‘be happy together’.

A visitor in 1884 saved their flyer promoting the tower, so we know what delights were available on payment of one penny:

The coloured glass windows were particularly popular, making the ‘Thames and the trees look as if they were made of raspberries and cream and all manner of colours’.

The gardens changed hands a number of times after Jones sold up in 1872, with many a new attraction offered. After various ups and downs in their fortunes the gardens, by now depleted in size and derelict in appearance, closed for good in the late 1930s, and the site was redeveloped.

Such had been the fame of the gardens that when the demolition of the crumbling tower was announced in January 1939 it was reported in newspapers across the country. Today there are few reminders of the lost gardens: some fragments of the clifftop entrance survive and the bear pit has been restored (both are listed at grade II).

For a full history of the gardens there is an excellent publication by Gravesend Historical Society https://www.discovergravesham.co.uk/books/publications.html

Thank you for reading. You can scroll down the page to find the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts.

John Powell Powell (1769-1849 – the double Powell acquired to meet the conditions of an inheritance) was passionate about bell-ringing and erected this ‘light, elegant and fanciful building’ at Quex Park, his seat in Kent, where his hobby could be indulged. Not content with a lofty tower, he almost doubled its height with a unique cast iron spire – years before a certain Parisian landmark took shape.

In 1819 construction work on the first stage of a brick bell-tower was complete and 12 bells were installed. These were made at the famous Whitechapel Bell Foundry in east London, and the tenor bell was engraved with the words ‘This peal of bells was cast for John Powell Powell of Quex House, Isle of Thanet, by Thos. Mears of Whitechapel, London, for the amusement of himself and friends’. At that date the tower was the only structure in Kent with a set of 12 bells, and was all the more curious as it was a secular, rather than an ecclesiastical tower. The story is told locally that the bells were originally to have been a gift to Birchington church, but when the parish was slow to accept a frustrated Powell decided to erect the tower.

John Mockett was invited to see the tower on June 4 1819, the King’s birthday, and recorded the event in his journal:
‘John P. Powell, Esq., of Quex Park… having erected a tower in his park, in which he placed a complete set of bells for his amusement, being very partial to bell-ringing, had the same opened, this day, with a merry peal, by a select set of ringers; and, in his usual liberal manner, entertained a large party of his friends at his mansion.’

Throughout July local groups of ringers visited to try the bells and compete to produce the most perfect performance. The official opening was held on 4 August 1819, when the Royal Society of Cumberland Youths (named for the Duke of Cumberland) was invited to ring the bells.

The bell-tower was not the first such structure to be built at Quex Park, as shown in the centre of the engraving above. A few years earlier, in around 1814, Powell had started work on a tower from which he could signal out to sea (only a mile away) and which was fitted up with a ‘ring of 12 handbells rung by means of lines from each, so arranged that one person could command them all & play tunes on them’. Rather less musical was Powell’s collection of cannon: these were displayed in front of the tower and sometimes fired. A Kent county history of 1830 records that the Round Tower was ‘appropriated by its munificent owner to the pastime of discharges of canon [sic], which with the peals of his bells constitute a favourite amusement of the gentleman in question’.

Powell was described as ‘the only gentleman in the kingdom who keeps in his service a regular band of bell-ringers’: his ‘servants, labourers and workmen’ were trained in the art by one of the ‘college youths from London’ (the Ancient Society of College Youths was founded in 1637 and promotes ‘excellence in ringing around the world’). Early in 1820 George III died, and the ringers were called upon to mark the occasion. On the evening of his funeral the bells in the Waterloo Tower were muffled, and ‘solemn mourning peals performed on them […] in sacred remembrance’.

In that same year the tower’s curious metal crown was put in place. Visiting just before the tower was opened, John Alfred Parnell (known as ‘the Gothic Traveller’ because of his pedestrian perambulations to gothic cathedrals) noted Powell’s plans for the tower: ‘N:B: Mr Powell will have a lofty Spire on his Tower. two thirds of Cast Iron and to be sprung with 4: Quarter Circle Arches. then it will be a Noble Sea-Mark, being only one Mile from that Briney fluid’ (a later writer would ponder what mariners thought when they saw the curious structure above the trees).

