Hockley Abbey was built in around 1779 by Richard Ford, an ‘ingenious mechanic’, out of the waste or dross from a nearby furnace. Built in the form of a semi-ruinous monastic edifice, Ford had the date of 1473 picked out in pebbles on the front ‘as a false suggestion of antiquity’, although this was soon covered over by the ivy which he encouraged to creep all over his new home. The house was demolished in the second half of the nineteenth century, but is remembered in paintings, prose and poetry.

Mentioned in 1788 as the ‘Cynder House at Hockley’, the earliest comprehensive reference is in rhyme. In 1800 James Bisset, the custodian of Birmingham’s Museum, published a curious hybrid, which was part poem and part who’s who of Birmingham, under the snappy title of A poetic survey round Birmingham; with a brief description of the different curiosities and manufactories of the place. Intended as a guide to strangers. […] Accompanied by a magnificent directory; with the names, professions, &c. superbly engraved in emblematic plates. Bisset invited the reader to join him on a tour of the town, and there was a pause to admire Hockley Abbey and its curious construction:

Close by the LAKE’S pellucid stream, behold
A GOTHIC PILE, which seems some cent’ries old,
VULCANIC FANCY there display’d her taste,
And rear’d the fabric on the barren waste;
The FORGE materials for the work provides,
Rude cinders clothe the front – compose the sides.

The ‘abbey’ was described in detail in by Charles Pye in his Description of Modern Birmingham. According to Pye, who toured Birmingham in 1818, Ford noticed that the workers at his manufactory spent several shillings each week in the pub. Not a drinker, Ford decided to put aside two shillings each day until he had enough money to build the house. With the funds in place, his workforce were sent to collect the ‘large masses of scoriæ’ from the Aston furnace and cart it to the building site. By the time Pye saw the abbey it was covered with ivy and he wrote that the uninformed visitor would be ‘at a loss to know what substance the walls were built with’.

Ford told Pye that Hockley Abbey was built ‘without advancing any other money than the fourteen shillings a week’. This all seems a little fanciful, and it is likely that Ford had to dip into his savings to fund the improvements on his new estate.  As well as the house, with its ‘feign’d time-shook walls’, he also laid out ‘beautiful grounds and walks, interspersed with fanciful curiosities’. These included a grot decorated with spar and shells, the ‘beauteous spoils of Neptune’s realms’.

The abbey became an object of interest for tourists visiting the area (Hockley Abbey was contiguous with Mathew Boulton’s much-admired Soho estate, where a grand manufactory stood alongside his mansion with pleasure grounds). The artificial ruins built out of ‘cinders and vitrifications’ were considered by one visitor in 1799 to be in such good taste that it would be ‘illiberal to pass by without notice’.

This 1868 photograph shows Hockley Abbey shortly before it was pulled down and the site redeveloped. Hockley Abbey is best remembered today as the trademark of John Rabone & Sons of Hockley Abbey Works, Birmingham. The measuring tools that they manufactured, and in particular spirit levels, brass rulers and tape measures, are now collectors’ items.

For more follies built out of furnace waste see this post about Morris Castle, near Swansea

The Flâneuse sends best wishes to all readers for the year ahead. Thank you for your continued support. As ever, comments are very welcome via the box at the foot of the page.

In 1941 Batsford published a new title by Edmund Vale called Curiosities of Town and Countryside. With a striking cover by Brian Cook, featuring the triumphal arch at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, the jacket blurb promised the reader ‘freaks, eccentricities and follies.’

The Flâneuse recently ordered a copy online and whilst waiting for the postman to arrive began to do some background research. She was baffled to find the reviewer in the Hampstead News writing that amongst the buildings featured in the volume were ‘monstrosities like Lansdown Tower, Bath, and the Sugarloaf Folly, Sussex’. William Beckford and ‘Mad’ Jack Fuller may have built structures that weren’t to everyone’s taste, but ‘monstrosities’ seemed a little harsh.

