In 1840 the foundation stone was laid for a column on the Brocklesby estate which can be found near Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. Eventually reaching a height of 130 feet, it could soon be seen from miles around. The plantations surrounding it have long since matured, and today you have to look a little harder to find what became known as Pelham’s Pillar.

Charles Anderson (1749-1823) succeeded to the Brocklesby estate of his great uncle, Charles Pelham, in 1763, and added the Pelham name to his own. Pelham, created Baron Yarborough in 1794 greatly improved the vast estate, ornamentally and productively, with advice from Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Building work on his monument was begun by his son, Charles Anderson Pelham (1781-1846), created 1st Earl of Yarborough in 1837, and the column commemorates the 12,532,700 trees planted by his father between 1787 and his death in 1823. Construction was completed by his son, Charles (1809-1862), 2nd Earl of Yarborough, after he succeeded in 1846.

The architect was Edward James Willson (1787-1854) of Lincoln and the builder was Mr Tomlin of Grantham (probably John Tomlin, stonemason). Work was well underway by 1844 when ‘many workmen’ were reported to be on site. By 1845 it was rising above the trees and visible from boats on the Humber. The urn was fixed on the top in autumn 1847, and by 1848 it was said to be ‘now completed’. The lions that guard the entrance were carved by William Day Keyworth (1817-1897) of Hull.

The inscription on the column gives 1849 as the official opening date and one of the first to see the new column was Prince Albert, who was staying at Brocklesby in April 1849 when on official business in Grimsby (noting Albert’s visit to Lincolnshire in her diary, Queen Victoria wrote ‘I always miss him terribly when he leaves me’).

The Prince was driven around the park, where large groups gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal visitor. Elizabeth Dixon, a local farmer’s wife, watched the procession from the Newsham Lodge and then followed the Prince to the pillar where she had ‘an excellent view of the whole party’.

Even before it was complete the pillar had become not just a landmark for travellers on the roads and river, but a prominent spot for the Earl of Yarborough’s hounds to assemble before the chase.

Brocklesby was already home to other ornaments, including a garden temple, a hermitage and an exquisite mausoleum of 1787. In 1844 it was noted that visitors were welcomed into the park. There they could ‘wander in extensive and beautiful plantations’ and take refreshments in a woodland cottage ‘built in the Swiss style’ which stood near the rising column. In 1885 the Brocklesby estate was described in a tourist guide as a ‘place of holiday resort’, with the pillar and the Swiss Cottage amongst the highlights.

Unfortunately some of these tourists were not on their best behaviour, and in 1849 the estate office offered an ultimatum: if the carving of names in trees and the disfiguring of seats did not stop, then access to the park would be limited. The announcement continued that in future access to Pelham’s Pillar and the mausoleum would be by ticket only, obtainable on application to the estate office. Once access to the column had been gained, the message was reiterated on a plaque requesting that persons visiting the pillar refrain from writing or cutting their names or ‘otherwise disfigure the walls’.

For generations the men of the Jackson family, who lived at Pelham Pillar Lodge, were both woodsmen for the adjacent plantations and custodians of the monument. Their address was often abbreviated, making it appear that the family inhabited the column itself:

Happily the behaviour of the visitors must have improved, and the estate continued to allow access. In 1889 the Primitive Methodists met at the pillar for a bank holiday gathering, perhaps tempted along by the ‘meat tea’ that was provided. In that same year, a local cycling club visited Pelham’s Pillar and the Swiss Cottage with their ‘wives, sisters, and lady friends’. Fear not any frail female readers alarmed at this exertion: the ladies were ‘conveyed in wagonettes’.

But sadly history repeats itself: in the late twentieth century the Brocklesby estate created a popular permissive path which took in a number of the monuments, many of which had been restored. In 2021 it was announced that the route was to be permanently closed after several incidents of ‘anti-social behaviour’. Pelham’s Pillar too is out of bounds, but it can be glimpsed through trees (in winter)  from the adjoining road.

