Cothelstone was an ancient seat of the Stawel family. In the second half of the 18th century it was the property of Mary Stawel (1726-1780), the sole surviving direct descendant. In recognition of her ancient lineage, George III made her a baroness in her own right in 1760, with the title to pass to her sons from her first marriage to Henry Bilson Legge, Earl of Dartmouth. After the death of her first husband in 1764, Mary married Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough (he would be created Marquess of Downshire after her death).

Sometime around 1770 Mary built a prospect tower in the park, which was known as Cothelstone Lodge. A correspondent with the Taunton Courier in 1899 quoted from a press cutting dated ‘around 120 years ago’ in which it was reported that ‘Lady Hillsborough has lately raised a small structure for the prospect’. This panorama was apparently the envy of the neighbourhood, and Lady Hillsborough is said to have declined the munificent proposal by ‘several gentleman of the county’ to knock down her tower and spend £2,000 on ‘something more conspicuous’. The architect of Lady Hillsborough’s unassuming little belvedere is not known, but the local artist and designer Richard Phelps (c.1710-1785), who designed the nearby hilltop towers at Dunster Castle and Willet Hill, seems a likely candidate – the two-stage buttress was certainly a feature he used.

In 1791 the Somerset historian Collinson described the lodge as ‘standing on a high hill justly celebrated for commanding one of the finest prospects in this part of the country’. Collinson reported that a total of 14 counties could be seen from the tower, and if equipped with a telescope it was possible to see 150 churches ‘on a clear day’. The panorama included the Vale of Taunton, Exmoor, the Quantocks and looked out over the Bristol Channel to Wales. It was sketched by Peter Orlando Hutchinson in 1833, at which date he described it as ‘ruinous’: the roof, door and windows were gone.

It was named as ‘Lodge’ on the county map produced by Day and Masters in 1782, and on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1802 as ‘Cotheleftone Lodge’. The title of lodge seems to have drifted out of fashion in the 19th century in favour of Cothelstone Tower or Cothelstone Beacon. Throughout the 19th century it was a landmark for the hunt, and a favoured destination for hikers and picnickers who, after exploring the hilltop tower, could enjoy the whortleberry jam and cream teas served at the lodge at the foot of the hill.

In 1913 the poet Edward Thomas saw the ‘blunt tower of a beacon’ on Cothelstone Hill, but he was one of the last to record the tower in situ. Towards the end of the First World War, the ‘people of Quantockland awoke to find their tower had collapsed and the skyline […] had changed overnight’. After the war there were discussions about where to place a Somerset war memorial, with the suggestion that £20,000 be expended on the project. A Captain Benson thought this a somewhat excessive figure and reported that people ‘in the western part of the county’ would prefer to see a little tower erected on the site of Cothelstone Lodge at a cost of £550. This plan never came to fruition, and today only a few stones mark the site.

The tower is a sad loss, but the hillside does have other attractions. As well as the truly astonishing panorama you might be lucky enough to meet some Exmoor ponies.

The manor house at Cothelstone is currently being renovated as a holiday let for large groups. Its setting is idyllic, and can be appreciated when visiting the delightful church of St Thomas of Canterbury.

There is a waymarked trail to the site of the tower from Cothelstone Hill car park https://www.cothelstonehill.org/things-to-do

Thank you for reading. The Folly Flâneuse always appreciates your thoughts and any further information on the buildings featured. Please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to get in touch.

This unique structure, topped with a statue, stands close to Yeovil, in Somerset, one of a small group of curious constructions erected in Barwick Park. The folly was probably built by John Newman (1717-1799) in the middle of the 18th century, but by the early 20th century it had become know as ‘Jack the Treacle Eater’ and strange stories were told about Jack’s career and nocturnal activities.

