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

Just south of Glasgow an immense drum topped with a dome can be glimpsed from the M74 motorway. This is the mausoleum commissioned by the 10th Duke of Hamilton. When he was interred there in 1852, it was hailed in the newspapers as ‘the most costly and magnificent temple for the reception of the dead in the world’, although with the caveat ‘always excepting the Pyramids’.

Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852) inherited Hamilton Palace from his father in 1819. He had been on the Grand Tour and had a passion for arts and antiquities, building up a vast and important collection.

A number of architects were consulted about the planned mausoleum, including the Duke’s kinsman David Hamilton (1768-1843). Hamilton designed the crypt with niches for the coffins of many generations to come.

But the rest of the building we see today was built to a design by David Bryce (1803-1876) based on a sketch by the Duke himself. By 1852 the crypt was ready to receive the remains of the Duke’s ancestors which were brought to the mausoleum from the old church in Hamilton. The building was still incomplete when the duke died in September of the same year, although he was immediately laid to rest in his sarcophagus in the upper chamber and work continued around him.

The Duke was fascinated by all things Egyptian and had asked a specialist, Mr Pettigrew, to embalm his body after his death. He then wished to be placed in a sarcophagus which he had purchased. This casket, ‘executed by the most cunning workmen of the Pharoahs’ featured a female face and was thought to have been used in the burial of an Egyptian queen: according to one source the Duke ordered it to be further chiselled out to make room for his body.

Not everyone was impressed with the Duke’s mausoleum (or the Duke for that matter: he was considered self-important). In 1863 Lady Waterford found it in poor taste, writing that it was a ‘monument of pride’ in which the Duke ‘reposes alone […] under an immense doom [dome] in the sarcophagus of an Egyptian queen’.

In 1943 a novel called The Pleasure Dome was published. It was the work of Elizabeth Kyle, and the story was based on the history of Hamilton Palace, and the colourful characters associated with it. Elizabeth Kyle was a pen-name of Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlap (1901-1982), who also published as Mary Forsyth and Jan Ralston, although she used her real name for her journalism. Her first novel was published in 1934 when she was described as ‘not one of those writers who derive local colouring from their imagination’: instead she drew upon her experiences of wandering ‘about Europe and America in a more or less vagabond way in order to satisfy her craving for adventure’. She also travelled widely as a correspondent for both the Manchester Guardian and the Glasgow Herald.

The Flâneuse is rambling, but there is a good reason for introducing the book. Kyle’s characters include the Duke of Hamilton, his architect, and the architect’s assistant Mr Connell, a man who has experience in building ‘whigmaleeries’. This wonderful word instantly evokes something enchanted or whimsical, but the Folly Flâneuse reached for her dictionary to double-check: whigmaleerie – ‘a fanciful ornament or contrivance’. Also in the cast of characters was the Duke’s father-in-law William Beckford, builder of whigmaleeries including Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire to a design by James Wyatt and Beckford’s Tower in Bath (H.E. Goodridge, architect of Beckford’s Tower, was one of the men who submitted a design for the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace).

The mausoleum featured on many nineteenth century picture postcards, but one in particular caught the eye of the Flâneuse. The message on the front is quite conventional, with Howard sending lots of love to his sweetheart in 1904, but the reverse, written in code, suggests clandestine meetings and illicit affairs. Upon cracking the code Howard is found to be above reproach: he tells Lilian his cold is getting better and comments on the weather. Incurable romantics will however be pleased to know that Howard and Lilian married in 1910 and had a long life together.

The family collection, including the treasures collected by the 10th Duke, was sold in a magnificent sale in 1882. In the early 1920s mineral workings under the estate threatened the stability of the palace and the mausoleum. In 1921 the bodies in the crypt, along with the 10th Duke in his sarcophagus, were reinterred in the nearby Bent Cemetery, where a simple monument marks their site (the remains of two most recent Dukes were reinterred on the Isle of Arran). Only the plinth which once held the sarcophagus remains in the upper room of the mausoleum.

The 13th Duke of Hamilton sold a vast chunk of the estate, including the palace, mausoleum and the hunting lodge called Chatelherault to Hamilton Town Council in the early 1920s. Work began almost immediately to demolish the palace, and there were calls to pull down the mausoleum too. Happily, local interest was so strong that the plans were abandoned. Today the mausoleum stands as an unlikely eye-catcher in the midst of playing fields and cricket pitches.