The Flâneuse climbed the tower many years ago when public access was allowed, but has no decent photographs, so thanks to the Garden Historian for the photo of the lions, and to Mike Booth of M.A.B. Media for the title image and the view above. His excellent film showing the detail of the architecture and the landscape setting of the column is well worth a look and can be found by clicking here.

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In 1836 General Loft, a committed church-crawler, visited Fotherby, near Louth in Lincolnshire, and found the ancient fabric of the church of St Mary’s ‘now terribly mutilated’. In the later 1850s a major rebuild was proposed, and the Bishop of Lincoln threw his weight behind the appeal with a donation of £20. James Robson, tenant and later owner of Brackenborough Hall, an attractive moated Georgian house about a mile from the church, was also a donor. As work got underway, he salvaged some of the stone from the old church and used it to build a sham ruin on a mound in the corner of his garden.

James Fowler of Louth was chosen as architect for the new church at Fotherby, and with funds in place it was agreed that work could begin in 1861. The crumbling old church was pulled down and, after a period of worshipping in nearby barns and meeting rooms, the congregation assembled in the new church in May 1863. Fowler was congratulated on the ‘imposing appearance of the edifice’.

At Brackenborough the folly was built on a mound in the corner of the moated enclosure that surrounds the garden. It was probably built contemporaneously with the new church at Fotherby, in the first years of the 1860s, but no records seem to survive to confirm an exact date. Robson (1820-1899) was a churchwarden and contributed to the cost of the new church, but no records of him acquiring the stone have yet been found. The folly no doubt functioned as a belvedere, summerhouse and eye-catcher, and in what was described in 1887 as ‘fine hunting country’ it may also have been a landmark for the hunt. When first built the south elevation was higher than the other sides and incorporated further recycled masonry, as seen in this 1907 view. No architect is associated with the folly: Fowler may have given advice, or it may have been Robson’s own design.

Brackenborough stands in an elevated position (relatively, in the flatlands of Lincolnshire), and before the plantations matured the view from the folly would have taken in local churches: there is still a vista to the elegant parish church of St James in Louth, with its spire said to be the highest of any parish church in Britain (the church was restored by Fowler in the 1760s).

Robson was declared bankrupt in 1887, after a collapse in the prices of agricultural produce, and the estate was put up for sale. Frustratingly, the sales particulars for the auction of the estate that year make no mention of the folly, although it was certainly extant a year later when the 25″ Ordnance Survey map was surveyed (published 1889) and the square tower is shown on its mound. The earliest written description found to date is in the sales particulars when the estate was again put up for auction in 1907. The folly was then noted as a ‘picturesque keep erected from stones from an old Ecclesiastical house’ (with house used in the sense of a church, or house of god). The estate was purchased by Frederick W. Bennett, whose family remain at Brackenborough today.

In the first edition of the Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, published in 1964, John Harris described the garden ornament as a ‘felicitous folly concocted from the remains of Fotherby church’ (for the Lincolnshire volume Nikolaus Pevsner concentrated mainly on churches and left secular buildings to Harris). Harris identified the fragments incorporated into the little tower as a thirteenth century arch, a three light Perpendicular window and a Decorated window ‘all built into a rugged ruin’. Photographs taken by Harris in 1959 during his research (Historic England collection) are similar to that shown above, and show that the south elevation was largely intact at that date.

The folly was ‘toppling precariously’ by the time Barbara Jones saw it in around 1970. The building was listed at grade II in 1986, by which time the upper section of the south elevation must have collapsed and it is not mentioned in the description. For years afterwards the folly was smothered in ivy and brambles and a large sycamore had taken root within the structure: it had become what Jones called a ‘ruinous sham ruin’ (Follies & Grottoes, 1974).

In 2015 Paul and Flora Bennett commissioned a structural survey from Capstone Consulting Engineers which concluded that the options were to repair and consolidate the folly as a ruin, or to repair and restore the folly creating a more ‘robust structure’. In 2020, after discussions at local and national levels, the Bennetts were given listed building consent to dismantle and reconstruct the badly listing folly under the supervision of Historic Building Consultant Liz Mayle.

