In a field close across the road from the principal entrance to Hodnet Hall in Shropshire are what appear to be the remains of a classical temple. Three Ionic columns are intact, two of which support a fragment of pediment, and a fourth pillar is in ruins. But whilst the columns are Georgian in date, this is not the ruin of an 18th century landscape ornament, for the eye-catcher was only erected in the 1960s.

In 1954 Apley Castle, near Wellington in Shropshire, was offered for sale. There were no takers, and as happened so very often in that decade the fabric and fittings were sold at auction and in 1955 work began to pull the house down. Brigadier Algernon George William Heber-Percy (1904-1961) rescued the late 18th century portico and intended to erect it as a feature on his Hodnet estate.

The Brigadier was responsible for laying out the admired gardens around the house from the 1920s, and had incorporated other salvaged architectural features into the design. His mantra was that ‘a garden never stays still – it is forever changing’, and he certainly transformed the estate with a string of lakes set within woodland and formal gardens.

The Brigadier died in 1961 without realising his plan to re-erect the portico, so his family decided to create the eye-catcher in his memory later that decade. A site was chosen in a field across the road from the house, with the folly aligned with the house and drive. Two huge cranes were brought in to lift the stones into place over the course of two weeks, which the Brigadier’s son, Algy Heber-Percy, described as a ‘rather expensive’ exercise. An inscription records that the monument was a project started by the Brigadier but ‘completed in his memory by donations received from his family and friends as a mark of their esteem’ in 1970.

When the revised edition of Barbara Jones’s Follies & Grottoes was published in 1974 the Hodnet folly was one of the newest structures to feature. Jones saw the ‘fine eyecatcher’ in the last months of her research before publication and thought it in the ‘best tradition of follies’.

The memorial folly is easily seen from the Hodnet to Marchamley road, opposite the drive to the house. But if you need help finding it this detail from a tea towel produced by Hodnet Hall in the early 1970s might help…

The gardens at Hodnet Hall open regularly https://www.hodnethallgardens.org and if you are in the area and need refreshments or a comfy bed then the Bear Inn, owned by the estate, is highly recommended https://www.thebearinnhodnet.com

The Folly Flâneuse is always happy to hear from readers – please scroll down to leave a comment. Thank you for reading.

In July 1833 the 1st Duke of Sutherland died. Tenants on his estates in Staffordshire (Trentham), Scotland (Dunrobin) and Shropshire quickly made plans to commemorate the man they considered a benevolent landlord – according to the inscriptions that is: the Duke was not quite as revered as the tributes might suggest. In Shropshire the tenants on the Lilleshall estate decided to erect an obelisk on Lilleshall Hill, high above the village, and by November the foundation stone had been laid. By the end of the century the obelisk had been struck by lightning (twice) and had caused some embarrassment for the editor of a local paper.

A subscription committee was convened soon after the Duke’s death, and it appointed George Ernest Hamilton as architect. Little is known about Hamilton, but in the 1841 census he described himself as a ‘civil engineer’ and he seems to have worked mainly in the midlands before moving to Australia. The builder was William Smith who used stone from the Red Lake quarry which the 2nd duke ‘kindly condescended’ to donate to the project. In October 1833 the newspapers announced that work was about to begin, and that the finishing touch was to be ‘a wolf couchant carved in stone’ on each ‘bold pedestal’, of the base: a wolf is a feature of the Sutherland crest.

Two inscriptions were mounted on the pedestal: the first eulogised the late Duke as ‘the most just and generous of landlords’ and the second featured words spoken by Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: LET ALL THE ENDS THOU AIMEST AT BE THY COUNTRY’S, THY GOD’S AND TRUTH’S. The latter plaque had been missing for some time before it was replaced in 2013.

When Peter Orlando Hutchinson visited in 1834 he saw the first two wolves already in place, and his sketches of the scene offer a rare view of the obelisk in its original form. Sadly his accompanying diaries for that period are not extant, so we don’t have any further description of what he saw.