For much more on the history of the mausoleum visit the Low Parks Museum in Hamilton or see the excellent Virtual Hamilton Palace website https://vhpt.org

The mausoleum is open for very entertaining guided tours on certain days each year. There’s more here https://www.slleisureandculture.co.uk/info/201/hamilton_mausoleum/234/tours

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In 1765 Charles Raymond built a tower on his estate at Valentines in Ilford, Essex. Money was not an issue, for Raymond had grown wealthy in business, and in particular shipping, having started his career in the employ of the East India Company. The prominently-placed sham fortification was an eye-catcher that announced his status to all who passed by. It was intended as his family mausoleum, but things didn’t quite go to plan.

Raymond (c.1713-1788) bought the Valentines (sometimes Valentine’s) estate in 1754. He renovated the house, and filled it with treasures from his travels and curiosities brought home on his ships. His garden was home to a menagerie with exotic birds, and in 1771 one Captain Rogers returned to England from China with a sampan to sail on the estate’s lakes.

Sir Charles Raymond (he was created a baronet in 1774) died in 1788. His plans for a grand mausoleum had been abandoned when the Bishop of London apparently refused to consecrate the tower. In his will Sir Charles stipulated a more conventional funeral plan: he wished to be ‘buried in as private a manner as may be’. He was laid to rest at St Margaret of Antioch in Barking, where he is commemorated by a monument in the church.

Daniel Lysons noted the tower in his Environs of London, published in 1796. He described it as being built in 1765 as a burial place, but noted that ‘it was never put to that use’. The little further information we have comes from the Ilford historian George Tasker. He wrote about Cranbrook Castle, as it became known (the Cran Brook runs nearby and gives it name to the area), in the local newspaper, and in 1901 published Ilford Past & Present. Tasker was privy to information from a descendant of Raymond, described as an ‘impeachable authority’, who stated that the intended mausoleum had cost £420 to build, and that the disagreement with the Bishop had led to the plans being dropped. Tasker had explored the tower, and wrote that outlines of the fourteen semi-circular niches for coffins could still be traced on the walls of the vault, which was built within the mound on which the tower stands.

Throughout the 19th century Cranbrook Castle had been rented out as a dwelling house: tenants in the second-half of the century included the local milkman, his wife and four daughters. Tasker described how the ground floor chapel had been divided into two rooms, and the room above had been converted into four apartments. Another writer thought it made an odd home, as the spiral staircase from the chapel to the roof took up much of the space. The tower, which was ‘conspicuous several miles round’, remained a popular local landmark, and featured on countless picture postcards.

During the First World War Cranbrook Castle was taken over by the Admiralty and became ‘the most important observation station’ near London, giving ‘very valuable information during air raids’. After the war the tower deteriorated and became a target for vandals bent on ‘wanton destruction’. By this time the land around the tower was in demand for housing, and new homes on the 45 acre Cranbook Castle Estate were advertised from the start of the 1920s.

Alongside the housing the Port of London Authority was building a new recreation ground, and locals became aware that their tower was under threat. There were proposals to turn it into a museum, or to incorporate it into the new pavilion needed for the sports ground, but ‘the authorities ordered its removal for causes not determined’. The strongly-built tower did its best to resist, with 12 strong men with ropes being needed to pull down the turrets in 1923. But soon not a trace remained, and the site was developed.

The Valentines estate was bought by the local authority in 1912: the mansion became council offices and the grounds became a public park. With help from the Heritage Lottery Fund and an active Friends group the house and parkland were restored in 2007-08. The house is now open regularly, with furnished period rooms on view, and also operates as a wedding venue. The gardens can be visited daily. Read more https://valentinesmansion.com

For the work of the Friends see https://valentines.org.uk

The castle is remembered in Ilford in the names and logos of Cranbrook Castle Lawn Tennis Club and Cranbrook Castle Montessori Nursery.

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In 1908 T.W. Wilkinson submitted an article on ‘Remarkable Follies’ to Wide World Magazine. This popular publication was launched in 1898 and was aimed at men, and in particular what one writer has called ‘armchair adventurers’. It specialised in true-life tales of derring-do with titles such as ‘The Underground Pirates’ and ‘Across Africa by Boat’. One wonders what the readership made of Wilkinson’s article: exciting as follies are, they don’t quite have the drama of ‘A Subterranean Duel’.

