In the middle of the 18th century the Earl of Strafford was embellishing his seat at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. A new wing was added to the mansion and the grounds were decorated with temples, columns and garden seats. Strafford asked his lifelong friend Horace Walpole for advice on an ornament for his menagerie, and this little gothic temple was the result.

The Menagerie, or Menagery, at Wentworth Castle (historically also known as Stainborough) was already well-established when Walpole was consulted. A substantial building, completed in 1717, provided a home for the keeper who looked after the ornamental birds and also provided a space for refreshments when Lord Strafford was taking his guests for tours of the park and gardens. In April 1738 ‘two good fires’ warmed a party who had been out exploring the estate, and an inventory of a few years later shows that the Menagerie House had a settee and cups and saucers for tea.

The menagerie grounds included ponds and cascades as well as homes for the birds (there is no evidence of any other animals). In 1771 there were ornamental pheasants but a poem of 1731 shows that there was an avian presence 40 years before that:

From thence with Pleasure you may see
Strange Birds at the Menagerie,
Some Squeek, Some Cry – Some Sing, Some Squall,
Whose echo Sounds unto the hall;

In 1739 William Wentworth (1722-1791) succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Strafford of the 2nd creation. Two years later he married Lady Anne Campbell (1720-1785) and the couple’s social circle included Horace Walpole (1717-1797), creator of the gothic delight called Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. When his friends asked him to design a building for the menagerie, Walpole suggested a structure ‘in the manner of an ancient market cross’, and in particular that at Chichester in Sussex.

In 1756 Walpole’s friend Richard Bentley (1708-1782), a fellow member of the self-styled Committee of Taste based at Strawberry Hill, produced a drawing for Strafford’s masons and construction of the temple began soon after.

The menagerie was Lady Anne Strafford’s domain, and her passion for the peacocks and ornamental pheasants in the grounds led Walpole (who revered Anne as both a beauty and a wit) to refer to her as ‘the lady of the menagerie’.

Walpole visited in August 1760 to see the finished work and he admired the situation of the temple ‘on a high bank in the menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks’. Walpole’s role in the design must have been pointed out to visitors as a traveller in 1761 noted ‘the Elegant Gothic temple designed by Mr Horace Walpole’.

Whilst Wentworth Castle was very much on the 18th century ‘tourist trail’, and is mentioned in countless travel journals, there are very few accounts of the little temple, but Arthur Young wrote a good account in 1771. He walked across a grass lawn overhung with oaks to find ‘a Gothic temple, over a little grot, which forms an arch, and together have a most pleasing effect’. Behind it was a piece of water with an island and the banks were ‘prettily planted’. The history of the chamber underneath the temple is not clear – it is not mentioned in Walpole’s correspondence and possibly pre-dates the building of the temple.

A little guidebook with the comprehensive title of Stainborough & Rockley, their Historical Associations, and Rural Attractions was published in 1853 (this is the source of the title image). By then the Menagerie wore ‘an air of neglect’ and the shrubs and trees had run wild. Some ‘traces of its former beauty’ were still visible and these included the piece of water and the gothic temple ‘on an elevated basement’, which was ‘beautifully artistic, and of elaborate character’.

Wentworth Castle featured in Country Life in 1924 when the magazine’s Architectural Editor H. Avray Tipping described the feature as ‘somewhat ruinous’, although he was referring in particular to the grotto chamber rather than the ‘mock-mediaeval frippery’ of the temple itself. During the Second World War troops were stationed at Wentworth Castle and the story goes that the temple was used for target practice.

Barbara Jones went to see the temple when she was researching for the first edition of Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. She described the ‘little summerhouse’ as being ‘of the very best mid-eighteenth century gothic’, and she was saddened to learn that the building had been intact until the Second World War. When she saw it in the decade after the war the elegant pinnacles were gone – ‘wanton destruction’ was her conclusion. By the time the revised edition of her book was published in 1974 the temple was ‘only rubble’. Nikolaus Pevsner called the temple ‘the umbrello’ in the 1959 1st edition of The Buildings of England: Yorkshire the West Riding, and that name seems to have been adopted from that date.

The stone fragments were recorded by the National Monuments Record in 1965 and nature then covered over the remains. In 2006 Archaeological Services WYAS were commissioned to survey the collapsed structure. Happily, the masonry was found to be largely extant, and we can hope that one day the funds might be found to enable a restoration.