The folly was dismantled, the stones numbered, and the folly rebuilt on secure foundations with new oak lintels and steel ties to support the structure. Flora even trawled the moat in search of stones that had toppled from the folly. In 2023 the restoration was recognised by a Pride of Place award from Louth Civic Trust.

Brackenborough Hall is a private residence, but the folly can be seen from a public footpath through the park. Or you could celebrate your wedding there, with the folly as a backdrop to your photographs, or stay in one of the holiday lets on the estate (which include an apartment featuring both the workings of the Coach House clock and a grain winch). To find out more visit brackenboroughhall.com.

Thanks to Steffie S. for alerting the Flâneuse to the restored folly, and to Paul, Flora and Poppy the exuberant labrador for a tour and a welcome coffee on a frosty morning.

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Early in the nineteenth century, Samuel Russell Collett moved to a farming estate at Swinethorpe in Lincolnshire. There he constructed a ‘romantic seat’, in the form of a sham castle, which by 1824 was known by the curious name of ‘The Jungle’.

The reason why Collett decided to build a house in this form seems to be long forgotten, and it is not known if he used an architect or designed it himself. Lucinda Lambton names Thomas Lovely as the builder, and he was presumably the Lincolnshire bricklayer by that name: The Jungle is built out of over-baked bricks (ones that have been in the kiln for too long and become dark, glassy and misshapen in appearance). But building the facade must have been quite a novel experience for Lovely, as the bricks are not laid conventionally, but are a haphazard jumble that creates a most unusual texture and appearance.

Initially Jones struggled to find the history of the building: ‘it has no history’ she noted, and all the information she could garner was that ‘a man built it’. Eventually, she was shown a manuscript account of The Jungle written by Major General John Henry Loft, a Lincolnshire M.P. and antiquarian soon after the house was built. He noted his observations, mainly of ecclesiastical subjects, as he travelled around the county, and happily for history they had survived.

In 1826 Loft diverted from church-crawling to visit Collett at his ‘very singular but tasty and handsome Residence’. He described the house as being ‘composed of over burnt Bricks’ built up in a rough state in ‘the manner of a Castle’ with a ‘grotesque but not inelegant appearance’. Around the house were gardens with ornamental trees amongst which different kinds of deer, several ‘very fine Kangaroos’ and a male and female buffalo with a calf wandered freely. Golden pheasants had their own enclosure, and gold and silver fish swam in the pond. In the house Loft admired ‘many good Apartments’, but he didn’t elaborate further.

Three years later a ‘liberal reward’ was offered for information on the ‘strangers’ who were suspected of stealing from The Jungle. Their haul comprised of ‘nine golden pheasants (viz. six cocks and three hens), a mongoose, some fancy rabbits and two storks’. The felons were soon apprehended, but the fate of the creatures is not recorded.

It is assumed that this menagerie gave the house its name of ‘The Jungle’, which first appears in print around 1824, Collett having previously being described as ‘of Swinethorpe’. And is it coincidence or nominative determinism that The Jungle stands near the village of Eagle? This remains one of follydoms great mysteries.

Collett died in 1850, and his wife continued at The Jungle until her death in 1854. The house was then let by Collet’s heir, and by 1899 was home to the Bingham family. The Jungle was a welcome sight to touring cyclists, as for many years Mrs Bingham offered teas and accommodation. By this date the building’s history was forgotten, and an 1890 guide described it simply as an ‘old house’ that was ‘very picturesque’.

Barbara Jones visited in the early 1950s when researching for the first edition of Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. She described the ‘fanged and snarling facade’ which fronted the ‘plain farmhouse’ and sketched the strange structure.

In the 1960s Audrey Houlston, whose husband was a Lincolnshire potato farmer, was out riding and spotted the house. It was love at first sight, and the Houlstons bought the ‘dairy and arable farm’ with 150 acres at auction in 1964 for £22,700. When asked about its appeal, Dennis Houlston explained that they liked the fact that the house was so unusual and ‘the only one of its kind’. The Houlston’s added a modern house, of a ‘clean rectilinear design’ behind the folly facade, and reassured the locals that they had no intention of having a menagerie in their grounds.