And then the book was delivered, and all became clear. As he states in the book’s preface, Mr Vale (1888-1969) excludes follies from his study of curiosities for the simple reason that he has ‘always cherished a profound and contemptuous dislike for these monstrosities’. His publisher, Harry Batsford, is adamant that follies should be included in the book, but Vale is resolute that he won’t write about them, and continues that follies are ‘interlopers’ as they are ‘decidely eccentric and not accidentally so’.

‘However I must not rant’ Vale writes (rather too late in the Flâneuse’s opinion) and he introduces Mr Charles Bradley Ford who has come to the rescue by writing a final chapter on follies, and thus allowing Vale to maintain his moral high ground. However this is all a little tongue-in-cheek, for ‘Charles Bradley Ford’ was the pen-name of Harry Batsford and his colleague Christopher Fry: when the company was hit by the financial crisis of the early 1930s, it was cheaper to write the books themselves using a pseudonym.

The publishers also had the last word on illustrations, so many ‘monstrosities’ can be found pictured in the book, including those featured here, although to add to the confusion some of the photographs are of structures that are not even mentioned in the text. And of course the dust jacket features a famous landscape ornament.

‘Ford’ begins his chapter with the obligatory note on the difficulty of defining a folly. He continues that the subject of follies is an ‘amusing and engaging byway’, but with a nod to Vale he continues that to some they are ‘detestable and deplorable excrescences’. Ford believes that follies ‘add to the gaiety of the countryside’, although he draws the line at obelisks which are ‘dull and commonplace in spite of the efforts of lightening to reduce their number’.

The Illustrated London News called the book ‘delectable’ and it is certainly a handsome volume. The argument for and against follies it contains is decidedly odd, but most entertaining: an excellent addition to any folly fan’s library.

The Flâneuse first spotted the striking dust jacket in a new Batsford publication – The Book Cover by Paul Dimond. The book explores 150 years of the vibrant covers designed for Batsford publications.

All of the follies pictured here are extant, and all can be visited or seen from a public road.

Thank you for reading. There will be more monstrosities next week. Scroll down to the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts.

Inspired by a folly which he had seen in Ireland, Joe Donnelly decided to build an eye-catcher on a patch of waste ground near his home. It was constructed between 2011 and 2015, and once the building work was complete Joe, with his grandson Aidan, created a garden around the folly. During lockdown Joe and Aidan (the latter by now working in horticulture) used their time to redesign the planting around the sham ruin.

The folly echoes the genuine ruins of nearby Kilwinning Abbey, below. The abbey was established in the late 1100s as home to a community of monks from Kelso Abbey, but was abandoned after the Protestant Reformation in Scotland in 1560. History tells that the abbey was pulled down by a ‘Protestant mob’, but the dramatic wall and gable of the south transept were left standing.

The folly at Kilwinning continues a Scottish tradition of such simple, but extremely effective, eye-catchers in the landscape. At Blair Atholl in Perthshire stands The Whim, built in the middle of the eighteenth century as an object to be viewed from Blair Castle in the valley below.

And on the Mellerstain estate in the Borders is the wonderfully named Hundy Mundy, thought to have been erected in the 1720s as an eye-catcher from the mansion. The tale is told that the folly takes its name from a Pictish Princess called Hunnimundias who lived nearby. The Flâneuse often experiences frissons of excitement when visiting follies, but she was surprised to feel such a powerful surge when visiting the Hundy Mundy: it turns out that she was leaning against an untagged electric fence when trying to get a good photograph.

High on a hillside in Easter Ross are the equally exotically named Gates of Negapatam, also known as the Fyrish Monument. The folly was erected in 1782 by Sir Hector Munro, the 8th Earl of Novar (1726-1805) who had served in Madras and, as the story goes, modelled his hilltop monument on that city’s Gates of Negapatam.

The Kilwinning folly might stand in a slightly less palatial plot, but it is every bit as impressive. The planting around the folly is constantly evolving, with old roses, herbaceous plants, grasses and bulbs adding interest.

The folly can be seen from the road, but as it is a private garden the Flâneuse won’t reveal the exact location: intrepid folly spotters will find it. For more on Kilwinning Abbey click here.