Perhaps it was to compete with such adventures that Wilkinson launched into a dramatic introduction:

‘There is no stranger human foible than that which finds vent in the erection of what are popularly known as “follies”. It impels men to begin building without counting the cost, and to create freakish and unnecessary structures, with a consequent enormous waste of money; and its results are seen all over the countryside in half-finished undertakings, architectural atrocities, sham antiquities, and other more or less ridiculous objects. Incredible though it may seem, it is none the less a fact that millions – literally millions – of pounds have been spent on such superfluities’.

After that controversial conspectus Wilkinson goes on to discuss, very briefly, around 20 follies – all fairly well-known examples, with some accompanying photographs. Despite his introduction he isn’t particularly disparaging in most cases, and he even concedes that Ralph Allen’s sham castle on the Bath skyline is ‘picturesque’. A curiosity of his paper is that he uses the word “freaks” as a synonym for “follies”, and to stress this both words almost always appear in inverted commas. Thus the Egyptian Well at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire is a “freak” which ‘appears as if it has just strayed from the British Museum’ (Wilkinson seems oblivious to the fact that this was the builder’s intention).

And Beckford’s Tower on the edge of Bath is noted as ‘one of the most elaborate towers of the freak variety’.

As well as isolated “freaks” such as the foregoing (as Wilkinson wrote) there were also examples of groups of follies built by one man ‘in whom the passion for erecting such things developed into a monomania’. Wilkinson picked out the Brightling “follies” of Mad Jack Fuller and the scattered “follies” of J.S.W.S Erle-Drax on his Dorset estates.

As well as Drax’s elegant tower at Charborough there were, according to Wilkinson, two or three sham antiquities, a huge mausoleum, and other “freaks”. The mausoleum stood in the churchyard at Holnest and was indeed huge – Wilkinson would no doubt have approved when it was pulled down in 1935.

The Charborough Tower still stands and is claimed as inspiration for Thomas Hardy when he was writing Two on a Tower.

Wilkinson ended with the question ‘Is “folly” building dying out now?’. His conclusion was that it didn’t look like it. But he picks the most unlikely structure to argue his case – a factory chimney in Bingley in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. Whilst a very functional feature of the Roundhill Tannery, the chimney must have qualified as folly in Wilkinson’s eyes as it was unlike any other chimney, and would have been much more expensive than a conventional design. According to another contemporary account of the chimney, each brick was placed 3.16 of an inch out of place so that when it reached a height of 50 feet each face would be opposite the compass point where it had started. Sadly the chimney was pulled down in the early 1970s.

In conclusion Wilkinson makes the bizarre and unqualified statement that “folly” houses are ‘actually now under construction in various parts of the country’. The Flâneuse would love to know which structures he had in mind.

Thanks to Sheila Donaldson of Bingley and District Local History Society for telling me the history of the chimney.

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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

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In the early years of the 18th century Sir James Tillie updated his will and included a rather mysterious instruction about his last resting place. He was to be interred ‘in such a place at Pentillie Castle as I have acquainted my dearest Wife the Lady Elizabeth Tillie with.’

Shortly before his death Sir James (1645-1713) added a codicil to his will (it is not attached to the proven will in the National Archives, but is with the copy in Cornwall Record Office). He stated that he wished to be placed in a ‘Timber oake Chaire’, lined with crepe or flannel, in which he could ‘sit exactly fit Tight and Close’. He was then to be placed in a room in Pentillie Castle until a ‘Repository’ could be built to house his remains. He specified two spots on the estate: ‘Either on that Eminence called Mount Arraret or Pisgah’, with the former (nothing is known of the latter), a ‘finely wooded hill’, being chosen by his widow. Lady Tillie had also been instructed by her husband to erect a monument and inscription.

The earliest account to discuss the burial seems to be a manuscript history by the Cornish antiquarian William Hals, written sometime before 1737 and published posthumously in parts from 1750. Hals painted Tillie as a rogue and an atheist, and claimed to have it on very good authority that Tillie was buried in a seated position, finely dressed, and with his papers and pen set out before him, all encased in a wooden box or coffin. From Hals also came the story that Sir James was so sure of resurrection that he claimed he would be back at the castle within 2 years, and before long the story was also circulating that Tillie had instructed his servants to continue to bring meals to him after his death. All of this seems to be embellishment, and there is no mention of grand vestments, writing materials or daily dinners in Tillie’s comprehensive codicil.