Frustratingly the architect is not known, although Gustav Eiffel can presumably be eliminated as he was only a child when the spire was erected. We do know that William Mackney was paid for ‘iron castings for the ringing tower’, and plates on the metal spire reveal the involvement of ‘John Clark Ramsgate 1820’: probably the John Clark of Ramsgate who was Powell’s head carpenter but who had progressed to ‘Master Builder’ by the time of the 1851 census.

The building quickly became known as the Waterloo Tower, although it was named simply as the ‘Bell-tower’ on 19th century maps. Inside it was ‘fitted up in a very beautiful manner with mahogany stair-cases’.  Powell was a ringer himself, and ‘assisted personally’ with the ‘choice and beautiful pieces of melody’ played to mark the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. Many events were commemorated by the ringers over the years, and it must have been a solemn occasion in 1849 when a ‘mournful peal’ was rung at the tower on the death of Powell himself.

Throughout the 19th century ringers were welcomed at Quex. The New Inn at nearby Birchington was kept busy with parties such as the Saint Mary’s Society of Battersea who visited in 1885: after a ‘refreshing sleep’ the members enjoyed an ‘invigorating walk on the sands and a substantial breakfast’ to fortify them before a strenuous morning in the Waterloo Tower.

In 1896 the tower was restored and one of the four corner pavilions consecrated as the family mausoleum (some remains were moved and reburied at that time, but John Powell Powell rests in Birchington church). For this reason public access is limited to occasional open days.

In the 1930s the prolific writer Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) used Quex Park as a setting in one of his highly popular thrillers: Contraband was published in 1935 and in it the Waterloo Tower, topped with ‘a miniature Eiffel tower’, plays a leading role in a story of international intrigue and dodgy dealings.

Barbara Jones visited when researching for Follies & Grottoes, which was published in 1953. She admired the ‘beautiful structure’ and declared the Waterloo Tower to be the ‘best kept folly in England’. Both towers are listed at grade II and the Waterloo Tower is still home to The Quex Park Society of Change Ringers.

Quex Park is home to the Powell Cotton Museum and the gardens are open to the public. For more information see https://www.quexpark.co.uk and https://powell-cottonmuseum.org

Thanks for reading. If you can add to the story, or wish to share any thoughts (which are always welcome), please scroll down to the bottom of the page to get in touch.

In the 1720s Sir Robert and Lady Furnese erected a vast garden building at Waldershare Park, their seat in Kent, which became known as the Belvedere. 300 years later a diminutive structure, the Monumenta Romana, has appeared in its shadow

The Belvedere was abandoned long ago, and by the 1980s the grade I listed structure was in poor condition and a target for vandals. In 1995 it seemed that a solution had been found, when the Vivat Trust, a charity that rescued historic buildings and converted them into holiday lets (sadly no longer in operation), became involved. The trust agreed a lease with the owner of Waldershare Park, Lord Guilford, and English Heritage agreed to part-fund the project. Vernon Gibberd and Andrew Plumridge, specialists in the field, were appointed as architects, and the Vivat Trust launched an appeal. Gibberd’s plan for the Belvedere included adding a cupola on the roof, allowing guests a view across the English Channel to France.

Writing in Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship in 1997, Vernon Gibberd described progress as slow, but there appeared no real cause for alarm. However soon after that article appeared English Heritage pulled their funding, and suggested they would take the monument into their own care. Two-and-a-bit decades later nothing has been resolved: the Belvedere still stands empty, and has been included in the Historic England ‘Heritage at Risk Register’ since 1998. There is no public access.

Happily the Belvedere can at least be viewed from the field below, through which passes the North Downs Way. This stretch of the national trail follows the ancient pilgrimage route the Via Francigena, which runs from Canterbury to Rome, and to mark this historic route Dover Arts Development has created the Via Francigena Art Trail. At Waldershare architect Charles Holland was commissioned to design a new artwork, which he called the Monumenta Romana. The artwork, constructed of salvaged timber, incorporates seating where the walker can rest and contemplate.