The Whim at Blair and the Fyrish monument can be reached via public footpaths. The land around the Hundy Mundy is now a tranquil woodland burial ground but respectful visitors are welcome.

Thanks to the Scottish Correspondent for sharing news that the Fyrish Monument’s lonely hilltop setting is threatened by plans for an onshore wind farm. There’s more here.

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

In 1138 Newminster Abbey was established close to the River Wansbeck on the edge of Morpeth, Northumberland. The first inhabitants were Cistercian monks from Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, who remained until the abbey’s dissolution in 1537. By the 19th century little could be seen apart from scattered masonry and bumps in the ground. Early in the 20th century parts were rebuilt as a grand garden ornament and tourist attraction, with perhaps not quite the academic rigour one might expect today.

In 1912 a 25 acre parcel of land, which included Newminster Abbey and a house called Spring Hill, was bought by George Renwick. Renwick (1850-1931) was a wealthy ship-owner who had entered politics and sat for various Newcastle seats up until 1922. He was created a baronet in 1921.

Renwick extended Spring Hill, which looked down to the site of the ancient Newminster Abbey (it was later renamed Newminster Abbey House), and began to excavate the abbey ruins, where for at least a century little had been visible above ground.

The one visible structure was this arch, noted in the early 19th century as the ‘last remaining arch of Newminster Abbey’.

Renwick’s excavations revealed artefacts, burial sites and large quantities of masonry hidden under the earth and rubble. A hoard of silver coins dating from the 11th and 12th centuries was discovered and donated to the British Museum in 1926. Renwick dug up the genuine fragments and used them, like a giant mediaeval Lego set, to create ‘beautiful arcading’.

Sir George invited the members of Morpeth Town Council to his home to see the work, and explained that he hoped that the ‘long hidden portions of the once famous Abbey’ might attract visitors to the town.

Residents were granted free access on condition that they used the ‘proper footpath’, and supported him in protecting the abbey ruins from damage and destruction. The picturesque reassembled ruins became the subject of many a picture postcard.

At that date no-one seems to have been particularly concerned that the ancient remains were being reconstructed as a garden ornament, although one can read between the lines of the carefully worded report that ‘extensive amateur excavation and rebuilding has taken place’.

Sadly, there is no public access to the overgrown grade II listed ruins for the townsperson or tourist of today. The site is privately-owned and hidden from view by trees and shrubs.

If you would like to share any thoughts please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page. To receive a folly story in your inbox each Saturday, please click the subscribe tab. Thank you for reading.

In the little village of Barsby stands a most unexpected delight – a house with a rather fancy pinnacled gothic tower attached. It started life in the late 19th century as a village meeting place – a philanthropic endeavour by the local vicar.

The vicar of nearby Ashby Folville, Reverend John Godson (1834-1912), also had the care of Barsby. He held the living from 1869, and the 1871 census records him living at the vicarage in the village. With him was his wife Martha Ann (née Bolton) but sadly she died soon after giving birth to a daughter, Mary, in 1876. Mary grew up with her father in the Ashby Folville vicarage where they had the services of a groom, a housekeeper and a cook.

The village of Barsby had no church, and villagers had to travel to Ashby Folville for services. The story goes that Godson intended the tower as a mortuary chapel, and the land around it was to be a burial ground: the graveyard at the ancient St Mary’s in Ashby Folville was running out of space. Apparently Godson’s superiors in the diocese refused permission and the plan was abandoned, although no documents can be found to corroborate these events.

The name of the architect is not recorded, although we do known that Godson had an interest in the subject as a member of the Leicestershire Architectural and Archaeological Society, and he was photographed with the architects F.W. Ordish (1821-1885) and J.C. Traylen (1845-1907). They were responsible for a major restoration of Ashby Folville church in 1874, but Ordish at least can be ruled out as the designer of the Barsby tower as he died before it was built.

What is known is that Godson had long ‘greatly desired’ that there should be a space in Barsby itself where religious meetings, Sunday schools and evening classes could be offered to the villagers. In 1887 he commissioned local joiners and masons to erect such an edifice, but not content with a simple room he created a building of ‘such size and character as to form a pleasing and very prominent feature in the village’. A local newspaper concluded that the appearance of Barsby was ‘wonderfully improved by it’, and as this old postcard shows, albeit faintly, the tower was an prominent eye-catcher seen down the village’s Main Street.