Barbara Jones saw the portrait above at Barwick when she was researching the first edition of Follies and Grottoes, published in 1953 (it was one of her favourite follies, a ‘wonderful thing’ and featured on the cover of the book).  The portrait enabled Jones to roughly date the folly for the first time – a close look reveals the date 1768 on the document in Newman’s hand – and to disprove the story that the folly was built in the 19th century. The portrait, with a companion piece of Newman’s wife Grace (also with a folly backdrop – they were clearly proud of their landscape ornaments), was offered at auction by Sotheby’s in 2018.

The figure atop the folly is often said to be Mercury, but as the postcard above suggests it is more likely his Roman counterpart, Hermes, messenger to the gods, wielding his caduceus.

But by the early 19th century the figure had become known as Jack the Treacle Eater, with the accompanying tale that Jack worked as a messenger at Barwick. Jack could cover vast distances, thanks to his habit of fortifying himself with a diet of treacle.

This constant intake of the sticky syrup was said to have given him a terrible thirst, and so in the dead of night he would climb down from the folly to drink deep from the lake. The sender of the card above, posted in 1915, had heard another tale, and told a friend that Jack ‘takes a drink from the Pond which is quite close every time he hears the clock strike’. And a correspondent with Country Life in 1943 was told as a child that Jack came down every time he heard a Yeovil clock strike 12, and that the implement he held aloft was his ladle for scooping up the treacle.

The story appealed to the poet Charles Causley (1917-2003), who in 1987 published an anthology of poems with Jack as the titular character. Jack the Treacle Eater was illustrated by Charles Keeping (1924-1988), and the book won the Emil prize for the best combination of words and text. The enchanting poem (it must be read aloud) begins:

Here comes Jack the Treacle Eater,
Never swifter, never sweeter,
With a peck of messages,
Some long, some shorter,
From my Lord and Master’s quarter
(Built like a minaret)
Somewhere in Somerset.
Jack, how do you make such speed
From banks of Tone to banks of Tweed –
And all the way back?
‘I train on treacle,’ says Jack.

The collection was reissued in 2002 with illustrations by Tony Ross (born 1938). Both collections are out-of-print but are well-worth seeking out.

Part of the mystery of the folly was solved in 2005 when Jack the Treacle Eater was renovated. Bob Osborn, who masterminds the Yeovil History website, had a look inside the little room above the arch during the works, and found it was full of nesting boxes. But why was a dovecote built on an arch and topped with a figure of Hermes, and how did it become known as Jack the Treacle Eater? Rhetorical questions, as this is one folly that must keep some secrets.

And finally, just to add another wonderful illustration, here is Jack on the cover of the 1st edition of Follies and Grottoes by Barbara Jones (1953)

You can see Jack up close from the path between Two Tower Lane and Rexes Hollow Lane, but a haha and nettle-bed stop a good appreciation of the structure. For that, take the footpath down the drive towards Barwick House.

There’s lots of interesting extra reading this week…

You can read more about the Newman portraits here https://www.periodportraits.com/newmans-of-barwick-park

And more about Barwick and its follies here http://www.yeovilhistory.info/barwick-follies.htm

For more on the illustrator Charles Keeping visit http://www.thekeepinggallery.co.uk

Charles Causley’s memory is kept alive by https://causleytrust.org. By complete coincidence the Folly Flâneuse recently picked up a copy of Patrick Gale’s latest novel Mother’s Boy, and was delighted to discover that it is a fictionalised account of Causley’s life. The Guardian review is here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/10/mothers-boy-by-patrick-gale-review-imagining-charles-causley-life

Thank you for reading. Comments are most welcome – just scroll down to foot of the page to get in touch.

Tucked in the corner of a garden in the town of Frome, Somerset, stands a little tower with a conical roof topped with a pineapple. This flamboyant finial, like the rest of the folly, is the work of the talented and resourceful Nigel Day: the uppermost leaves started life as a copper hot water cylinder.

Day has lived in this quiet Frome street for around three decades, during which time he has renovated and extended a rundown cottage. Carvings, inscriptions, secret doors and a clock tower are all his own work, and somehow he has also found time to build a folly.