Holland took inspiration from the classical monuments that Sir Robert Furnese appreciated on his Grand Tour in the early 18th century (Furnese was painted with his hand resting on a volume entitled Monumenta Romana) and from the Belvedere itself. The artwork takes the form of a cupola that might once have topped the Belvedere, just as Gibberd had proposed some years earlier, and in Holland’s words ‘the two structures can be seen to complete each other’.

If the walk from Canterbury to Rome is not for you, simply follow the North Downs Way a short distance from the bottom of Singledge Lane, near the village of Coldred.

Update April 2024. Thanks to the Flâneuse’s airborne accomplice, Nic Orchard, for this recent aerial view of the tower.

Comments are very welcome, please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

Deep in woodland on Holly Hill, near the village of Hernhill in Kent, stands a bedraggled belvedere. It was built by Edwyn Sandys Dawes sometime in the late 19th century, as a prospect tower with a ‘view unsurpassed in the county’.

Dawes (1838-1903) had made a fortune in the world of shipping and related broking trades. In the 1870s he settled at Mount Ephraim, near Faversham, a Dawes family seat: he demolished the existing house and erected the mansion, complete by 1878, that stands today. Further land was acquired to create a model agricultural and sporting estate. He made ‘extensive alterations’ to improve the roads, including providing ‘rustic seats for the weary pedestrian’, and created plantations until the estate could not be equalled for ‘order and picturesqueness’.

Sometime before 1896 he erected the ‘observation tower’ on Holly Hill. The grounds of Mount Ephraim often hosted charitable events, and in 1897 the local Sunday School enjoyed climbing the new tower to admire the ‘magnificent view’. The belvedere (which is variously known as Mount Ephraim Tower or Holly Hill Tower) soon became a ‘well known landmark’: at the January 1904 funeral of Sir Edwyn (he was knighted in 1894) at St Michael’s Hernhill mourners could see it in the distance.

The story is told locally that the tower was built so that Dawes could watch his ships approaching London, and that the construction provided work for men at a time of want. Dawes was certainly respected locally, and has three monuments in St Michael’s: a stained glass window, a brass plaque given by his son celebrating ‘an unselfish life rich in good works’, and a marble tablet erected by the ‘large number of workmen’ for whom Dawes had ‘provided employment’ as he improved and cultivated his estate.

Barbara Jones visited the tower when preparing her book Follies and Grottoes, first published in 1953. The photograph taken at that date shows the tower still in pretty good condition, and in her notes Jones recorded that the iron staircase up to the viewing platform was intact.

In April 1953 it seemed that the tower’s days were numbered: the local paper reported that the Sittingbourne Scouts had been invited to ‘blow up’ the tower. Happily, this turned out to be a wide game (for the benefit of those who were never scouts or guides: a game played over a wide area), and the detonation was not literal – but the tower began to deteriorate soon after. Jones returned to the ‘dumpy little’ tower when updating the Follies & Grottoes text in the early 1970s. By then the internal iron staircase and floor were gone: a photo’ from this revisit shows how the tower had decayed.

Jones noted the decay, but was distracted by the vast number of ants, which were ‘everywhere’ around the tower: hopefully they weren’t a problem in 1969 when the East Kent Cycling Club chose the grassy area in front of the tower for their ‘outdoor luncheon party’.

Today it would be very difficult to have any sort of party by the tower, as the little glade is now overgrown. The tower is snugly tucked in amongst trees and shrubs, and long ago ceased to function as a belvedere. But it is still a delight, and well worth the climb on a freezing winter’s day.

Thank you for reading, and if you would like to share any thoughts on this post please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

Jezreel’s Tower, which once stood on Chatham Hill in Gillingham, was one of those unfinished fantasies that became folly after their original purpose had failed. This architectural extravaganza was built as home to the ‘New and Latter House of Israel’, a religious group founded in the late 19th century which had a short and very colourful history, and left behind a unique building.