The first event was held in the ‘Church Mission Room’ in January 1888, when villagers and visitors had a tea party followed by a sermon given by a missioner from Leeds. The Barsby Wesleyans had completed work on a room adjoining their chapel in the village only a few weeks earlier: cynics might conclude that the vicar’s reluctance to lose his flock to the Wesleyans may have influenced his benevolence in building the meeting room.

Alongside the programme of visiting preachers, Godson allowed local groups and families to use the hall. Birthdays were celebrated there, the Ashby Folville Church Choir held a ‘social’ in 1907, and later that same year a Miss Dalton gave a talk on her time as a ‘lady missionary’ in the Yukon, ‘wherein the famous gold-mines of Klondyke are situated’. After the First World War a group of village men who had served together met regularly at Godson’s Folly to share their memories.

Godson resigned the vicariate of Ashby Folville in 1910 after 40 years in the parish, and died on 27 May 1912. It’s not clear who took ownership of the Mission Room after his death, but sometime around the mid 1930s it was adapted as a private house, with an upper storey being added to the meeting room. In 1954 ‘Tower House’ was home to Mr and Mrs Adams: Arthur Adams remembered the tower being built, and his wife recalled attending Sunday School in the adjoining room.

Nothing seems to survive to explain why Godson wanted an elaborate tower attached to his meeting room. Did he wish it to appear that Barsby had a church? Was it an observatory, or did it have some other practical purpose? All we know is that Mr and Mrs Adams had a son who used the upper room to build wireless sets – presumably there was a good signal up there.

Godson’s Folly remains a private home, but is now tucked away in trees with only the pinnacled roof visible amidst the street furniture of modern life. The keen-eyed might spot that the street-sign reads ‘Church Lane’: it is not clear if the road took its name from Godson’s sham church tower and Mission Hall, or from a long-lost place of worship. The tower can be seen from this road.

Thank you for reading. As ever, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or information – scroll down to find the comments box (your contact details remain private, only your name will appear).

Near the hamlet of Blackborough in Devon’s Blackdown Hills, remnants of the local Whetstone mining industry can be found in the woodland. A battered pile of stones could be assumed to be another relic, but the more curious visitor will be intrigued to discover that it is marked on old maps as ‘Garnsey’s Tower’.

The Garnsey family had lived in the Uffculme area for centuries, and had a seat in the hamlet of Bodmiscombe. Exactly which member of the family built the tower is difficult to discover, and the ‘why’ and ‘when’ remain an only partially solved mystery. A 1938 newspaper report named the builder as John Garnsey, but there were at least three generations of John Garnseys in Uffculme throughout the 18th and well into the 19th century.

What is known for certain is that it was already in decay in 1854, when the polymath Peter Orlando Hutchinson (1810-1897) described it in his diary. On a walk from Uffculme he first visited the whetstone mines: here men dug deep into the hillside to extract the stone called Devonshire Batt, which was then shaped and smoothed and sold as whetstones for sharpening knives. Hutchinson then went on to ‘Garnsey’s Tower’, but his diary account makes it clear that he didn’t know the history of the building.

Hutchinson meticulously measured the diameter of tower, which was twelve feet, and wrote that it was three storeys in height. He was unable to climb it as the floors were ‘ruined and fallen down’. The windows had been blocked to strengthen the structure, but Hutchinson described it as ‘so tottering that it threatens to fall’. Happily, Hutchinson sketched it on the spot, and his watercolour is annotated with some extra information: the tower had fireplaces, suggesting that the Garnseys used the tower as a belvedere and place for refreshments.

Although Hutchinson could not climb the ruinous tower, he did describe the view from a nearby hill, and from that we can conclude that the panorama from the top of the tower would have included views of Dartmoor and the Quantocks, and stretched as far as the sea.