Much restoration work has already taken place under the auspices of the Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Castle Heritage Trust which was established in 2001. The site of the Gothic temple is not publicly accessible but a sham castle, temples, obelisks, a column and extensive gardens make a visit to Wentworth Castle (not to be confused with neighbouring Wentworth Woodhouse) more than worthwhile. The house is home to the Northern College but opens for monthly tours. In 2018 the National Trust took over the management of the gardens and park https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/wentworth-castle-gardens

No feature on Wentworth Castle is complete without a mention of the pioneering research of Dr Patrick Eyres and Dr Michael Charlesworth: their work is gratefully acknowledged.

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John Piper’s paintings of follies and garden buildings are well-known, but less familiar are his ceramics decorated with architectural features, including a series of ‘curly dishes’ with his wonderful whimsical interpretations of 18th century designs for rustic follies.

In 1982 gallerist Dan Klein extended his space in London’s Belgravia and that October the opening exhibition featured ceramics by Quentin Bell. Bell worked with an assistant and materials provided by the Fulham Pottery, and the aim was to show the result when ‘contemporary artists are invited to turn from canvas to ceramics’. Next in line was John Piper, who had also been invited to exhibit works in this less familiar medium. In the summer of 1982 he created around 200 ceramic pieces at his home at Fawley Bottom, near Henley on Thames. 

Piper had some experience of creating pots, having previously collaborated with the potter Geoffrey Easton, who offered ‘advice and encouragement’ for this new project. But it was the young Jean-paul Landreau, recruited by the Fulham Pottery whilst on his summer break from studying at Harrow College of Art, who helped Piper realise his designs. Quentin Bell saw the work in the studio, and his first thought was ‘heavens how thoroughly John has enjoyed himself’. Piper, then 79 but described as ‘full of youthful vigour and enthusiasm’, enjoyed working in this medium, finding it ‘awfully exciting to put something that looks dull in the kiln & see it come out all shiny hot & beautiful’.

The exhibition ran for just over two weeks in November 1982. ‘Piper’s Pots’ (as the alliteratively inclined Marylebone Mercury titled their account of the show) included ceramic obelisks, candlesticks, platters and dishes in a variety of styles – some abstract, and some figurative. A selection were decorated with architectural views, including a collection of ‘curly dishes’ designed by Piper, and named for the raised lobes which gave the dishes their unusual profile.

Four of the curly dishes featured rustic follies taken from an 18th century pattern-book which went by the snappy title of Grotesque architecture, or rural amusement : consisting of plans, elevations, and sections, for huts, retreats, summer and winter hermitages, terminaries, Chinese, Gothic, and Natural Grottos, Cascades, Baths, Mosques, Moresque Pavillions, Grotesque and Rustic Seats, Green Houses, &c. Many of which may be executed With Flints, Irregular Stones, Rude Branches, and Roots of Trees. The whole containing twenty-eight entire new designs, beautifully engraved on Copper Plates, with Scales to each. to which is added, a full explanation, in letter press, and the true method of executing them. The author was ‘William Wrighte, architect’, a man about whom even the great architectural historian Sir Howard Colvin admitted ‘nothing whatsoever is known’ (although there are at present scholars doing their very best to prove him wrong).

Wrighte’s pattern book contained a series of plates which landowners could peruse before instructing capable builders to erect something similar. The four which inspired Piper were a Winter Hermitage, a Gothic Grotto, a Rustic Seat to Terminate a View and, featured here, a Hermit’s Cell. The accompanying text tells that it was to be built of large stones and trunks of trees, with a thatched roof and a floor of small pebble stones or cockle shells.

This dish, catalogue no. 56 in the 1982 exhibition, was bought at the show by the (clearly very discerning) curator of Barnsley’s fine art collections. It can be seen on display at Cannon Hall Museum, a former country house a few miles from the town.

It’s not known if the then curator of Cannon Hall was aware that the estate had its own summerhouse with rustic tree-trunk columns. Although Cannon Hall and its surrounding gardens and pleasure grounds were sold to Barnsley Council in 1951, the wider estate, including the Deffer Wood summerhouse remained with the family.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse may be the ‘root house’ to which Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall ‘retired’ in 1778 to write verses and bring solace to his ‘harassed mind’. It is certainly a very tranquil retreat today.

Sadly the centuries old Fulham Pottery did not survive for long after these excellent exhibitions were held, and all that remains today is a grade II listed bottle kiln just off the New Kings Road. The Dan Klein Gallery operated for only a few years, although Klein (1938-2009) went on to have a distinguished career as a specialist in contemporary ceramics and glass.