William Gilpin, clergyman and promoter of the picturesque, perpetuated the story told by Hals in his Observations on the Western Parts of England, published in 1798. Gilpin’s text was then repeated, often verbatim, in a number of other publications in the next decades.

In fact Tillie’s burial was really only unconventional in that he was interred ‘by making an Arm’d chair and closeing up his body in it’, as a visitor in 1764 was told, rather than in the more usual prone position in a casket (although it was also still quite rare to build a mausoleum on a private estate rather than in the consecrated ground of a churchyard).

In 1810 the landscape gardener Humphry Repton created one of his famed Red Books for Pentillie. In it he proposed that the ‘small building’ on Mount Ararat be remodelled so that it might be appear to be an ‘isolated Tower of a ruined Castle’. Repton expert John Phibbs has suggested that the battlemented upper storey and the walled terrace were added at this date. This idea is backed up by earlier watercolours, which appear to show the mausoleum as a simple square tower.

The whole ensemble is shown in an engraving dated 1823:

For many years the mausoleum was in a neglected condition. The doorway was blocked up and only glimpses of the rather decayed and bramble-bound statue of Sir James were possible.

In 2013 a restoration was begun with the Pentillie Estate (seat of the Coryton family) receiving funding from Natural England and the Country Houses Foundation. As part of the project the Jessop Consultancy was commissioned to investigate the mausoleum, alongside Building Surveyor Richard Glover. Few records for the building of the mausoleum seem to have survived, although the (not always reliable) Cornish historian Sabine Baring-Gould wrote in his Cornish Characters & Strange Events that accounts for the construction survived, dated after Sir James had died and thus proving that the building was erected after his death. The site investigation however led the team to conclude that the mausoleum was a remodelling of an earlier tower or summerhouse.

Within the vault human remains were discovered along with pieces of wood with metal studs that spelled out Tillie’s initials and date of death. Enough remained of the decaying coffin for the specialists to confirm that he was indeed ‘placed in a wooden box […] but with a raised back section to imitate a chair’. Sir James’s remains were not disturbed, and the vault was resealed, but his statue was sent away for specialist restoration and then returned to the mausoleum, from where he continues to survey his domain.

Thanks to the team at Pentillie for welcoming the Folly Flâneuse and for the loan of the canine companions who guided us up the Lime Walk to the grade II* listed mausoleum.

Pentillie is now an events venue and there are holiday properties in the grounds. There are seasonal garden open days – check the website for 2023 dates in due course https://www.pentillie.co.uk

For more on Tillie see Stephen Tyrell Sir James Tillie: his Life, Houses and Eccentric Burial, Pasticcio (2016).

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With St Valentine’s Day approaching, the Folly Flâneuse wondered which were the most romantic garden buildings. The most famous expression of love in an architectural form is surely the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his favourite wife. But closer to home are three equally enchanting buildings built as monuments to lost loves – two real, and one imaginary, and each likened to the marble mausoleum in India. 

Near Abergavenny in Wales is the Clytha estate. In 1787 William Jones retired there following the death of his wife, Elizabeth, who was buried in nearby Llanarth churchyard. A long inscription on her monument in the church was composed by her ‘most afflicted and grateful husband, as a feeble effort to do justice to the memory of the best of wives’.

A few years later Jones began work on another ‘memorial to my wife’, but this time on a monumental scale. Work began on the ‘Castle’ in 1790, with Jones project-managing the construction himself, and a plaque records that:

This Building was erected in the Year 1790 by
WILLIAM JONES of Clytha House Esq
Husband of ELIZABETH […]
It was undertaken for the purpose of relieving a mind
sincerely afflicted by the loss of a most excellent Wife
whose Remains were deposited
in Llanarth Church Yard A:D: 1787
and to the Memory of whose Virtues
this Tablet is dedicated.

Only a few years later Sarah Anne Wilmot, who was touring Wales in 1802, was shown around by the ‘pensive owner’. She wrote in her journal that the Castle was a ‘united mausoleum and gazebo to his late wife’. Having been taken on a complete tour of the grounds, her party was treated to fine fruit from the hothouse, but nothing could lift the ‘air of melancholy’ which Sarah Anne felt pervaded the house and garden.