As the 20th century progressed the tower continued to crumble and today a stubby and characterless few courses of stone are all that survive.

Soon after Hutchinson sketched Garnsey’s Tower, he erected an ornament of his own in his Sidmouth garden in Devon. Appalled that sections of the parish church were to be pulled down, he purchased the stone and in 1859 re-erected it in his grounds of his house in Coburg Terrace. The ‘old chancel of Sidmouth church in miniature’ was originally home to Hutchinson’s museum and library, but he later incorporated it into a house, which still stands today. His ‘summerhouse in the tree’, recorded in his diaries, is sadly long gone.

Peter Orlando Hutchinson’s diaries and sketchbooks, which are in Devon Record Office (South West Heritage Trust), have been digitised (an admirable project) and are are hosted on the East Devon AONB website https://www.eastdevonaonb.org.uk/ourwork/projects/peter-orlando-hutchinson

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

Tucked in woodland off Sydenham Hill in south London sits a sham ruin. Although it is now hard to imagine, it was once a feature of the ‘beautiful grounds’ of Fairwood, an elegant newly-built villa. This area of London was very much in vogue in the middle of the 19th century, after the arrival of the relocated Crystal Palace put it on the map, and Sydenham Hill became home to a number of distinguished family homes.

Fairwood was built in the early 1860s for David Henry Stone (1812-1890), a businessman, attorney and solicitor who played a significant part in civic life as a magistrate, an alderman, and eventually as Lord Mayor of London. The substantial villa was built to a design by the architectural practise of Banks and Barry: Charles Barry (1823-1900), son of the great architect Sir Charles Barry, worked extensively in the Dulwich and Sydenham area of London, and himself lived a few doors away on Sydenham Hill. The house, stabling and conservatory at Fairwood cost just over £5775 pounds to build, the architects attributing the high cost to the quality materials used and also the ‘large excess of London prices over those prevailing in the country’.

Stone commissioned the garden designers and artificial rock specialists James Pulham & Son to create a ‘Rocky Stream’ in his grounds, as well as what were simply described as ‘Ruins’. A pamphlet written by James Pulham sometime around 1877 records this work being executed in 1863 and 1866, but sadly little other information has survived. Pulham designs often featured local stone, but when unavailable they used brick or rubble coated in their proprietary cement, which could be modelled to perfectly mimic natural rocks. The brick core of part of the Sydenham folly can clearly be seen in the photo’ above.

James Pulham himself described the role such ruins played in a garden or landscape: ‘Emotions of sublimity or beauty are awakened in the mind by castles or other ruins; also by other picturesque objects, as a portion of which may be consistently added to the scene – as an ancient tower on a precipice, forming a portion of the ruins of an old castle – or may be the ruins of an abbey, church, or ancient bridge; all such objects, which, by themselves, strike the imagination as picturesque’.

Stone was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1874 and, with the Mansion House at his disposal, sold Fairwood that same year. The particulars described it as a ‘a very superior family residence’, which had been decorated in the very best taste, ‘regardless of cost’, with all the latest fashions such as decorative Minton tiles. The house was set in over one and a half acres of ‘pleasure grounds’ with a terrace and ‘beautiful woodland walks’. The house changed hands again in 1908, when it was illustrated in the press:

Stone died in 1890 at St Thomas’s Hospital, where he was Treasurer and had an official residence. The houses on Sydenham Hill were mostly held on 99 year leases granted by the landowners, Dulwich College: after the Second World War there was little interest in taking on the leases, and the houses were almost all demolished.

Today, Sydenham Hill Wood is managed by the London Wildlife Trust and is a very popular amenity. The foundations of the grand villas are lost under a blanket of ivy and shrubs, with only the occasional glimpse of a piece of masonry poking through the undergrowth. Only the folly stands as a reminder that part of this woodland was once suburban gardens in the very latest taste.

There’s more on the woodland here https://www.wildlondon.org.uk/nature-reserves/sydenham-hill-wood-and-coxs-walk

David Henry Stone’s cousin was the Portsmouth MP William Henry Stone, who came into possession of follies when he bought Leigh Park (now Staunton Country Park) in Hampshire https://thefollyflaneuse.com/the-shell-house-leigh-park-havant-hampshire/

Thank you for reading and please scroll down to the bottom of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or comments.