Cannon Hall has the double attractions of a great collection (the Piper dish is just one item in an important display of ceramics) and a lovely designed landscape. Until 30 October 2022 you can also see some wonderful family portraits which are being shown in public for the first time – including a depiction of dapper root house retiree Walter Spencer Stanhope.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse is accessible via permissive paths, thanks to Cannon Hall Estates. Its location is not widely publicised (to deter vandals) so it’s advisable to do some research before visiting.

For more on Cannon Hall and the exhibition https://www.cannon-hall.com/spencer_stanhope

Jean-paul Landreau, Piper’s assistant on the project, is still making pots (see the comments below to hear from Jean-paul himself) http://www.jeanpaullandreau.com/english.php

There’s a curly dish featuring a Welsh castle in the collection of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley on Thames. Does anyone know the location of the others?

UPDATE March 2026: at the time of writing the Abbott and Holder Gallery in London has Piper’s working drawing for the ceramics based on Wrighte.

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The palatial mansion of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, is set in a landscape ornamented with towers and temples, pyramids and pavilions. One of the earliest is this slim, elegant structure pierced with an arch. Originally an eye-catcher, it later became an object on a drive to the house, but now once more stands alone on a swathe of green in a tranquil corner of the park.

Thomas Watson-Wentworth (1693-1750), created Baron Malton in 1728 (and then Earl of Malton 1734 and 1st Marquess of Rockingham 1746), kept a careful note of expenditure on his estate, and noted improvements in a volume which survives in the family archive. His summary of activity in 1722-1733 included the building of what was then known simply as ‘Obelisk in Lee Wood’, but was later nicknamed ‘the Needle’s Eye’ as apparently the slim arch was thought to resemble the eye of a needle.

The obelisk (remembering that obelisk and pyramid were used interchangeably in the 18th century for any tapering 3 or 4 sided structure) is shown on an engraving of 1728, so must therefore have been built between 1722 and 1728, making it the earliest of the fanciful erections in the vast park. It is contemporary with work on the Baroque west front, and predates the building of the great Palladian east front.

The square plantations of Lee Wood flanked the eye-catcher, and channeled views to the obelisk. One of the series of views of the estate painted for the family in the middle of the 18th century (private collection, not pictured), shows the tapering structure, cut through with a slim arch with woodland to each side. It could therefore only be seen from limited positions, and this is most likely why it was missed by many visitors, and is barely mentioned in contemporary accounts. A rare exception is the agriculturalist writer Arthur Young who visited in 1768  and saw ‘the arch’, which he thought was ‘raised as an object to decorate the view from the Ionic Temple’.

The Ionic Temple sits on the great terrace which was constructed in 1735-6 along the southern edge of the garden. So Young got it a little wrong, as the Needle’s Eye predates the Ionic Temple, but his account does back up contemporary map evidence that there was a vista between the two buildings, now sadly lost.

Towards the end of the 18th century the Needle’s Eye became a feature on a new drive from Rainborough Lodge on the northern edge of the estate (fans of geometry in gardens might be interested to know that Rainborough Lodge, the Needle’e Eye, North Lodge and the Ionic Temple can be linked with a dead straight line). Also known as the Lion Gate, because it features two large … stone lions, the lodge was built to a design by John Carr in the last years of the 18th century. It survives today, although the drive was later abandoned, leaving the obelisk once more as an isolated landscape feature.

By the time the first Ordnance Survey map was published the folly had become known as the ‘Needle’s Eye’, and is marked as such on the 1st series map of 1841. This was a fairly common nickname for structures cut through with an arch in the Victorian period, and was also used for a pyramidal lodge at Nostell Priory (see link below), and Thornhill Lodge at Calverley, both in Yorkshire.

In 1849 a group of excursionists (the name coined for groups taking day trips on the new railways) arrived at Darfield Station. They walked to the Rainborough Lodge, and on up to the ‘Needle’s Eye, an arabesque monument’, and took advantage of the seats inside the arch before exploring Wentworth. The prospectus for their excursion also tells that the pyramid was ‘surmounted by an earl’s coronet’. This description of the Needle’s Eye seems to have been taken from a piece published in the Leeds Mercury a few years earlier, and which remains something of a puzzle. The 1728 view shows it topped by an urn, and a decorative urn can be seen today. Was there once a coronet, or is the article simply mistaken? The mystery remains to be solved.