The Monmouthshire historian William Coxe also visited soon after completion, and he too admired the ‘ornament’, and admitted that he could not ‘retire from the building without sympathising with the regret, and applauding the gratitude, affection, and taste of the owner’.

Writing about the grade I listed Clytha Castle in Follies: A Guide to Rogue Architecture (co-written with Wim Meulenkamp and published in 1986), Gwyn Headley memorably called Clytha the ‘Taj Mahal of Wales’, which set the Folly Flâneuse wondering if other British buildings had been given a similar epithet. Two notable examples came to mind…

James Williamson, 1st Baron Ashton (1842-1930), fabulously rich from the production of oilcloth and linoleum, built the Ashton Memorial in the early years of the 20th century. His architect was Sir John Belcher (1841-1913), who was president of the Royal Institute of British Architects at the time of the commission. Belcher was a prolific architect of domestic and municipal buildings in a flamboyant Edwardian Baroque style. His works included Colchester Town Hall and London’s elegant Mappin and Webb building, which was controversially demolished in the 1990s to enable the development of No.1 Poultry, but a hilltop palace for a client with very deep pockets is unsurprisingly unique in his oeuvre. As Pevsner wrote in the 1969 edition of his volume on Lancashire, Belcher was ‘put into the position of designing the most sumptuous building in all his career for no utilitarian purpose whatsoever.’

The building is said to commemorate Ashton’s 2nd wife, Jessy, who died in 1904. A plaque actually dedicates the building to all of his family, but the people of Lancaster have always maintained that the loss of his wife was the driving force behind construction on this mammoth scale, and it was quickly dubbed ‘The Taj Mahal of the North’ (although less romantic Lancastrians prefer to call it ‘The Structure’).

Opened in 1909, the monument stands in Williamson Park, the public space created by Lord Ashton, and his father before him, for the people of Lancaster. At around 50 metres high the memorial can be seen from miles around, and whilst Ashton himself was said to be shy and shun the limelight, the same can not be said of the Ashton Memorial.

Meanwhile overlooking the Stour estuary in Essex, there’s a much more recent cenotaph, but this time to a fictional lost love. In 2010 Living Architecture’s Creative Director Alan de Botton met artist Grayson Perry and the idea for A House for Essex was born. Perry worked with architect Charles Holland (then of FAT Architecture) to bring the project to fruition, and it was completed in 2014.

Essex-born Perry created Julie Cope, an ‘Essex every-woman’, whose story is told through a series of artworks in (and on) the House. In brief: Julie finds herself pregnant and marries when still young, she divorces, and when the children have grown she gets the qualifications she missed out on as a teenager. She meets new love Rob, and settles into a comfortable middle-class life. Her life ends abruptly in a tragic accident, and Rob builds the house at Wrabness as her memorial, or as Perry puts it ‘a Taj Mahal upon the Stour’.

You too can stay in the monuments to Elizabeth Jones and Julie Cope, as both properties are holiday homes. Clytha Castle was restored by the heritage charity The Landmark Trust, and The House for Essex is a property of Living Architecture, which exists to create thought-provoking houses which inspire discussion about modern architecture. The Ashton Memorial is open to the public, and to continue the theme of romance, is a popular wedding venue.

There’s more on Clytha Castle here https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/clytha-castle-6088/#History

And for A House for Essex see https://www.living-architecture.co.uk/the-houses/a-house-for-essex/overview/

The Ashton Memorial is freely accessible https://www.lancaster.gov.uk/sites/williamson-park/ashton-memorial

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High in Hampshire stands this imposing monument. It marks the resting place of a heroic horse, which managed not only to survive a leap into a deep pit, rider intact, but went on to win a great race the following year. That rider was Paulet St John (1704-1780) of Farley Chamberlayne. Alongside his sporting exploits, he found time to be a Member of Parliament and Mayor of Winchester, and was rewarded in 1772 when he became Sir Paulet St John, baronet.

But to go back forty years to 1733: when out ‘a foxhunting’ St John misjudged the terrain and found himself leaping into a chalk pit which was 25 feet deep. Somehow, neither man nor mount was injured, and the horse went on to win the Hunters’ Plate at Winchester the following year. The tale, as told on the monument, is that St John celebrated his lucky escape by entering the horse in the race under the name of ‘Beware Chalk Pit’, although a diligent writer in the Sporting Magazine of 1840 searched back in the records and concluded that the horse was actually better known as a chestnut called (unimaginatively) Foxhunter.