He took some time to decide on the form this folly would take, knowing only that he wanted it to feature a terracotta scallop shell which he had picked up in a reclamation yard many years earlier. Abandoning the idea of a sham castle or an obelisk, he decided on a circular tower, with the shell as an overdoor, and work began in 2006.

Everything was built to meet the building regulations of the day: the footings go down about five or six feet. Such is Day’s attention to detail that each of the trapezium-shaped roof tiles was cut by hand: this job alone took four weeks. Day’s son helped get the reconstituted Bath stone blocks into place, but otherwise he executed all of the work himself – apart from the handsome metal gates which were made to his design by a local blacksmith. Day even carved the iguana which basks on the outer wall.

With the exterior complete Day needed a little help from his friends. They were recruited for the onerous task of banqueting on scallops and crab (washed down with plenty of Muscadet) to provide materials for the interior decoration. With additional shells purchased from a specialist supplier, Day set to work creating the shellwork, which depicts the circle of life in the sea.  This idea was inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez, in which the author realises that there is no such thing as an old fish: everything in the oceans is eaten by another creature.

Shellfish also appear on the tiled floor, which Day designed and painted himself and fired in a borrowed kiln. Day’s favourite books are Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, and he continued the shellfish theme by featuring the poem of The Walrus and the Carpenter, in which the little oysters are tricked into becoming lunch.

Day has enjoyed his folly now for fifteen years but has two regrets. One is that the bats which initially seemed interested in roosting in the roof-space have never settled in, and the second is that he wishes he had created a hollow tube up through the roof, through which he could have launched rockets on fireworks night.

Day remains full of ideas, and it is very unlikely that this is a garden that will ever stand still. The garden is private, but opens occasionally for charity.

Thanks to Nigel for a warm welcome, and to he and Paul Salter for help with photographs. The Folly Flâneuse visited on a bleak day – main pic – and didn’t get to enjoy the summerhouse in the sunshine.

Thank you for reading. Comments and thoughts are always welcome: scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. If you would like to receive a weekly email featuring a folly story then please click on the ‘subscribe’ tab.

The little village of Bawdrip in Somerset was once home to a rugged and romantic ruin. Standing on Knowle Hill, it was built by Benjamin Cuff Greenhill of Knowle Hall as an eye-catcher and observatory, and to add a ‘Gallic touch to the Somerset countryside’. Sadly it is long gone, but it is remembered in local legends and picture postcards.

In 1829 Greenhill (c.1805-1881) married Henrietta Lavinia MacDonald, a granddaughter of the Flora MacDonald who helped ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ escape. The couple had Knowle Hall constructed as their family home, but the marriage broke down and as a divorce case and custody battle ensued Henrietta, showing some of the pluck of her grandmother, fled to France with her children (this has absolutely nothing to do with the tower, but was too fascinating to leave out).

So to resume the history of the folly… Greenhill married for the second time in 1854. His new wife was Pelagie, a Frenchwoman described as the daughter of the Count de Breuilly, and they settled at Knowle Hall as their family grew. Knowle Hall had fine grounds and Greenhill embellished them further with the completion of a sham castle on Knowle Hill, close to the house. This was described as a ‘watch-tower of large dimensions, having at the top a turret from whence can be obtained one of the most magnificent landscape views’. The panorama included the Welsh coast and the islands in the Bristol Channel, as well as the Mendip and Quantock ranges of hills. Building had taken three years under the supervision of the local contractor Mr John Varman, but by summer 1867 work was almost complete, and cannon were placed around the folly as the finishing touch. These were presumably the guns fired in September 1867 to mark the coming of age of Greenhill’s son.

After Greenhill’s death his widow moved to the south coast and the estate was offered to let. The 1883 particulars described the ‘tower and observatory with castellated building, from which magnificent views are obtained on all sides’. But by the next century the ‘romantic and baronial castle’ had acquired a much more fanciful history.