James White (1840-1885) was a former soldier who became leader of the New and Latter House of Israel. He changed his name to James Jershom Jezreel and his followers became know as Jezreelites. Very briefly, as we are  mainly concerned here with the structure he built, their beliefs were centred on a prophesy in the bible that said that 12,000 people from each of the 12 tribes of Israel would not die, but would live on with Christ.*

Jezreel travelled widely at home and abroad spreading the word, and published a book of sermons called Extracts from the Flying Roll, being a series of Sermons compiled for the Gentile Churches of all Sects and Denominations, and addressed to the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel. In the early 1880s he settled in Gillingham, and his community worked in a number of small businesses raising money for the construction of a permanent HQ (and a comfortable country house for Jezreel and his wife, known as Queen Esther). By 1884 the funds were in place, and Jezreel claimed that God led him to a site on Chatham Hill, high above the town.

The tower was originally planned to be 144 feet square, to represent the 144,000 Jezreelites who would achieve immortality. The architects, Margetts of Chatham, persuaded Jezreel to settle for a structure 124 feet square and 120 feet high. The foundation stone was laid on 19 September 1885 and the huge structure in ‘yellow brick with ornamental lines of blue Staffordshire brick’ began to rise. The outer walls were decorated with tiled panels featuring the Flying Roll (a trumpet with a scroll attached – the trumpet would be sounded to announce God’s message which was contained in Jezreel’s publication The Flying Roll), crossed swords, and the Prince of Wales’ feathers (representing the Spirit and the Trinity respectively). At its heart was to be a giant stage with seating for thousands of people, and there was also a restaurant, dormitories and in the basement a workshop where the Flying Roll and other tracts could be printed.

There was great interest in the rising structure, and the surrounding settlement, and in 1885 it was predicted that it would ‘soon to be known as the Utah of England’. It was reported that the Bishop of Rochester kept a careful watch on ‘this melancholy heresy’, and vowed to keep the district ‘supplied with the antidote of the Church’s teachings’.

Jezreel himself had died in 1885, leaving the tower roofless and inconveniently disproving the central doctrine of the Jezreelites. Although a number of members left the community, ‘refusing to believe any longer in the promised immortality’, Jezreel’s wife, took over leadership. She herself died in 1888, and some elements of the press were not kind to the Jezreelites, calling them ‘poor deluded mortals’ and reporting that Esther had ‘paralysed her followers by yielding to the weakness of mortality’. From this date the community dwindled until only a dedicated few remained.

Meanwhile the builders, Messrs Nayler, had not been paid and a court order gave them possession of the incomplete tower. In autumn 1897 they put the building up for sale, with the particulars announcing that the tower, with 7 acres of garden grounds and a range of offices and outbuildings, was the perfect investment for ‘manufacturers, capitalists, syndicates, speculators’. It caused great amusement when on sale day the auctioneer suggested that one option was to convert it into a lunatic asylum. It was thought that it would at least sell to a salvage contractor who would demolish it for the materials, but the tower failed to reach the reserve and was withdrawn from sale.

The sale attracted attention across Britain, with reports in many regional newspapers. The members were viewed as benign, with travellers being ‘familiar with this strange community, quietly cultivating their gardens and engaged in handicrafts’, but there was little sympathy for the community as a whole and the press was filled with lurid tales. The Leeds Times concluded that the tower was a ‘peculiar monument to religious delusion’.

By 1905 the tower had been sold to a syndicate of businessmen, and an open day was held so that people could view the ‘structural monstrosity’ before it was pulled down. The early days of demolition were witnessed by a tourist in 1905 who sent a postcard to a friend saying ‘this card will be a novelty in the future’. Little did he know that the work would be abandoned with only a few dents to the upper storey: the contractor went bust having failed to dismantle the frame. An enterprising local company used this story in a press advertisement a few decades later.

Eventually in 1920 the tower complex was bought by the Co-op who adapted a range of ancillary buildings as shops. The tower became the rather eccentric home to a number of hard tennis courts.