On 15 June 1839 the obelisk was struck by lightning, causing ‘considerable injury’ to the structure. In December there was further excitement in Lilleshall when a local paper reported that four large wolves had been seen passing through the village. There were no reports of injuries, although one of the wolves was reported to have been shot dead before the others were captured and secured. The story was picked up by countless other national and regional newspapers, but a week later the Staffordshire Advertiser, pinning the blame firmly on the unnamed ‘neighbouring journal’ that had first published the tale, sheepishly admitted that the whole episode was a hoax sent in by ‘some wag’. What had actually prowled through Lilleshall were the four stone wolves from the obelisk: William Smith had returned to repair the damaged obelisk, and the wolves were being carted away for restoration.

In April 1884 a ‘frightful storm’ hit Lilleshall and caused the ‘partial demolition of the obelisk’. Lightning once more struck the shaft and the ‘electric fluid’ passed through the whole of the structure, displacing the ‘massive stonework of the base’ and sending portions of the stonework rolling down the hill. Charles Clement Walker F.R.A.S. was less than half a mile away when the lightning struck, although much to his frustration he was looking in the wrong direction. He examined the damaged obelisk before giving a paper on the subject to the Royal Meteorological Society in which he concluded that William Smith had a ‘total ignorance of electrical science’: Smith had used glass in the rebuilt apex of the obelisk, presumably believing it to be a non-conductor.

After the second strike the base of the obelisk was rebuilt to a new design, minus the projecting buttresses. It doesn’t appear that the four wolves had ever made it back to the monument, and sadly their fate is unknown. And there is a further mystery: in 1891 The County Seats of Shropshire, claimed that at on the Lilleshall Hall estate ‘two huge heraldic griffins crouching on the sward’ were ‘the survivors of four similar figures which were originally placed on the pedestal of the memorial obelisk’. It seems the author was wrongly informed, as a number of references confirm there were wolves on the obelisk, but whatever their origins they are fascinating creatures.

The obelisk at Lilleshall has full public access and it is worth the climb to appreciate the extensive views. A lightning conductor protects the monument from future strikes.

Update: please see the comments below for more on why the Duke was not universally benevolent

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Sundorne House in Shropshire was the seat of the Corbet family and the estate included the picturesque ruin of Haughmond Abbey. In 1774 John Corbet added a dramatic eye-catcher to the ensemble – a sham castle on the summit of Haughmond Hill.

John Corbet (1751-1817) spent 1773 on the Grand Tour, where he was painted by Pompeo Batoni. He had inherited the Sundorne estate from his father in 1759, when still a minor and on his return from Europe he began to remodel the mansion using the architect Robert Mylne, and his improvements to the park included a vast new lake.

Although his portrait by Batoni shows him with a plan of the Pantheon in Rome, he chose to ornament the park with a building in the Gothick style. High on Haughmond Hill he built a mock fortification called Haughmond Castle.

The architect Robert Mylne sent Corbet a ‘design of a castle to be erected on the top of a hill’ in November 1774. Mylne had experience in the field having already built Blaise Castle in Bristol: Haughmond Castle had a similar triangular floor-plan of a central core surrounded by three circular turrets, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps. It was complete by 1777 when a lucky visitor stayed in the ‘pea green’ room at Sunborne and his view took in the building on Haughmond Hill.

As well as being an eye-catcher from Sundorne, the Castle would have served as both a landmark and a refreshment pavilion during the chase, for Corbet was a passionate huntsman. Locally it is told that a flag was flown when hunting was to take place the following day, although an alternative version has it that the flag was hoisted to warn the servants at Sunborne House that the hunt was over and the participants were heading back for dinner.

It was also a belvedere and from it there was a ‘magnificent panorama’ which included ‘the valley of the Severn, with the ancient town of Shrewsbury, backed on the horizon by the Welsh Mountains, while further south the wooded crest of the Wrekin towered above the valley’.