As the story is told, Greenhill built the tower to help cure his wife’s homesickness by reminding her of her childhood home (a rather delayed reaction as they had by then been married for a decade). In 1950 the local paper made the wild and seemingly unsubstantiated claim that it ‘was probably identical to the tower at the chateau’. The Folly Flâneuse tried to track down Pelagie’s childhood home to test this theory, but without much luck. It is not even clear exactly who her father was – her memorial in Puriton church calls her the daughter of the ‘Count de Breuille’, but her marriage certificate names him as ‘Paul Dubruille gent’.

The writer, and soon to be acclaimed poet, Edward Thomas saw the ‘tower and many ruinous arches’ in 1913, and quickly recognised it as a ‘sham’, rather than an ancient relic. But viewing the folly at twilight he was still able to ‘dally a little with the kind of feeling which the real thing would have produced’ – exactly the response the builder would have hoped for when he erected his romantic ‘ruin’.

The slightly battered postcard above dates from early in the 20th century, but wasn’t actually posted until 1972, when the sender noted it was ‘a very old card’. Sadly, at that date the tower itself no longer existed. By the middle of the 20th century the tower was no longer in vogue, and the sham ruin had become genuinely distressed, so much so in fact that it was ‘considered dangerous to cattle’. For this reason it was demolished in the summer of 1950 – a sad loss.

Most of the images on this post come from private collections of vintage postcards, which are particularly useful when researching lost buildings. One collection, unsurprisingly, is that of the Folly Flâneuse herself, but many of the old postcards featured in these pages each week are generously shared by another collector. The Folly Flâneuse would like to record her immense gratitude.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox each week, please click on the Subscribe tab. If you can add to the story, or wish to share any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

The tower on Willett Hill tantalises with a glimpse above the trees when approaching by road, before disappearing completely as one begins the ascent on foot – which makes it all the more exciting when after a stiff climb the folly eventually bursts into view.

Willet Hill is in the Brendon Hills, near the village of Elworthy on the edge of Exmoor National Park. The tower was built in around 1774 and paid for by a group of local landowners. As the annotation to the sketch above records, James Bernard of nearby Crowcombe Court subscribed £80 of the total cost of £130, but sadly the other donors are not recorded. The land was owned by Rev. Bickham Escott of Hartrow, so that was presumably his contribution to the project, but nowhere is it recorded why this group of gentlemen decided to erect a building  ‘to represent an old Ruin’ on the hilltop, and there is no inscription to help. Probably there was a hunting connection, with the room in the tower acting as belvedere and picnic parlour, and it was certainly an eye-catcher from the various gentlemen’s seats in the area. Hopefully there was also a large dollop of whimsy in their decision, and they built it because they liked the idea of enlivening the landscape with a sham ruin, then very much in vogue.

The architect of Willet Hill Tower was Richard Phelps (c1710-1785), who was better known as a portrait painter. He was based in Dunster, a few miles away on the coast, where he painted members of the Luttrell family and designed follies for their seat at Dunster Castle, including the tower and sham ruined gateway on Conygar Hill.

Collinson’s history of Somerset, published in 1791, described the ‘lofty smooth knowl’ on which the tower was ‘a fine object to the country many miles round’. The tower, on the bare hillside, is also shown on an 18th century map.

Collinson wrote that the folly was 80 feet in height, but incorrectly describes it as ‘a hexagonal embattled tower’, whereas it is actually a square tower with an adjoining short section of curtain wall cut through with an arch. A corresponding stretch of wall to the north, shown in the sketches above, has collapsed.

In 1840 the Elworthy parish was surveyed to produce the tithe map, and by then the hillside had been planted with firs which gradually obscured the view of the tower. The tower has emerged occasionally when the timber was felled, but is currently tucked away in a clearing in dense woodland managed by the Forestry Commission, who are happily committed to managing the land around the grade II listed tower to ‘ensure that the views or the structural integrity of the building are not diminished’.

Lofty follies are often borrowed for more practical purposes: the hilltop site was used as a trigonometrical point by the Ordnance Survey early in the 19th century, and in the middle of the 20th century the Royal Ordnance Corps had a lookout point at the folly – their concrete bunker survives close to the tower.