When The Jungle was offered for sale in 2000, the picturesque property understandably caught the eye of newspaper editors with property pages to fill. The Daily Telegraph gave the ‘bizarre, elfin-gothic castle’ a double-page spread, and thought that with an asking price of £500,000 the ‘quaint folly’ was both a ‘bargain and an opportunity’.

The Jungle remains a rather special family home, and can only be glimpsed from the road. The folly facade is listed at grade II*.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is in its usual position at the foot of the page if you wish to share any thoughts or further information.

Moments from the Great North Road, as it passes through Lincolnshire, is Stoke Rochford Hall in its lovely undulating park. The present house is a delicious early Victorian confection of towers and turrets, contemporary with the obelisk. But there were earlier houses in the park, and two intriguing arches are reminders of an earlier age.

In 1806 the then owner of Stoke Rochford Hall, Edmund Turnor (1754-1829), M.P. and antiquarian, published Collections for the history of the town and soke of Grantham…  In it he wrote that the ‘front of the stables’, built in 1676, was ‘still remaining, and contrived as to form the west end of the gardens’.

On the opposite hill, he continued, was a ‘summerhouse corresponding with the centre of the stables’. The Historic England list entry says the summerhouse is dated 1704, although it is difficult to decipher the plaque today. Below the plaque, carved directly into the fabric of the summerhouse, is a Latin inscription which records that Sir Edmund Turnor, Knight Bachelor, (1619-1707) placed the building here when he was 86, which would have been in 1705 or 1706.

By 1815, when the Ordnance Survey drawings were prepared, the front of the stables was no more, and the entrance arch had been rebuilt as an eye-catcher to be seen both from the drive to the house, and from its twin arch summerhouse. This recycled arch bears a plaque with the date 1676 and the inscription ‘Qu’o conspectior e’o humilior’: The more I am noticed, the more humble [I am]. Both are today listed at Grade I.

In 1847 Charles Turnor (1768-1853), Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral, antiquarian, and ‘patron of science’, added to the ornaments in the park by erecting an obelisk in memory of Sir Isaac Newton, who was born in nearby Woolsthorpe. The monument was the work of the architect William Burn (1789-1870), who was then working on remodelling the village church, having designed the new house a few years earlier.

The obelisk was announced to the world in the pages of an Astronomical Society Report in early 1848, and this was picked up by the press and the news more widely circulated. The report included the full inscription, but to summarise here: Charles Turnor erected the monument in 1847 in memory of Sir Isaac, and his inscription exhorts ‘the inhabitants of the surrounding district’ never to forget that so great a man was born, and began his education, ‘in the immediate neighbourhood’.

Stoke Rochford Hall has been in institutional use since it was requisitioned during the Second World War. For 38 years it served as a hotel and conference centre for the National Union of Teachers, and in 2016 it was leased to a hotel and wedding venue operator. The estate remains with Turnor descendants.

The hotel has all the usual food offerings, and the landscape, which also features a lovely lake and a cascade, can also be viewed from public rights of way. The very pretty little village is worth exploring, and there are wonderful Turnor and Cholmeley (of Easton) monuments in the church.

For more on the hotel https://www.stokerochfordhall.co.uk

Thanks to the newly-recruited Classics Correspondent for help with the Latin inscriptions.

If you would like to share any thoughts or further information, please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page. Thank you for reading.

The Folly Flâneuse is taking a short break to catch up with family, friends, and (of course) follies, and will be back next week. She sends her best wishes to all readers, and hopes that you too are able to enjoy the relaxation of restrictions, whilst remaining safe and well.

Meanwhile here is the jaunty yellow boathouse at Belton Park in Lincolnshire. Designed by Anthony Salvin and built in c.1838-9, it was restored by the National Trust in 2008.