The unfinished tower had inevitably become known as ‘Jezreel’s Folly’, and it was one of the buildings the writer Oswell Blakeston featured in his BBC radio broadcast on follies in October 1936. Blakeston said that the tower had been strongly built to withstand the conflagration at the end of the world, and that its great height was to bring the Jezreelites closer to heaven. The BBC received letters of complaint from a number of Jezreelite correspondents strongly disputing these claims (as the Jezreelites were to live on with Christ neither would be necessary). Mr Coffrey of Kew pointed out Blakeston’s errors, and offered to tell him ‘funnier stories about the temple’. History does not record if Blakeston took him up on the offer.

Contemporary with Blakeston’s lecture was a publicity campaign by Shell which featured follies on a series of posters. Tristam Hillier chose Jezreel’s Temple as his subject in 1936. Soon after, Thomas Hennell painted the tower for the Recording Britain project which documented Britain’s heritage during the Second World War.

Sadly, Gillingham Town Council did not share the interest shown by these artists and turned down an option to buy Jezreel’s Folly. In April 1960 work began once more to pull down the redundant tower. Demolition expert Mr Brown of Sittingbourne described it as ‘the toughest job of my life’, and the anticipated 3-6 month project continued well into 1961. The buildings which housed the Co-op survived until the 1980s when they too were lost.

P.G. Rogers published The Sixth Trumpeter: The Story of Jezreel and his Tower in 1963, soon after it finally disappeared. His book has been a major source for this piece, so he must have the last word: ‘aesthetically-speaking, the tower was not an architectural masterpiece [but] it had, nevertheless, a certain grim, brooding majesty that was all its own’.

* For a full explanation of the Jezreelite beliefs see the book above, or there is an excellent article here https://inkyn.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-jezreelites/

Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts – the Folly Flâneuse is always pleased to hear from you. Thank you for reading.

250 years ago, on 15 August 1771, the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh. One of Scott’s greatest fans was, to give him his full title, The Reverend Sir William Marriott Smith Marriott Bart M.A.* (1801-1864), rector of Horsmonden in Kent. Here, as part of improvements to the rectory’s grounds, Marriott built an eye-catcher tower dedicated to Scott, now sadly lost.

The tower was completed in 1858, more than 20 years after Scott’s death in 1832, and replaced a simple wooden viewing platform on the highest part of the estate, which had been in the Marriott family for generations. It was probably built to the rector’s own design (although S.S. Teulon was working on a new school and improvements to the church in this period), and was erected by the estate bricklayer and carpenters. Marriott’s tribute, built out of ‘pure veneration for the genius of Sir Walter Scott’, took the form of two connected towers. A narrow one contained a staircase to the viewing platform, from where a ‘magnificent view of a large part of Kent and Sussex may be obtained’, whilst the main tower housed two rooms. Above the door was an inscription reading ‘In honorem Cualteri Scott – A.D. 1858’ and the local paper waxed lyrical, calling the new tower ‘a gem of architectural beauty’.

Marriott was himself a poet, and his volume The Olden and Modern Times was published in 1855. He composed a number of verses that were displayed in the tower, and on entering the visitor first met with an inscription cautioning that only those who shared his reverence should enter:

‘The Poet’s mind can add a grace
Into the charms of Nature’s face
Turn from this tower if you come to scoff it,
Or deem him fool who doesn’t build for profit.’

The two rooms were decorated with views of scenes from Scott’s novels, and drawings of the principal characters. Marriott kept a full set of Scott’s works in the building, and the interior was also decorated with a collection of items that added to the Romantic ‘Scotch’ atmosphere – a set of antlers; a Highland bonnet (‘which may perchance have decked the brow of some famous chieftain’); a claymore, spear, and shield; and ‘a brace of decayed Ptarmigans’. This decoration was surely influenced by Scott’s description of the study of Jonathan Oldbuck, the titular character of The Antiquary, first published in 1816: his study was ‘a chaos of maps, engravings, scraps of parchment, bundles of paper, pieces of old armour, swords, dirks, helmets and Highland targets’.