As ever, a seemingly useless landscape feature needs a good back story. Local legend tells that the building was erected so that the 1st Marquess of Rockingham could prove his boast that he could drive a carriage ‘through the eye of a needle’. Another version has it that guiding a horse and trap through the arch was a right of passage for young apprentices in the stable-yard, hoping to win promotion. No-one knows if there is truth in any of the tales, but they continue to entertain.

The grade II* listed Needle’s Eye is in the care of the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Amenity Trust, and was restored fairly recently. There is full access, courtesy of the trust, via a public footpath from Coaley Lane.

For the mansion and gardens at Wentworth Woodhouse https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk

For the follies in the care of the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Amenity Trust see https://wentworthestate.co.uk/visiting/monuments-follies/

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In the early 19th century the Reverend William Wordsworth (1783-1869) built an observatory on high land near the village of Monk Bretton. The lofty landmark was demolished in the mid-20th century, and is known today only from a few photographs.

Wordsworth (a distant relative of his namesake the poet) studied at Oxford and was then ordained into the priesthood. He was curate at Mersham, in Kent, and Domestic Chaplain to Viscount Palmerston, before moving to the parish of Ardwick on the edge of Manchester. By 1824 he and his wife had moved to Monk Bretton, near Barnsley, where he had inherited his grandfather’s  estate. There Wordsworth lived the life of a country gentleman, and became a respected magistrate.

No architect is known for the tower, which is also known as Wordsworth’s Folly, Burton Castle (Burton being a corruption of Bretton widely used in the 18th and early 19th centuries) or Monk Bretton Castle. Originally it was called the Summer House, and it is marked as such on the 1st series Ordnance Survey map published in 1841. The surveyors would have been sure of its name, for they used the tower as a triangulation point when working on the map series. A sketch map, copied from the surveyor’s drawing, survives showing that the tower had views to the ‘dome on Pontefract Church’ (St Giles), 10 miles away, as well as several other churches and another pleasure pavilion, the belvedere at Bilham, almost 8 miles away.

By the time the revised 1st edition map was published in 1855 the tower was called the Observatory, and the village held their 1857 Floral & Horticultural Show in the adjacent ‘Observatory Field’.

Wordsworth’s tower was his ‘calm retreat’, and from the summit he enjoyed a panorama that encompassed views to Barnsley, Wakefield, and the great estates of Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Bretton Park. Every lofty tower in Yorkshire claims a view to York Minster, but at least Wordsworth admitted to the use of a telescope, as described in this extract from On the Observatory at Monk Bretton by the Barnsley Poet Thomas Lister:

Should optic power assist the sight,
The eye may speed its joyful flight,
Where nobler scenes expand-
See Ebor’s sacred splendour smile-
With awe regard that mighty pile!-
The glory of our land.

In 1895 locals appealed for the Observatory Field to be made into a recreation ground, and the tower to be made accessible to the locals, many of whom had ‘no idea what a noble prospect there is from the top’. Such a park it was argued would be unrivalled locally ‘in the matter of beauty of situation and the extent of prospect it would command.’ The campaign was a partial success, and maps from the first years of the 20th century show a ‘Cricket and Football Ground’ had been established in the shadow of the observatory, although there is no evidence that the tower was opened to visitors. Monk Bretton Cricket Club still play at the ‘Castle Ground’.

In 1953 a beacon was lit at ‘Monk Bretton Castle’ to mark the coronation of the new queen. Sadly this was its last hurrah, and Barnsley Council demolished the deteriorating tower for safety reasons a few years later.

For some years the tower was framed by the twin columns of Monk Bretton’s very unusual and attractive war memorial, erected in 1920 to remember those who did not return from the First World War. The columns, which now also commemorate those lost in World War II, were moved across the road in 1978, where they are sited in a neat little garden of remembrance.

It is still possible to stand on the site of the tower, close to an O.S. trig point (at the time of writing inexplicably painted to represent a minion from the Despicable Me film franchise), and see a vast panorama over Barnsley and beyond. And the tower is at least remembered in the street names of a recently-erected housing development.

The belvedere at Bilham is a subject for another day, but to whet your appetite…

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There was good news in autumn 2019 with the announcement that the great Georgian estate of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, had been awarded National Heritage Lottery funds to allow work to begin on the restoration of the Camellia House. Originally known as the Greenhouse, the building was part of a menagerie complex which housed exotic pheasants. Only 20 miles away, in Bawtry, another curious aviary has sadly not survived. 