High above Belton House, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, stands this quirky tower with views back to the mansion. It consists of a room perched above a tall arch, and its spindly, leg-like supports, gave rise to its supposed local name of Lord Brownlow’s Britches.

We will return to Lord Brownlow later, but for now we are interested in the builder of the tower: Sir John Brownlow (1690-1754) who was created Viscount Tyrconnel in 1718. He settled at Belton in the early 1720s, and at that date the gardens were in the formal style of the previous century. He did not sweep this all away, as so many of his generation did, but the gardens were old-fashioned, and as one visitor in 1744 noted waspishly ‘the park and gardens were reckoned fine 30 years ago’. Tyrconnel added such à la mode garden features as a wilderness, a sham ruin and a grand orangery, as well as the Bellmount tower eyecatcher.

No architect is recorded, but we know that master builder and joiner Samuel Smith erected the tower, which carries a plaque naming and dating the building: BELLMOUNT 1750 (but note that the National Trust call it Belmount Tower).The upper room was used as an observatory and a belvedere. Lord Tyrconnel was interested in science, and had microscopes and a telescope in his study, and may have used the tower to stargaze. Bellmount was also a place in which to entertain guests, and allow them to admire and appreciate his extensive park and gardens. A visitor a few years after it was completed wrote that ‘from a temple in the garden called Belle Mount you may see seven counties at once’ (sadly she doesn’t name them, so you will have to figure them out for yourself).

The tower was also an eyecatcher from the mansion, and terminated the vista along the eastern avenue.

But what we see today is not the original building. A painting by John Harris, on display in the house, shows the landscape as it was just after the hilltop belvedere was built. It can also be seen, top centre, in this engraving by Badeslade; at that date it had a pair of wings flanking the lofty tower. Tyrconnels’s great-nephew, Brownlow Cust (1744-1807), created Baron Brownlow in 1776, who succeeded to Belton in 1770, improved the park with guidance from his friend Philip Yorke of Erdigg, and professional landscaper William Emes. Yorke disliked the wings on the belvedere, calling them the ‘most offending members’ and suggesting they be ‘cut off’. Brownlow clearly followed his advice, and this emasculation accounts for the odd proportions of the building today and the curious buttresses which replaced the wings. As Barbara Jones wrote in 1953 it is ‘a very strange building and well worth a visit’.

The army had used the park for exercises since the late 19th century, and in 1891 the 1st Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment enjoyed the ‘finest views’ from their tents by Bellmount. During the First World War the park at Belton was home to a huge training camp, and the tower became a focus for manoeuvres.

Lord Brownlow gave Belton House and a part of the estate to the National Trust in 1984. The Bellmount tower was subsequently acquired with the help of funds from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Although the tower was restored in 1989-90, it is in need of further repair.

In 2020 National Heritage Lottery funding was secured for a major project to reconnect parts of the Belton estate which had become fragmented. The National Trust and the Woodland Trust will work together to link the park around Bellmount with Londonthorpe Woods on the edge of Grantham. There are also plans to restore the grade II* listed tower and add interpretation.

For more on Belton see the excellent National Trust guidebook written by Adrian Tinniswood in 1992.

Bellmount Tower can not be accessed from Belton Park, but is accessed via a separate car park on Five Gates Lane. Belton is a National Trust property https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/belton-house

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As the nation settles into staying at home, forgoing a social life and, more practically, visits to the hairdresser and beauty salon, the Folly Flâneuse got to thinking about those fashionable landscape ornaments called hermitages, in which men (presumably women had more sense than to apply for the vacancy) lived in isolation. With ragged clothing, long fingernails, and unkempt beards, the hermits animated the landscape, whilst creating a little drama for the visitors who caught a (staged) glimpse of the recluse.

Hermits in the landscape garden have been considered at length elsewhere, so only a brief summary is necessary here. In the 18th century hermitages sat alongside grottoes, temples, belvederes and sham ruins as essential components of a voguish pleasure ground. Hermitages were created from natural materials – tufa from nearby streams, tree trunks and branches, and moss and heather for the roof. The buildings had to look as if a hermit could have built them himself, using only what he could find locally. Most were designed as rustic retreats, the name ‘hermitage’ suggesting a place where the visitor could be at one with nature and pause for quiet reflection, the word hermit being ultimately derived from the Greek for ‘solitary.’