The prominent eye-catcher played a key role in the celebrations of the coming-of-age of Corbet’s eldest son Andrew William in 1822. Cannon were fired from Sundorne Castle (the house by now remodelled and renamed) and ‘these were answered by discharges from the Castle on the hill’. Tenants and their friends were invited to partake of a ‘cold collation’ at the Castle, and in the evening the building must have been a magical sight when it was illuminated.

For some years the eye-catcher doubled as a home for estate workers. Photographs and postcards from the early years of the 20th century show the Castle in good condition, but in the 1930s it collapsed. In 1938 a visitor noted the ‘ruins of Haughmond Castle’ and by 1973 only ‘traces’ remained.

Sundorne Castle too is gone – demolished in 1955, although a very attractive gatehouse and chapel were left standing.

All that remains of Haughmond Castle today are a few moss-covered bits of masonry and some curved ironwork. The view can still be appreciated, although the valley has been developed since Corbet’s day. There are walks to the site from the Forestry Commission’s Haughmond Hill car park https://www.forestryengland.uk/haughmond-hill/walking-trails-haughmond-hill

Haughmond Abbey is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited all year round https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/

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On high ground in Weston Park, ancestral seat of the earls of Bradford, stands this prospect tower. Although Weston Park is in Staffordshire, the knoll on which the tower stands is just over the border into Shropshire, and it was formerly home to another monument, allegedly built for the most repulsive of reasons. 

Until 1855 Tong Knoll was part of the Tong Castle estate which adjoined Weston Park. In 1760 George Durant (1731-1780) purchased the Tong estate from the Duke of Kingston and set about remodelling the house and grounds. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown provided plans, but sadly little archival evidence survives to record how the works were implemented, and it was later reported that Durant was ‘his own architect’.

Durant died in 1780 when his son, also George, was still a minor. After taking control of the estate when he came of age, George junior (1776-1844) indulged in his two favourite pastimes: embellishing the estate with countless architectural curiosities, and exercising his droit de seigneur. This latter activity led to the local legend (which may not have been stretching the truth too far) that he had a child in every cottage in the village, as well as the fourteen children that were the legitimate issue of his marriage to Mary Ann Eld of Seighford, Staffordshire.

His wife was understandably unable to tolerate his constant philandering, and in around 1820 demanded a divorce: Durant v. Durant kept the legal profession busy for a number of years. Throughout the proceedings George Durant played for time with the help of his attorney, Thomas Wood of Wolverhampton, sniffily described by his wife’s London legal team as ‘a country lawyer not known in this court’.

All of this was reported in the national and local papers, but after Durant’s death another story emerged. The tale told is that Durant baulked at the £600 of alimony awarded to his ex-wife: his bumpkin brief successfully appealed, and the sum was reduced to £400. To mark the occasion Durant built a ‘conspicuous object’ on Tong Knoll, clearly visible from the road between Wolverhampton and Tong. Historians give different accounts of the design of the building – was it square or octagonal, two storeys or three? Sadly, no views are known to survive.

There is also disagreement about the wording Durant added over the door: one writer says OPTIMO ADICO TW and another OPTIMA AMICO TW. But whether the plaque commemorated the best of outcomes, or the best of friends, all are agreed that ‘TW’ was a tribute to the lawyer Thomas Wood. The case may have been a career high for Wood as he was described in 1847 as an Insolvent Debtor ‘formerly of Wolverhampton […] afterwards a Prisoner in the Fleet Prison, lately a Prisoner in the Queen’s Prison, and now deceased.’

The monument had but a brief existence, being destroyed in a dramatic fashion soon after Durant’s death in November 1844. According to a story which appeared in the local paper only days after Durant’s demise, his eldest legitimate son, George, who died in 1831, had made a death-bed plea to his younger brothers that they would one day avenge their father’s betrayal of their mother. As soon as news of their father’s death reached them, Ernest and Frank gathered together 29 labourers and made their way to the tower. A few minutes later, thanks to 50lbs of gunpowder, the building was blown up ‘without accident’ and George’s wish that the monument should perish with its builder was granted. The explosion was heard for miles around, with some locals fearing it was an earthquake. News of the blast soon travelled, and the pile of rubble briefly became a tourist attraction.