Exact dates for the death of the horse, and the erection of what became known locally as ‘the ‘Horse Monument’, seem to be lost. The mound on which it stands is thought to be Bronze Age, but with modern interventions, and it was once the site of a beacon. Most sources suggest the monument was built in 1795, but as this was 15 years after St John died it must be earlier, and almost certainly before 1772, as the inscription does not record St John’s baronetcy. On Taylor’s 1759 map of Hampshire the site is marked as ‘Beacon Hill’, but no building is indicated (although frustratingly this doesn’t mean it wasn’t there). However by 1791 when Milne’s map of the county was made, ‘Beacon Hill’ is shown complete with a building on the summit. By the time the 1st series Ordnance Survey map was published in the 1810s the building had become known as the ‘Farley Monument’.

In 1863 the monument was described as ‘somewhat dilapidated’ and it was covered with graffiti as a result of ‘vulgar Vandalism’ (presumably it had stood strong against the weather, because of course in Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen…). It was restored by the Rt Hon Sir William Heathcote, Bt, of Hursley in 1870, and it seems that it was actually more of a rebuild than a repair. In 1846 it was described as a ‘miniature pyramid’ and an engraving published in 1861 (above) shows a cube with a pyramid roof, much simpler and squatter in form than the current structure. A most unexpected source, of which more later, described it in 1848 as ’20 feet high’, whereas the present pyramid reaches over 32 feet (10m).

Post-restoration, the cube base had disappeared and an elegant elongated pyramid had appeared in its place. There are porches on each face: one contains an entrance and the other three are blank. Inside a room was constructed so ‘way-farers and picnic parties may rest and be thankful’. Heathcote replaced the original inscription with two plaques (one inside, one on the exterior), adding for posterity his own role in the building:

UNDERNEATH LIES BURIED
A HORSE
THE PROPERTY OF PAULET ST JOHN ESQ
THAT IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 1733 LEAPED
INTO A CHALK PIT TWENTYFIVE
FEET DEEP A FOXHUNTING
WITH HIS MASTER ON HIS BACK.
AND IN OCTOBER 1734 HE WON THE
HUNTERS PLATE ON WORTHY DOWNS
AND WAS RODE BY HIS OWNER
AND ENTERED IN THE NAME OF
“BEWARE CHALK PIT”
—–
THE ABOVE BEING THE WORDS OF
THE ORIGINAL INSCRIPTION
WERE RESTORED BY THE RT HON.
SIR WILLIAM HEATHCOTE BARONET
SEP.  A. D. 1870

The monument was nicely summarised by John Rayner in the 1937 Shell Guide to Hampshire as a ‘strange manifestation of the English spirit, combining hippo mania and the almost invariably successful grandeur of follies’.

The monument needs regular maintenance. It was restored in 1950, and again at the beginning of the current century, when the question of whether it was actually an equine mausoleum (which it had been called since at least 1798), was raised. A basic investigation found no trace of the horse, but it did confirm that the building had been constructed in ‘two phases’. This restoration involved stripping off the old render and removing and replacing the decayed outer skin of brickwork. Once rebuilt the pyramid was re-rendered with lime mortar and painted. In 2014 further renovation and repainting was required to keep the monument looking its best. Since the early 1970s the surrounding land has been a country park with the grade II listed monument dominating the landscape.

But to return to the unlikely source of the measurement of the tower: in 1848 a Geometry and Mechanics examination paper for the Winchester Diocesan Training School, asked the following question: ‘The “Horse Monument” on Farley Mount is a pyramid of brick-work 20 feet high, built upon a mound 30 feet high; supposing the materials to weigh 8 tons, how many units of work were expended in raising them from the foot of the mound to their present position?’

If that’s too taxing, have a listen to a brief 1937 clip about the folly on Pathé News. Having sneaked Professor Henry Higgins into the text earlier, he would surely have approved of the clipped pronunciation of “Hempshire” https://www.britishpathe.com/video/horse-monument/query/Farley

The fabulous colour photos used here are all courtesy of John Malaiperuman, the conservation architect who led the 2014 restoration. You can see more of his work here http://johnmal.com/farley-mount/

For Farley Mount Country Park  https://www.visit-hampshire.co.uk/things-to-do/farley-mount-country-park-p1414861

The fact that a building in the Albano hills above Rome has been known since the 18th century as the ‘so called’ mausoleum of the Horatii and Curiatii speaks volumes: it was in fact constructed on the Appian Way centuries after the legendary rival Horatii and Curiatii triplets are said to have battled for their pride and people. But the legend and the sham sepulchre must have made an impression: back home in England it inspired at least three monuments in landscape gardens.