But some estate owners went a step further and recruited ‘real’ hermits – legend has it via the classified ads in the local newspaper. In return for their basic accommodation and meals, the applicants would eventually receive a pension. But the small print insisted that they made commitments such as remaining for 7 years, not cutting their hair or nails, and making a vow of silence. Needless to say, there are few records of anyone staying the course, but many a story of the hermit being caught having a good natter in the village pub only a few weeks into his contract. Much more reliable were the (albeit rare) waxwork hermits, who seldom strayed, or the automata under the control of a hidden estate retainer.

Whether there is much truth in the hermit tales is debatable, but there were certainly plenty of hermitages. There were examples across Britain and although many have been lost because of the organic nature of their construction, there’s a particularly lovely surviving example at Brocklesby, the seat of the Earl of Yarborough in Lincolnshire. Accounts show it was constructed as part of a scheme of improvements proposed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who last visited Brocklesby in 1780 shortly before work on the shelter started.

The approach to the hermitage is through a grotto tunnel which was once decorated with fossils and curious minerals. Venturing into the dark space created a frisson of trepidation, but on coming out into the light the visitor’s spirits would rise at the sight of the pretty little rustic temple in front of them. Created out of tree trunks, gnarled branches, and rough stone, around a brick core, the little octagon is entered by an arch beautifully formed of two curving branches. The interior was decorated with rustic latticework made of entwined branches, of which traces remain, and furnished with a table made out of a ‘lump of elm disease’ (as Barbara Jones unromantically described it in her notes), a rustic seat, and four chairs each hewn out of a single piece of wood.

So was it ever home to a hirsute and terrifyingly-taloned anchorite, dressed only in rags? Rumour has it that a hermit was occasionally to be found at home, but evidence seems hard to come by. Although there was certainly a very shabby and shifty individual in residence when the Folly Fellowship visited in 1999.

Hermits may have endured their spartan surroundings, but most people were just too keen on their creature comforts to linger in root houses, which by their nature were ‘not very dry’. James Plumptre toured Yorkshire in 1799 and was enamoured with William Aislabie’s landscape garden at Hackfall, near Ripon. Hoping to be able to return and spend more time there, he wished for a cell to be built where he might ‘hermitize’. But remembering the northern weather he added the caveat ‘at least for the summer half year.’

One man who wasn’t afraid of the colder seasons was William Wordsworth, born 250 years ago this week on 7 April 1770. In the early 19th century he built a rustic shelter in his garden at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, inspired by an example he and his sister Dorothy had seen in Scotland. The ‘Moss House’ was used all year round, including as a retreat ‘for quietness on warm days in winter’. The Folly Flâneuse had intended to feature the Wordsworth Trust’s plans to create a modern day successor to the lost structure, which were at an advanced stage when the current situation escalated. Obviously, that’s all on hold but there will be further news here in due course, and a visit to see it is on the flâneuse’s increasingly long list of ‘Things To Look Forward To’.

The hermitage at Brocklesby is grade I listed in recognition of its status as a rare survivor of the genre. ‘Damp and in disrepair’ when seen by Barbara Jones in the 1970s, it has since been restored. The pleasure grounds at Brocklesby are strictly private but have historically been open to the public at certain times of the year. Once the current restrictions are lifted a call to the estate office should elicit the necessary information https://www.brocklesby.co.uk

In the middle of the 18th century the area around Dunston was unenclosed heath, and travel was a dirty and dangerous business, especially in the dark winter months. Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), 2nd baronet, of West Wycombe and Hell-fire Club fame, came into property in the area when he married Sarah Ellys of nearby Nocton in 1745. Dashwood erected the Dunston Pillar in 1751 as a beacon to guide ‘the peasant, the wayfaring stranger, and the horseman with his dame on pillion’.