The 18th century saw a mania for ornamental birds, and particularly pheasants, introduced into Britain from ‘exotic’ lands. Shops were established where ladies could choose the finest specimens, and architects and landscape designers were kept busy designing menageries and aviaries. The colourful birds also appeared on wallpaper, porcelain, and needlework panels as the fashion took hold.

The menagerie at Wentworth Woodhouse was created in the 1730s by Lord and Lady Malton, later the 1st Earl and Countess of Rockingham, and it took the form of a grass meadow edged with shrubberies. At the side were pens for the birds, mainly ornamental pheasants from around the world, although visitors were impressed by a ‘pair of Cockatoos flying at liberty in the gardens’. Alongside the imported curiosities there were also domestic poultry, and cows grazed nearby, adding to the pastoral scene. Over time more exotic creatures, including an eagle and a moose, were added, and by the middle of the 19th century sheep, goats and llamas lived alongside an American bear, ring-tailed lemurs, kangaroos and many other species.

The double-faced ‘pavilion and greenhouse’ at the upper end of the menagerie provided a place for ladies to drink tea when visiting to admire the flora and fauna. The building must have been a real opportunity for the family to impress guests – exotic birds, an ‘architectural greenhouse’, and a cup of tea – at that date still a luxury item.

The Greenhouse was built in 1738 to replace one elsewhere on the estate. In c.1814 it was extended as a home for an important collection of Camellias, and was suitably renamed. The new building was decorated with Coade stone ornaments: four female statues and two baskets of fruit. Camellias provide welcome winter colour, and were in bloom when they were placed on the coffin of Viscount Milton, son of the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam, in January 1877.

The Camellia House fell into disrepair after the house was requisitioned during World War Two, although the Camellias still grew amid the dereliction, and recent clearance work has re-revealed their glory. The building will be restored as a cafe and tea will once more be drunk there, which is appropriate really as tea (Camellia sinensis) is a close relation of the ornamental camellia.

Not too far away from Wentworth is Bawtry Hall, which can be found on the edge of the village of the same name, close to the border with Nottinghamshire. The estate was purchased by Pemberton Milnes in 1779, and soon after that date he built a new mansion to the design of Doncaster architect William Lindley. Milnes died in 1795, and the estate passed to his daughter, Bridget, who in 1775 had married Peter Auriol Hay Drummond, a son of the then Archbishop of York. The couple had lived at Bawtry Hall during her father’s lifetime, paying a peppercorn rent from at least 1789. In 1793 a visitor described ‘Mr Drummond’s very pretty grounds’; the highlight was ‘a Charming Avery (sic) fancifully built, enclosing some beautiful Pheasants, particularly the golden.’

Drummond died in 1799, and in 1803 Bridget married Robert Monckton-Arundel, 4th Viscount Galway. They lived at nearby Serlby Hall until Galway’s death in 1810, but the Viscountess made visits to Bawtry to manage her estate. In 1804 Doncaster’s historian Edward Miller wrote that she ‘has the groves and grounds in the nicest order; and in a beautiful little area, surrounded by shrubs, has erected the annexed elegant menagerie for the reception of curious and rare birds to which she pays great attention.’ It is only thanks to Miller’s ‘annexed’ engraving that we know that the aviary took the form of a large round cage.

Following the death of her second husband, Bridget returned to Bawtry Hall and to the care of her gardens and aviary. Peck’s Topographical History of Bawtry, published in 1813, notes that the menagerie’s principal inhabitants were three species of ornamental pheasant; the golden, the silver and the common. The aviary was still in use in April 1835 when a reward of £5 was offered for information on the theft of a silver pheasant. The dowager died in November of that year and the house was then rented out, the aviary probably declining from that date.

The Dowager Viscountess Galway’s heirs sold the estate in 1904 and in 1939 it was acquired by the Ministry of Defence, who made it the HQ of Bomber Command from 1941. After the war the hall was retained by the RAF although much of the grounds was developed for housing. The hall was sold in the 1980s and was subsequently used as offices and as a religious retreat until in 2017 it became a wedding and events venue. The plantation called Menagerie Wood is the only reminder of the unusual building that once ornamented the grounds.

There’s more about the Chippendale Society here https://museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/temple-newsam/
and much of the society’s wonderful collection is on display at Temple Newsam, near Leeds https://www.leeds.gov.uk/museumsandgalleries/templenewsamhouse

For Wentworth Woodhouse see https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk

Driving through South Yorkshire on the A1, it is possible to catch a glimpse of a small square structure just off the south-bound carriageway. This is Robin Hood’s Well, near the village of Burghwallis, and it is probably the smallest structure in the canon of the great architect Sir John Vanbrugh. It was commissioned by the Earl of Carlisle and Vanbrugh probably dashed off the design from his carriage, en route between London and the earl’s seat of Castle Howard in North Yorkshire.