To quickly summarise the story told by the Roman historian Livy: the Horatii (from Rome) and Curiatti (from Alba Longa) families each had triplets. With their respective cities at war it was decided that rather than lose whole armies, the two sets of boys would instead settle the two communities differences with a fight to the death. Rome were the victors, with only one brother surviving the battle. It’s not clear when this monument became associated with the triplets, but the legend was certainly told to the many Grand Tourists who passed along the Appian Way in the 18th century. The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos saw it in the early 19th century and noted that there ‘seems great reason to doubt it being rightly called’, but felt that nonetheless it had an ‘imposing air’.

These visitors brought home sketches, watercolours (professional and amateur) and engravings which circulated amongst their friends and family on their return.

Three people in particular took notice: Sir William Morice at Werrington in Cornwall, Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt at Stoke Park near Bristol, and William Aislabie at Studley in Yorkshire. Each of these men built structures on their estates that took inspiration from the monument, and contemporary visitors recognised the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatti as the source of the design.

The earliest ‘copy’ of the monument was that at Werrington Park, near Launceston in Cornwall. It was probably built after Sir William Morice of Werrington returned from his Grand Tour, which had included a stay in Rome, in 1730. It is shown in this undated portrait of Morice, but as he died in 1750 it was clearly extant at that date. The itinerant Bishop Pococke confirmed that it was based on the monument in Rome: he described it as a ‘model of what is called the Tomb of the Horatii’, although he gives no further information. The forward-thinking Victorians were less-impressed with such ‘pseudo-antiquities of the type of which the 18th century was fond’, but after this dismissal Sir Alfred Robbins’s history of the Launceston area does at least confirm that by 1888 the building was known as the ‘Sugar Loaves’ on account of the three conical pinnacles. When Barbara Jones saw it in the middle of the 20th century it was still in pretty good condition, but what was once both eye-catcher and viewpoint is now lost in undergrowth, and little survives today.

Dating the version of the tomb at Studley Royal in North Yorkshire, is more problematic, and The Folly Flâneuse is grateful to National Trust archaeologist Mark Newman for his help in assessing the available information. John Aislabie (1670-1742), and his son William (c1700-1781) both ornamented the landscape at Studley, but there are no accounts relating to the monument to confirm which man was the builder. A visitor in the late 1750s is the first to mention the monument, and notes that it was based on a plate in Montfaucon’s L’antiquité expliquée, which had been published in 1719 (with an English translation appearing in 1722). That has been taken to suggest that the building was a recent addition and therefore William was the builder. But Mark Newman believes that stylistically the Roman Monument, as it was called, belongs to the earlier period when John was laying out the landscape. Research continues…

It is however certain that the inspiration was ‘the remains of the Monument erected to the memory of the Horatii’, although the Aislabie version was known simply as the ‘Roman Monument’. Being a pragmatic Yorkshireman, Aislabie (senior or junior) built the base as a summerhouse for refreshments and for admiring the view to his Octagon Temple across the valley. The 5 rooftop pinnacles survived until at least the middle of the 19th century, but there is no trace of them on site today, and without them the little building has lost its meaning and impact.

In the first years of the 1760s Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, who had been in Rome in the 1730s, erected a version of the monument at Stoke Park, near Bristol. The design was drawn up by his polymath friend Thomas Wright. This too was recognised by Bishop Pococke: he visited in 1764 and saw a ‘model of the Monument of the Horati, at Albano’. Pococke’s description of an arched building with four pediments and a frieze topped with four obelisks sounds considerably more elaborate than the original, probably because it also functioned as an eye-catcher from the mansion.

The building was already a ruin a century ago, before collapsing completely, and until recently was largely forgotten. Bristol City Council, current owner of the park, hopes to fully restore the building when funds allow, and some work has been completed. But for now one needs to use one’s imagination.