Described a few years later as an ‘exceedingly lofty tower’, a staircase led to the top where a glass lantern was lit each evening. Around the tower was a ‘neat square court’ with small pavilions at each corner. Dashwood engraved the miles to London and to Lincoln respectively on two of column’s faces, with the inscription ‘Dunston Pillar’ on the third, and on the south face:

COLUMNAM HANC
UTILITATI PUBLICAE
D.D.D.
F. DASHWOOD
MDCCLI.*

Soon after the tower was constructed, the land around it was enclosed, new roads were constructed, and the Light House was slowly rendered redundant. As early as 1771 one passer-by worried it would soon become a ‘useless obelisk’.

With Dashwood’s reputation as something of a rake, it’s not a great surprise to learn that instead of becoming redundant, the tower and grounds entertained the Lincoln Club. This was a sort of northern outpost of the Hell-fire Club, the mock-religious society dedicated to the pleasures of the table and the bedroom, which met at Medmenham Abbey, on Dashwood’s Buckinghamshire estate.

By 1776 the tower and its enclosure were likened to a London pleasure garden and called the ‘VauxHall of this part of the world’. A ‘kind of Banquetting room’ was built against the north wall, and there was a fine bowling green. The whole was surrounded by plantations which promised to be the ‘Paradise of Lincolnshire’ within a few years. The pillar may also have provided a very grand stand from which to watch horseracing, as the final straight of Lincoln’s first racecourse was aligned with the tower. Further views of equine interest would have featured the hunt, and Armstrong’s 1778 map of Lincolnshire comprehending Lindsay, Kesteven and Holland (Holland being a historical subdivision of Linconlnshire) has a vignette of Dunston Pillar with the horses and hounds passing by (not illustrated).

In 1792 Sir John Dashwood King (1765-1849), who had inherited the baronetcy from his half-brother Sir Francis, tried to get a licence to serve alcohol. He was unsuccessful but presumably did not give up as the following year he had plans drawn up by Mr Lumby, a Lincoln architect, to further extend the banqueting room. An even more spectacular design proposal, undated, unexplained, and unexecuted, would have seen the whole tower encased in a two-storey house.

By the end of the century parts of the Lincolnshire estate had passed to Robert Hobart (1760-1816), 4th earl of Buckinghamshire. In 1810 he commemorated the fifty year reign of George III by replacing the pillar’s lantern, which had collapsed in a storm, with a huge statue of the monarch, and added an inscription of his own:

THE STATUE UPON THIS PILLAR
WAS ERECTED AD 1810
BY ROBERT EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
TO COMMEMORATE THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE REIGN OF HIS MAJESTY
KING GEORGE THE THIRD

Modelled by Joseph Panzetta, who worked at Mrs Coade’s artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth**, the statue was 14 feet high and showed the king in his coronation robes with crown and sceptre.

Tragedy struck when a stonemason fell to his death as the figure was being erected atop the pillar. John Willson was buried in nearby Harmston churchyard, and he is remembered with this wonderful headstone. Like the original pillar, the column is surmounted with a Coade Stone statue, presumably sent from the Lambeth factory and inserted into the stone. Willson is remembered with both a Latin inscription and the English translation:

He who erected the noble King,
Is here now laid dead by Death’s sharp sting

By 1931, His Majesty was also meeting an undignified end as a storm had cost him his right forearm. It could be found, alongside his sceptre, ‘in a hedge bottom near the foot of the pillar’. Ten years later, with World War II underway, the Royal Air Force considered the column a danger to aircraft coming in and out of Coleby Grange Airfield. Initially, the Ministry of Defence decreed that the whole tower must be demolished, but after discussions it was agreed to take it down to a height below the maximum tree line, a reduction of about one-third of the original extent.

Specific instructions were issued to the contractors to dismantle the statue with the greatest care, and to number both the pieces of the King, and the courses of masonry from the tower. However, taking down the statue was more difficult than planned, and pieces of the Coade Stone fractured and fell during the process. The statue was likened to ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and there were quips about ‘putting King George together again’. However with the nation at war, little attention was paid to the issue and the fragments were stacked in the base of the pillar and the door secured.