There is a parking place just off the B3224 at the bottom of Willet Hill, and then paths spiral up to the tower – but it is worth checking a map if you want to be sure of the direct route to this enchanting spot.

The follies Phelps designed for Conygar Hill on the Dunster Castle estate can also be visited https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/dunster-castle-and-watermill/trails/conygar-tower-from-dunster-castle-walk-

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome: please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to share information or ideas. 

Somerset has more than its fair share of folly towers, but one of the most audacious examples is sadly long gone. This was the slender tower built by John Turner in the hamlet of Faulkland, near Bath, in 1890. It stood for less than 80 years, having become progressively shorter before its eventual demise in the 1960s.

John Turner (c.1818-1894) was born in Devon but later moved to Faulkland, in Somerset. Here he settled as a gentleman farmer and developer of houses and cottages: according to the 1881 census return Turner had 160 acres and was employing 12 men and 5 boys. Later that decade he suddenly decided to branch out into the entertainment business, and started to build a tower, with a ballroom at its base, all set within pleasure gardens. The grand opening ceremony was held on 25 September 1890 and five thousand people were said to have visited that day. According to reports in the local paper and the building press Turner had invested £4,000 in the project.

Standing 200′ (60m) high, the first section was built of stone, and atop this was a wooden structure, which visitors were assured was fixed with ‘powerful bolts and iron work’. This section had two viewing platforms, and was finished with a wooden spire. The ‘architect & builder’ was ‘Mr J. Wilcox of Terry Hill’: this was Job Willcox, who described himself more humbly as a ‘carpenter’ in the 1891 census.

Most people climbed the belvedere to appreciate the view, and there were window seats where the weary could rest as they climbed the internal staircase. But the tower was also an early theme-park thriller, and the more intrepid visitors could climb out onto the wooden spire and ascend a ladder into an iron cage. Four shillings per annum bought membership of the ‘Faulkland Tower Club’. This was strictly ‘non-political and unsectarian’, and existed to ensure the ‘social and moral welfare’ of its members – which sounds somewhat more sedate than climbing the tower.

Sadly this benevolent enterprise came to an end when Turner died in January 1894. His executors sold his farm stock, his furniture, and finally in April there was the ‘Highly Important and attractive sale’ of his estate. Lot 21 was ‘the substantially-erected tower’ with adjoining dancing and tea rooms, skittle alley, pleasure grounds cottages, houses, shops, stables and coach house. The purchaser, at £900, was Hedworth Hylton Jolliffe, 2nd Baron Hylton who lived at nearby Ammerdown Park.

So far, so factual (assuming one believes what one reads in the papers), but it wouldn’t be a good folly without an equally good story. Going back in time, Turner was said to have built the tower out of spite because (a) Lord Hylton built an 8′ wall around his estate (b) Lord Hylton reneged on a property deal or (c) that Lord Hylton built the 164′ (50m) high Ammerdown Column overlooking Turner’s land. The latter can be discounted as the column was not erected by Lord Hylton, but by his cousin Thomas Robert Jolliffe: Hylton did not inherit his cousin’s estate at Ammerdown until 1872. It seems unlikely that Turner waited more than three decades to exact his revenge on a man who had been dead for almost 20 years when the tower was completed.

But there was definitely some local rivalry, which may have given rise to the stories. Turner was keen for it to be known that his tower gave views to the Ammerdown Column and two more distant Somerset follies: the Cranmore Tower, and King Alfred’s Tower on the Stourhead estate. And crucially, he boasted that his ‘most formidable’ folly was 50′ (15m) higher than the tallest of these structures.

Another story tells that the building of the tower bankrupted Turner. It is true that Turner did not die a wealthy man, and had perhaps exhausted his resources on the tower project, but he left a modest estate of a little over £450. Another local tale is that the 2nd Baron Hylton hated the tower so much that he bought it just so he could pull it down. But although the wooden superstructure was taken down in 1895, after being badly damaged by a lightning strike, it wasn’t until 1910 that a substantial 80′ (24m) section of the tower was removed. The truncated tower and ballroom continued for some years as a social club (where miners ‘used to drink more than other people thought good for them’), but in 1968 a letter in Country Life magazine announced that the tower was ‘now in the hands of the demolition squad’.