In a patch of scrubby woodland in a Bristol suburb stands this magnificent ecclesiastical eye-catcher. The centrepiece of the structure is the former west window of the Lord Mayor’s Chapel on College Green in Bristol, which was re-erected here when the chapel was restored in the 1820s.

There is some argument as to who actually erected the garden ornament. At Henbury Hill House lived Henry Brooke (1763-1829), whilst nearby Brentry House was home to John Cave (1765-1842). Both men were Bristol grandees – prosperous businessmen who served as councillors, aldermen, and in Cave’s case as Lord Mayor in 1829. The folly, in its woodland setting, is equidistant between these two villas. The Bristol antiquary George Weare Braikenridge wrote (in manuscript) that Brooke bought the window and ‘set it up as a sham ruin on Henbury Hill to serve as an object from his house’. But a generation later, in 1887, John Latimer claimed in his Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century that it was Cave who erected the folly.

What is certain is that Thomas Garrard, Chamberlain of Bristol (he controlled the city purse) was the ‘moving spirit’ in promoting the refurbishment of the ancient Lord Mayor’s Chapel, also known as St Mark’s. Work took place throughout the 1820s, with the sculptor and mason Thomas Clarke being paid £100 in 1822 for carving and erecting a replica of the original window in the chapel.

The folly must have been erected by 1830 when it is marked as ‘Summer House’ on the 1st series Ordnance Survey map. The window was set between two tall towers to give stability, and a further section of sham ruined wall was set at a right angle. It was noticed by a visitor to Bristol in 1833 who described the ‘modern ruin’ on an ‘elevated Knoll’ which had been erected ‘as a point of view, and to preserve an ancient and fine Gothick window’.

Subsequent editions of the map only mark the building’s L-shaped footprint, with no accompanying name, but locally it was known as The Lookout, presumably because one of the supporting towers contains a staircase to a viewing platform. From the top the view was said to encompass six counties.

A generation later historians were scathing about Garrard’s ‘so-called restoration’ of the chapel, and the new window was dismissed as inferior to the original. Writing in 1887 Latimer pointed out that the old window had now stood as a mock ruin for around 60 years and after ‘being buffetted by the storms […] its sound condition still demonstrates the recklessness of those who expelled it from its original site’.

For around a century the eye-catcher was a local landmark, visible from some distance with the tracery standing out on the horizon. But there was great demand for building land in the Bristol suburbs, and after the First World War the open fields behind the folly began to be developed. Frederick M. Burris (1881-1948), one of  ‘Bristol’s best-known citizens’ built a house called Longacres, and the screen was incorporated into the garden he designed and laid out there. Burris and his wife, Eileen, supported numerous charities, and the garden was frequently the venue for fundraising garden parties. It was around this date that a picture postcard of ‘The Ruins’ was issued. The section with the arched entrance to the right of the window has since been rebuilt as a plain stretch of wall.

When Nikolaus Pevsner first saw the eye-catcher in 1958, it still stood in the garden of Longacres (‘a large house’) and he declared it ‘more intensely picturesque and romantic than any of the sham castles of Bristol or Bath’: high praise indeed as this category includes such delights as nearby Blaise Castle and Ralph Allen’s sham castle on the Bath skyline. In 1989 the Longacres site was redeveloped by Berkeley Homes and the folly was offered for sale for one pound – with the tiny proviso that you also buy one of the £400,000 new homes.

The window section of the folly (listed Grade II*) can be viewed from the woods (entrance from Sheepwood Close) but the rest of the sham ruin is inaccessible in the private garden. It is an amazing experience to suddenly find the folly looming above one in the woods – thanks to Peter Godfrey for the big reveal.

Your thoughts are very welcome – please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. Thank you for reading. If you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox each weekend please click the ‘subscribe’ tab.

