Now near neighbour to a Rotherham suburb, Keppel’s Column originally stood in open ground on the edge of Scholes Wood on the Wentworth Woodhouse estate. An obelisk had been proposed for the site as early as 1769. Its original purpose was as an eye-catcher to terminate the southern vista from the new principal front of the Wentworth House mansion, balancing the pyramidal Hoober Stand to the north which is dated 1748. Keppel’s Column was clearly visible from the top of Hoober Stand, as was the Lady’s Folly, which featured here recently https://thefollyflaneuse.com/ladys-folly-tankersley-south-yorkshire/. All three ornamental buildings could be seen from each other, and when guests were taken by carriage to climb a tower, or take tea in a summer house, they served to display the vast size of the Marquis of Rockingham’s estate.
landscape
Deffer Wood summerhouse, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, South Yorkshire
Root houses, so named because they incorporated natural materials such as tree trunks, branches, bark, moss or heather, became key features of gardens and parks in the 18th century. Richard Payne Knight summed up the genre in his poem The Landscape in 1794
The cover’d seat, that shelters from the storm,
May oft a feature of the landscape form,
Whether composed of native stumps and roots,
It spreads the creeper’s rich fantastic shoots;
Hartburn Tower and Grotto, Hartburn Glebe, Northumberland
John Sharp became the incumbent of Hartburn, near Morpeth, in 1749 and this curious tower was built soon after; it was originally used as a schoolhouse and to house the parish hearse. Sharp contributed to the cost from his own pocket, but reaped the benefits as the tower also served as an eye-catcher from his ornamented grounds in the valley of the Hart Burn that gives the village its name.