There they remained until 1953 when the owner of the pillar, Mr Parker, began to press for restoration. After initial misgivings by the MoD, who thought the tower had only a ‘limited and sentimental value’, it was accepted that under the terms of the Compensation (Defence) Act 1939 a contribution to the costs of restoration should be paid. Plans were drawn up to rebuild the tower, and erect a new lantern on the top, but ultimately Lincolnshire County Committee couldn’t commit their share of the costs at a time when the country was still focussed on economy. The owner then gave the fragments of the statue to the Lincolnshire Local History Society, and they were moved to a council depot where, like a Lincolnshire Ozymandias, the shattered visage and other fragments lay in a ‘nettle bed’ before being transferred to the stone mason’s yard at Lincoln Castle. Margaret Jones (known to her colleagues as ‘Boadicea’), was an archaeologist working with the Ministry of Works in Lincolnshire. Writing to Country Life in 1959, she reported that the mason, Mr Freestone (nominative determinism?), was at work on the king’s head, which was in about 12 pieces.

But yet again restoration plans ground to a halt. There was a revival of interest in the 1960s, when it was agreed that part of the statue would be erected on a plinth in the grounds of Lincoln Castle. Plans were drawn up showing two alternatives: the bust, ie head and shoulders, was the first option, and a second showed the statue rebuilt down to the knees (most peculiar in the opinion of this writer). The MoD offered funds but no further action was taken.

The hero of the hour was Brian Loughborough, the Curator of the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, in whose care the fragments of the statue had been placed by the local history society. In the early 1970s he resurrected the idea of erecting the bust at Lincoln Castle and recruited the local MP, the Hon. Joseph Godber, to the cause. Godber went straight to the top: Defence Secretary Peter Carrington, later Lord Carrington. In 1972 the MoD sent a cheque for £450 in full settlement, and with a further £100 from the Department of the Environment, the museum was able to go ahead and place the order for the restoration work to begin in June 1972. The statue was finally complete in 1974 when crowds gathered to see the crown lowered into place.

In 2010 the bust in the castle grounds was further restored by Coade Ltd, the company which has successfully redeveloped the Coade Stone process.

The tower still stands in its truncated form, it is on private land but can be seen from the A15. The inscriptions are badly deteriorated with only odd words still legible. The surviving portions of the tower and the statue are both listed at grade II.

With the remaining fragments safely in storage, and developments in artificial stone technology, it would be amazing to see the statue of King George restored to its full height. But there remains not only the tricky question of money (of course), but also where to put a massive statue that was designed to be viewed from several metres below?

Meanwhile, another version of the Dunston Pillar, with statue intact, can be found in Australia. A sterling silver model of the tower was created by the renowned 18th century silversmith, Paul Storr, in 1811. It was apparently created as a table centrepiece for Sir Joseph Banks, who had an estate nearby, and carries the botanist and voyagers crest on the base. It stands 79cm tall  but is not an exact replica of the pillar as King George is not wearing his crown, and some florid acanthus leaves have been added to the column. It was sold by auction at Christies by his descendants in 1992 and was purchased by The Australiana Fund, a not for profit organisation with the aim of collecting furniture and artworks to display in the country’s official residences.

It is appropriate to find a Sir Joseph Banks connection 200 years after his death in 1820. There are events around the country https://www.joseph-banks.org.uk/2020-2/but The Folly Flâneuse is particularly looking forward to a trip to the seaside https://www.cookmuseumwhitby.co.uk/whats-on/2020-exhibition.html

* The Folly Flâneuse is no Latin scholar but this can (hopefully) be translated as This column for the use of the public Francis Dashwood gave and dedicated as a gift (DDD – Dono Dedit Dedicavit) 1751

** He also modelled the statue of Rowland Hill on its column in Shrewsbury as well as the Nelson pediment at the Royal Naval College in London.