Early in 1860 the Mayor of Hull, Zachariah Pearson, gave 27 acres of land to the Hull Corporation, on condition that they made an immediate start on laying it out as a public park. Initially known as the People’s Park, it was soon renamed Pearson Park in honour of the Mayor’s munificence. It was formally opened in September 1860, and quickly became a popular destination with all the usual attractions of lake, aviary, refreshment rooms and drinking fountain. But a couple of years after opening a less common feature joined the growing list of attractions in the park: a folly in the form of a sham ruin with a rather fascinating provenance.

To step back in time, the Ruins, as the folly in the park became known, had already been a feature in another Hull attraction. Much of the masonry had first been erected as an eye-catcher in Hull’s Zoological Gardens, a short-lived enterprise that operated for two decades before the money ran out. The Zoo opened in 1840 as a ‘place of resort for healthful exercise’ where the mind was to be stimulated by ‘the picturesque and tasteful arrangement of the grounds and architecture’.

In the early years ‘further architectural embellishments’ were added each season to encourage return visits: there was a Swiss chalet for the goats, a Moorish temple to house the elephants, and a ‘Heathen Temple’ which displayed what were then described as ‘curiosities associated with Buddhist mythology’. Supervising the layout was one of the Vice-presidents of the Zoological Gardens, the architect Henry Francis Lockwood. Lockwood (1811-1878) was then practicing in Hull, but would become famous for his later partnership with William Mawson, which produced buildings such as Bradford Town Hall and the mill, village and church in the model village of Saltaire, also in the West Riding.

Whilst the ruin in the Zoological Gardens was a sham, it was not intended to fool anyone, and was marked on the plan of the gardens as ‘Ruins (Artificial)’. But most of the masonry used was genuinely ancient, and had an excellent provenance, for it was purchased at the auction of surplus ‘reliques’ after the great fire at York Minster in May 1840. Material from the Minster was salvaged after the fire and made into small mementoes such as snuff boxes and candlesticks, but there was also also money to be made from the substantial pieces of timber and masonry that could not be reused when the damaged section of the church was rebuilt.

In 1844 the York auctioneer Mr Vaile informed ‘Antiquarians, Connossieurs [sic], Architects, Builders &c’ that he had been directed by the Restoration Committee of York Minster to sell the ‘Ancient and Valuable Reliques’. Present at the auction was Thomas Dalton Hammond, a Hull chemist and druggist and one of the Honorary Secretaries of the Zoological Society, and when bidding began for the masonry he was quick off the mark and snapped up the first lot. This was an ‘Ancient perforated Stone Parapet from the top of the North-West Tower’ at a cost of one guinea, and Hammond then went on to buy a total of 27 lots. His haul included keystones, quatrefoils, carved flowers and carved lion heads, mouldings, marble flooring and his most expensive purchase, at £1.12.0, was ‘Two Canopies, with Buttresses, Crockets, Springer and Finials complete’ which had been part of the South Side of the Nave. These fragments, as well as decorative masonry from other churches, then began the second phase of their lives as a folly in the Zoological Gardens, but sadly no view is known to survive.

Meanwhile, plans had been progressing for another recreational facility for the people of Hull, and Pearson Park, on the land donated by Pearson, had opened in 1860 to a design by Mr J.C. Niven, the Curator of the town’s Botanical Gardens (Kingston upon Hull did not gain city status in 1897). As the park was being developed the Zoological Gardens were struggling to survive, and eventually failed.

The animals were dispersed, and in 1862 the ‘costly and ornamental buildings’ were offered at auction. The Folly Flâneuse would love to know what happened to the ‘large and handsome’ Elephant House, or the ‘exceedingly beautiful’ Menagerie as well as the many other buildings and artefacts. But we do know that the ‘Ancient Church Architecture’ was bought by Alderman Moss of Hull. With civic funds at his disposal he expended £45 on portions of the ruins: according to the sale catalogue these comprised a ‘fine screen’ from York Minster, as well as fragments from Holy Trinity Church in Hull, and a church at Owthorne (possibly St Nicholas near Withernsea which had stood derelict before being restored in 1858). The fragments were then used for the third time as rather fine folly in Pearson Park.