In 1855 the Durant family offered the Tong estate for sale, and the successful purchaser was the 2nd Earl of Bradford of Weston Park. The earl’s daughter, Lady Charlotte Bridgeman, was delighted that her father had secured the land, writing ‘Hurrah for Tong Knoll! We may walk straight to the top as often as we like’.

In 1883 the 3rd earl of Bradford topped the knoll with a new tower at a cost of £634.1.0. No documentary evidence for the architect has yet been found, although John MacVicar Anderson (1835-1915) was updating the house in the same period and must be a contender.

The prospect-cum-banqueting house was built as an eye-catcher from a number of viewing points in the park, and the land around it was managed for hunting, so the tower would have been a lofty grandstand for viewing the chase, and a comfortable space for refreshments. The Tong Knoll Gallops, where the earl’s racehorses were exercised, were also nearby, and the tower appears in the background of a portrait of the earl’s prizewinning Retreat (who later enjoyed a contented retirement put out to stud).

The tower soon became a local landmark, and the family welcomed local charities such as the Band of Hope Trust, who climbed the tower after a tea party in 1896.A Bridgeman family anecdote tells that it was Britain’s two times Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, who suggested that a tower be built on the site. Disraeli was a friend of the family, and often visited Weston Park, but sadly he would never see the tower as he died in 1881.

The 7th and current Earl of Bradford gave Weston Park to the nation in 1986, and the Weston Park Foundation was formed to manage the estate. By 1992 the foundation had turned its attention to four ornamental garden structures which were in need of restoration and a purpose: the Knoll Tower, the Temple of Diana, the Pink Cottage and the Boat House. They were offered for sale or lease in 1992, with the foundation retaining the option to buy them back after 21 years.

Although there was interest, the rigorous vetting process only found the right candidate for the Boat House, which is let to a fishery operator. But that is good news for holidaymakers, as the Knoll Tower (grade II), the Temple of Diana (grade I) and the Pink Cottage (grade II) were later restored by the estate and are now available to rent.

Tong Castle was damaged by fire in the early years of the 20th century, and demolished in 1954, but a few of George Durant junior’s curious structures remain for intrepid folly-spotters to find.

For more on staying in the amazing properties at Weston Park see https://www.weston-park.com/visit/stay/

The Temple of Diana and the Knoll Tower can be seen from walks on days when Weston Park is open to the public, and the Pink Cottage can be glimpsed through the trees https://www.weston-park.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Weston-Park-Walks-Leaflet-.pdf

Thanks to Gareth Williams, Curator and Head of Learning to the Weston Park Foundation, for his help with this post. For more on the estate see his new book https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783276127/weston-park/

Badger Dingle, north east of Bridgnorth in Shropshire, was created by Isaac Hawkins Browne in the 1780s and ‘90s. He constructed a new mansion, Badger Hall (demolished 1950s), to the designs of James Wyatt whilst at the same time employing William Emes, and probably his associate John Webb, to create a pleasure ground. Lakes were created in the valley bottom and a circuit walk took visitors through the ‘ornamented cultivated side’ of the valley, which looked across to the ‘purely sylvan’ scene of the opposite bank. An early account describes a picturesque scene of  alpine planting and colourful shrubs.

Throughout the century it was open to tourists, but by 1890 public days were restricted and visitors had to apply in advance to the then owner, Col. Capel Cure. Soon after visitors were banned; their habit of digging up flowers and ferns was no longer to be tolerated and Badger Dingle was closed to the public ‘on account of the ravages of depredators’.

The ‘ornamented’ side of the valley had a temple for refreshments, a rotunda and a rock tunnel. Both of the buildings are attributed to Wyatt and all three features survive today. The temple is in particularly good condition as it is in the care of the excellent Landmark Trust and provides a romantic (in both senses of the word) retreat for two. Known originally as the Doric Temple it was later called the Birdhouse. Today it is simply The Temple.

Happily the dingle once again welcomes visitors and there are footpaths through the woods and around the ponds.