Marriott displayed a long poem inviting visitors to climb the tower:

Ascend Scott’s turret, and the view
Would have pleased him as well as you.
Though bolder scenes in Scottish clime
Called forth the native poet’s rhyme.
Yet o’er the expanse this height displays
Scott had not spared some well-pleased lays,
And tho’ no mountains grace the scene,
Nor bright blue lake their rocks between,
Yet hill and dale the view adorn,
And valleys sing with golden corn,
And clustered hops their garlands twine
More gracefully than graceful vine:
Through many a Kent or Sussex glade
The lordly oak throws wide its shade;
And on hilltop, or deep in bower
Of holy groves, the grey church tower,
And near the pastor’s blest retreat,
And England’s pride, the squire’s old seat,
The snug farm-house, the labourer’s cot,
Where peace may be, though wealth is not.
These meet the grateful sight, as yet
No chimney tall and black is met
With smoke from Mammon’s altar, there
To vex the heart and taint the air,
And could we pierce yon far off rock,
Which long has dared old ocean’s shock,
E’en the wides sea would close the view,
Not vaguely in the distance blue-
My pen must fail, ah! Scott’s is dry,
Let each beholder trust his eye.

By 1901 the tower was dismissed as ‘devoid of any architectural pretensions’, and in 1935 a visitor noted significant vandalism to the interior. The writer E.V. Lucas wrote to the Sunday Times in that year to criticise the people of Kent for the ‘shocking state’ into which they had allowed the tower to fall. Lucas found the locks broken, the pictures awry and stained, and the windows smashed. He found ‘hundreds’ of names inscribed on the walls, inside and out, the roof stripped of its lead, and trees (Scotch firs, of course) obscuring the once fine view. Lucas was particularly horrified to find that a bust of Scott had been vandalised: his nose had been broken off and he sported a pencilled moustache.

A week after Lucas’s long epistle to the people of Kent appeared in the Sunday Times, the ‘Letters’ page featured an indignant response from Marriott’s great-granddaughter. It was all very well for the ‘prosperous and leisurely’ Victorians to build towers, she wrote, but it was unfair to expect the current generation to look after them when ‘there is less money to waste on such useless erections!’ That didn’t really bode well for the structure, but someone local must have taken half-hearted action, as two years later another visitor struggled with the substantial locks. But by that date there was ‘nothing much to see’ except the graffiti.

The last of the Marriotts to live at Horsmonden died in 1944, and the house and contents were then sold at auction. The lot containing Scott’s Tower was sold for £800, but the purchaser was more interested in the eight acres of pasture and woodland that accompanied it, and the tower, after serving as an observation post in the Second World War, was left to rot. Barbara Jones wrote admiringly of it in the 1st edition of Follies and Grottoes, published in 1953, although she recorded its poor condition (sources variously blame the military on manoeuvre or itinerant hop-pickers). By 1974 when the revised edition of F&G appeared Jones was sad to report that the tower had been demolished. It was blown up by the Royal Engineers less than a century after it was built.

Originally, the bust of Scott at Horsmonden was accompanied by lines composed by Marriott, and the final couplet, dedicating the tower to Scott, contains a portent:

To thee he builds this tower, though thy name
Will long survive the builder and the fane.

As Marriott predicted, Sir Walter Scott’s renown has indeed long outlived the tower.

Abbotsford, Scott’s home in the Borders, opened to visitors in 1833 but it is not known if Marriott ever saw it. Visitors are still welcome: Scott’s collections are beautifully presented, there’s a great introduction in the visitor centre, and (always important to The Folly Flâneuse) the cafe is excellent https://www.scottsabbotsford.com

* The second Marriott was added by royal licence in 1811 and the surname is often given a hyphen, but Marriott himself used the form ‘Wm M Smith Marriott’. He inherited the baronetcy in 1862.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments section if you would like to share any thoughts.

Taking it easy as Christmas approaches, the Folly Flâneuse was flicking through a copy of The Home Owner magazine from December 1937. She was delighted to discover one writer’s thoughts on follies at that date. Follies were, he wrote :

‘the natural off-spring of the union of too much money with too little brain…set up ostensibly to improve the view, but really to advertise some wealthy nit-wit’

On that note a very merry Christmas and there will be more nit-wits and their creations in 2019.