P.S. The Folly Flâneuse has been indulging in a little armchair travel this week. In her mind she has been transported to Brussels, where an exhibition on Belgian Follies has just opened. Featuring architectural drawings, plans of landscape parks, watercolours, engravings, and photographs, the show encourages the visitor to escape for a moment from the ‘turpitudes of the world’ and immerse oneself in follies. The Folly Flâneuse was happy to oblige, albeit virtually, and thanks to curator Michel Mathy can give a sneak preview here.

Of the many works in the exhibition, this view of the picturesque Vignou Tower in the grounds of the château d’Attre, in the Belgian province of Hainaut, really appealed. It was beautifully painted by Marie-Thérèse du Toict, whose family seat the château was in the early 19th century. Two further views of the estate by Marie-Thérèse are also in the show, as are this 18th century design for a garden pavilion and photograph of a charming Chinoiserie kiosk:

If you are lucky enough to be able to visit, please report back. If not, you can read more about the exhibition, and watch a folly-filled film (in French, with Flemish subtitles, but visually lovely even if you don’t know the languages) here https://civa.brussels/fr/expos-events/belgian-follies

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Gosford House, a seat of the Earl of Wemyss and March, is a stunning mansion which looks across the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh. Designed by the eminent architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) shortly before his death, building work began in the 1790s. The house sits in the prettiest of grounds, with watercourses, ponds, summerhouses and a sublime mausoleum. In the following century one of the summerhouses was given a new use by the Aberlady Curling Club, which held matches there whenever the pond was suitably frozen.

The construction of the new house at Gosford (also known as Wemyss House at this date) for Francis Charteris, 6th earl of Wemyss (1723-1808), went on for almost two decades, and was beset with problems from the start. It was said to be built of local ‘sea stones which no art can every dry’, and in the 1820s and 1830s visitors believed it was ‘totally uninhabitable’, and that it would ‘shortly be pulled down’. The family continued to live in the old house, not far from the new site, and only a few rooms in the new mansion were used as a picture gallery. Happily the pessimistic predictions were wrong, and the house survives today, with rebuilt wings flanking Adam’s central block.

As the construction of the house dragged on, work continued to transform the demesne. Passing by in 1796 the Duke of Rutland couldn’t believe that Lord Wemyss would build a house in such an ‘objectionable’ situation in a ‘barren rabbit warren’, so clearly a landscape and garden had to be conjured out of nothing. The design of the pleasure grounds is attributed to James Ramsay (died 1820), a Scottish architect and landscaper, and the general design of ponds, walks and rides was decided by the time William Forrest surveyed Haddingtonshire for his map dated 1799. Sadly, this map, and Ainslie’s estate map of 1808, do not detail the smaller garden buildings (although the mighty mausoleum is shown) so their date remains uncertain, but by 1832 a visitor could describe the ‘labyrinth of groves and walks’ and the ‘grottoes of every kind of material’.

One of these ‘grottoes’ is the building at the head of the pond, which is marked as ‘summerhouse’ on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1854. Originally thatched, the little rustic pavilion and its flanking walls are built out of tufa, and traces of its shell-work decoration survive. This is the building which became the base of the Aberlady Curling Club after it was formed in 1860: curling stones and brushes were stored inside, and the room also gave players warmth and shelter.

Curling had been an important sport in Scotland for centuries, but was very much in vogue in the 19th century, its popularity summed up in a newspaper article of 1896: ‘In the society of Scotsmen it is universally admitted that there is no winter amusement which excites more lively interest than a well-contested match on the ice’. And although our writer mentions the Scotsmen, the game was also popular with female players.

The pond at Gosford was considered perfect for the sport, as its sheltered situation ensured the ice was preserved for a long period. In 1886 Lord Wemyss, as patron of the club, was thanked for making the ponds available, and allowing the game to be played with ‘so much personal comfort’. Such is the local passion that when Lord Elcho, heir to the estate, celebrated his 21st birthday in 1933, the club presented him with commemorative curling stones. The present Earl of Wemyss and March is patron of the club today, and although matches have for many years been played in indoor rinks, there was a Grand Outdoor Event at Gosford when conditions allowed in 2010. If you’d like to see the club in action have a look at their Flickr album here https://www.flickr.com/photos/aberladycurling/albums/72157625562513200

In recent years a major project has seen the restoration of the pleasure grounds. The park is open daily and you can find out more here http://www.gosfordhouse.co.uk/house-tours-grounds/

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