The tower was brought to the attention of a wider audience in 2016 when the independent publishing house Little Toller Books republished In Pursuit of Spring by Edward Thomas (1878-1917). In 1913 the writer, later to become an acclaimed poet, went on a cycling tour with his son Merfyn, taking photographs along the way. Passing the tower, which he at first took for a church tower or a chimney, Thomas asked about its history and was told that ‘Mr Turner used to go up and down it, but it served no other purpose’ – a true folly. The new edition of In Pursuit of Spring is illustrated with Thomas family photographs, and the cover star is Turner’s Tower.

For more on Thomas’s book see https://www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/little-toller/in-pursuit-of-spring/

Edward and Merfyn’s cycling tour (they are thinly disguised as ‘David and Philip’) is mentioned in the memoir Edward’s wife Helen wrote to help with her grief after his death. It has recently been republished by Persephone Books https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/as-it-was

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

In 1771 the agriculturalist and country house afficionado Arthur Young visited Halswell in Somerset. He admired the house, but admitted that what ‘chiefly attracts the attention of strangers, are the decorated grounds’. Sir Charles Kemeys Tynte (1710-1785) ornamented his park with temples, rustic shelters and elegant bridges, all of which fell into disrepair, or disappeared completely, after the Second World War. Happily, recent years have seen a major programme of restoration, which continues apace.

In May 1950 the estate was dispersed at auction ‘by direction of Lord Wharton & his trustees’. Lot 26 was 750 ‘Well Grown Trees’ standing in Mill Wood. The purchaser, E.C. Wyatt & Sons of Taunton, paid £18,700 for the lot, and promptly felled the trees, leaving the ornamental structures vulnerable in a bare landscape. The Druid’s Temple, a rustic timber rotunda, is now known only from photographs, although archaeologists have discovered its site. And only one pier remains of an open arch which once sheltered a giant statue of Neptune.

There was a happier future for the Temple of Harmony, which was restored by the Somerset Building Preservation Trust in 1995-96 (in 1997-98 they restored Robin Hood’s Hut, high above the house, which is now offered as a holiday let by the Landmark Trust).

In December 2013 the house was purchased by Edward Strachan, who quickly bought back other parcels of the former estate and embarked on a huge project to bring the house and landscape back to life. The once roofless rotunda, which stands close to the house, was the first landscape feature to be brought back to its original elegant state, and more recently another ambitious scheme has seen the restoration of the beautiful and unusual Bath Stone Bridge in Mill Wood.

According to an account by the estate steward of the time, the bridge was built in 1755. Architectural historian Gervase Jackson-Stopps attributed it to the architect and polymath Thomas Wright of Durham, on the basis of a very similar sketch design in Wright’s papers.

Research continues as part of the project, and undoubtedly there will be more to report in due course, but for now we should celebrate the outstanding quality of the restoration of the bridge, which was overseen by architect Robert Battersby of Bristol based Architecton, working with the enthusiastic Halswell team.

By the time work began a fair chunk of the bridge, which is actually a dam controlling one of the series of ponds that are a feature of Mill Wood, had been toppled into the water. One of the two curious carved figures that once terminated the wings of the bridge was lost (happily the torso has since been recovered and is displayed nearby), and the other needed some serious beauty treatment. Stonemason Mike Orchard and sculptor Tom Waugh take the credit for the new stonework and carving, which blends beautifully with the old.

Waugh also included a very modern detail. The laurels planted as a backdrop to the bridge will slowly mature, and it will be hidden. In centuries to come garden historians will discover it, and ponder its meaning.

The work was recognised in the prestigious Georgian Group Awards, winning the 2021 prize for the Best Restoration of a Georgian Structure.