In 1864 the local historian Sheahan wrote that the Ruins would soon mellow and ‘form a pretty feature’. Publishers agreed and the scene was soon featured on countless picture postcards.

By 1929 the once pristine area around the folly had become overgrown, and a letter to the editor of the Hull Daily Mail suggested that a ‘suitable inscription’ be placed near the Ruins to explain the forgotten history of the stones. But the folly continued to fall out of fashion and favour, and it was cleared when the park was ‘modernised’ in the 1950s to save money on maintenance and staffing. Sadly there was no auction this time, and the Folly Flâneuse has not (yet) discovered what happened to the ancient stones. Pearson Park remains an amenity for the people of Hull.

There’s an excellent history of the Zoological Gardens on the Hull History Centre website here https://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/whats-on/activities/The-Zoo-on-the-Avenue-Booklet.pdf

Thanks to Chris Hand for mentioning the Ruins and setting in motion a most enjoyable piece of research, and to the teams at Hull History Centre and York Minster Archives.

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High above the town of Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale stand two strange stone pillars which look like the remnants of some ancient ecclesiastical edifice. Until 1893 there was a third, and they were known as the Three Stoops, or alternatively as Yorke’s Folly after their begetter, John Yorke. They are often dated to around 1800, but they are actually some decades earlier, being constructed at the height of the Georgian vogue for mock ruins and eye-catchers.

Yorke (1733-1813) first considered building an eye-catcher on Guyscliffe, to be seen from his house at Bewerley in the valley below, in 1768*, the year in which he succeeded his father. The sham ruin’s gothic form may have been suggested by Bewerley having once housed a grange serving the monks of Fountains Abbey, which stands only a few miles away. The folly was complete by 1779 when a lady touring Nidderdale admired the ‘beautiful wooded hill crown’d with cliffs’. But she was not impressed with the folly, and complained that Mr Yorke had expended £300 on ‘a most wretched imitation of a Ruin’. Perhaps she might have felt differently if she knew that this was not just a gentleman’s whim, but a philanthropic enterprise to help the poor of the district.

Writing in Follies & Grottoes in 1953, Barbara Jones noted that unemployed men from the neighbourhood were recruited to build the folly in return for 4d a day and a loaf of bread. Jones gives no source for this story, but an account written in the early years of the 19th century, during Yorke’s lifetime, corroborates her account. On seeing the folly in 1805, Charles Fothergill was delighted to learn of Yorke’s benevolence and described him as a ‘gentleman of ancient family and very good fortune, perhaps not less than £20,000 per annum; the greater part of this sum he regularly expends in ameliorating the condition of the indigent poor and sick’.

Yorke died in 1813, and by his request was quietly buried in Hudswell churchyard, close to his other family seat in Richmond, Yorkshire, where his gravestone has a simple inscription, free from encomiums. But others praised his ‘charity and benevolence’: the Leeds Mercury reported that he was ‘universally lamented’ and the Richmond historian Clarkson wrote that ‘the poor have lost in him their most bountiful benefactor’.

In November 1893 a storm hit Pateley Bridge, and the third (and most substantial) stoop was ‘blown down’. The Pateley Bridge and Nidderldale Herald reported that it was surprising that the folly had survived so long in its exposed position, and with a nice understanding of the picturesque noted that the stoops ‘so interestingly break the monotony of the edge of Nought Moor’. The collapse of the third stoop was remembered in the Yorkshire Post in 1929, and a Yorke descendant wrote to the paper with the pessimistic premonition that ‘doubtless the last two will, in time, share the same fate’.

Happily he was wrong, and although ambitious plans to rebuild the third stoop as a millennium project came to nothing, the Two Stoops remain a dramatic landmark, and the grade II listed folly is a popular resting spot for friendly ramblers enjoying a panorama of Nidderdale.

If you plan to visit Yorke’s Folly, allow time to explore the Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge and support the volunteers who keep it flourishing  https://www.nidderdalemuseum.com

* This very useful reference is from Margaret Hadley Watersons’s From Folly to Flower Garden: The Yorkes in Nidderdale (2015) which is on sale at the museum.

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