To see the delights of Mill Wood you will need to visit on a Sunday afternoon in summer. Halswell House and its grounds can be seen via the Invitation to View tours operated by Historic Houses. Or to have the place to yourself the Folly Flâneuse can highly recommend a stay at the beautifully restored Tudor House at the heart of the estate.

Lots of links this week, but all worth a look…

The excellent Halswell Park website has loads of interesting information, including more on staying on the estate https://halswellpark.wordpress.com

For tours of Halswell visit https://www.historichouses.org/house/halswell-house/tours/

The Temple of Harmony reopens in spring https://www.templeofharmony.org.uk/

Robin Hood’s Hut can be booked here https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/robin-hoods-hut-11228/#Overview

Please scroll down to the very bottom of the page to share any thoughts or comments. Thank you for reading.

Newton Surmaville, just outside Yeovil, was bought by the Harbin family in the early 1600s, and they immediately set about constructing a very handsome new house. Sometime in the middle of the following century they added this summerhouse on Newton Hill, high above the house, and the story locally is that it was one of a trio of towers in the area, used by their owners to flag the message that it was time to ‘gallop over for a convivial evening’. 

The Summerhouse at Newton Surmaville was probably built by Swayne Harbin soon after he succeeded to the estate in 1741. It is situated on the highest point in the area with sweeping views over the town of Yeovil and beyond. The hall and its summerhouse caught the eye of clergyman John Swete, who was touring the area in the 1780s. He asked a passer-by for information and recorded this exchange in his travel journal:

‘… pray my pretty lass (said I to a young girl I met with) […] whose house may that be under the wood? lord Zur doant you know! Why ’tis Squier Harbins! cawled Newton! – and pray what is that Building on the top of the wood? why Zur ’tis the Squier’s Zummer House!

‘Such was the vulgar dialect of the country’, concluded the patronising parson.

The two other edifices which were part of this (possibly mythical) signalling network are the tower on St Michael’s Hill at Montacute, built by the Phelips family in 1760, and a tower belonging to the Goodfords of Chilton Cantelo. There seems to be no trace of a tower at Chilton Cantelo today, but the tower at Montacute does survive, and is now in the care of the National Trust.

That it was built for the view is clear from the inscription in Greek above the door, which translates as ‘Periscope’. Collinson’s History & Antiquities of Somerset of 1791 confirms that there was indeed a ‘flag-staff fifty feet high, on which a flag is occasionally displayed’, as seen in the engraving below.

Happily the tower at Newton also survives. The building consists of a central tower with two low wings, which were probably added when the summerhouse was converted into a dwelling, as they are built of a different stone. By the middle of the 19th century it was marked on maps as ‘cottage and garden’ and for the rest of the century it was home to the estate shepherds. It has remained a dwelling ever since.

It was however the building’s original purpose which gave its name to the mount on which it stands – Newton Hill became known as Summerhouse Hill. An article in Country Life in 1952 described it as ‘charmingly designed’ and a ‘particularly pleasant example of folly architecture’. The building is now known as The Round House, which initially feels wrong as the central section is clearly an octagon: or is it? The Buildings of England (‘Pevsner’) volume for Somerset reveals that the summerhouse has a ‘sophisticated design’, and is ‘not octagonal because the diagonal faces are quadrant curved’. So the Round House it is.

The excellent news is that the Round House is soon to be restored as a family home. The Folly Flâneuse thanks the owners for inviting her to visit, and wishes them all the very best for this fabulous project. There are public footpaths on Summerhouse Hill, but the building is strictly private.

The tower at Montacute is accessed by a public footpath from the village.

For more images of the Round House see http://www.yeovilhistory.info/roundhouse.htm?fbclid=IwAR0MVPJcxkLiYDFAA7-_NrVqhNyQsuBqjsHpxql378kDtAF1r0X2M0WMvbM

There’s more on Newton Surmaville house here https://www.newtonsurmaville.co.uk

Thank you for reading, and if this post has prompted any thoughts or questions please scroll down to comment. If you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox each week then why not subscribe?