A well had existed on the spot long before the earl decided to cover it over early in the 18th century. No doubt the earl, like other travellers, had been unimpressed with the dusty roadside waterhole and commissioned Vanbrugh to offer it some protection. In 1725 a traveller in the party of the Earl of Oxford saw the  ‘new stone building’, but thinking it a little plain suggested that it be adorned with statues of Robin Hood and Little John. He also composed a few lines on the subject of the well:

If parch’d with toil, or heat, thou burn
Invited taste this limpid flood;
And boast wherever thou sojourn,
Thou once hast drank with Robin Hood.

Originally the well was built against a park wall and there were steps down to the water. An elderly retainer was on hand to serve water to travellers, although there was also an inn, ‘at the sign of the Robin Hood’, for those wishing for more sophisticated refreshments.

In the early 1960s the road was converted to a dual-carriageway, and the well cover was carefully dismantled with the stones numbered ready for re-erection. The Earl of Ross, of nearby Womersley, stored the stones in his stables until the works were complete and the building could be reconstructed. In 1964 it was rebuilt around 300 metres away from its original position at the water source. In 1993 a stainless steel frame was inserted to support the roof and safeguard the well’s future.

This view of Robin Hood’s Well by S.H. Grimm shows another ornamental building in the background (look closely). This is the Barnsdale Lodge, or Summer House, still a prominent eye-catcher high above the road when heading north on the A1, especially when it catches the sun. This landscape feature was designed by John Carr of York for Bacon Frank of Campsall Hall in around 1784, and its ‘extensive and beautiful prospect’ was much admired.

Incidentally, Barnsdale also gave its name to the nearby Barnsdale Bar services, once one of chic roadside eateries pioneered by the Forte family. Like the well it too has disappeared, and today’s motorists thunder by in search of refreshment elsewhere.

The group of follies and monuments at Wentworth Woodhouse needs little introduction, being one of the finest collections of landscape ornaments in Britain.   So this post is just an opportunity for The Folly Flâneuse to remind you that you can climb the Hoober Stand and admire the Monument on bank holidays and Sundays from Spring Bank holiday until late August. And also to use some photographs taken during the wonderful March heatwave.

The Needle’s Eye can be visited at any time via the the public footpath which leads off Coley Lane, park in the lay-by on your right as you approach from the village.

The Hoober Stand can be climbed during the open days, but the exterior is accessible at all times from the public footpath. Follow the signs to Hoober and then Hoober Stand or see the estate’s website below for a map.

The Rockingham Monument can only be seen at close quarters on the summer open days so don’t miss the opportunity.

Ideally, visit the Wentworth Woodhouse mansion first  and see how the Rockingham Monument and Hoober Stand were placed as eye-catchers from the Palladian front. The third monument visible is Keppel’s Column which is featured here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/keppels-column-rotherham-south-yorkshire/

Check opening hours and learn more about the follies here https://wentworthestate.co.uk/visiting/monuments-follies/

Read about visiting the mansion and the great plans for its future here https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk

Joseph Locke was a railway pioneer. Sheffield born, he achieved great wealth, but business and a career in politics took him away from his native Yorkshire. He remained hugely popular in Barnsley and never forgot the town where he moved as a small boy, which benefitted ‘to a large extent in his liberality’. There was great sadness when his death was announced in September 1860, aged only 55.

The following year Locke’s widow, Phoebe, announced that she intended to create a ‘recreation ground’ for the people of Barnsley as a ‘mark of regard and affection for her late husband’, and 17 acres of land were bought from the estate of the Duke of Leeds. The Chairman of the Board of Health declared himself  ‘exceedingly well pleased with the plans for laying out the ground’, and the local newspaper reported that it was a ‘most munificent gift, and would prove … a pleasure to the inhabitants.’ 

Mrs Locke asked a Mr Edwards, an engineer from her late husband’s railway company Locke & Errington, to travel to Barnsley and prepare plans for laying out the ground. The opening of the park was marked with processions and a general holiday, and commemorated by a medal with a profile of Joseph Locke. On the reverse was a wreath of laurels and the legend ‘The Locke Park, given to the inhabitants of Barnsley by Phoebe, widow of the late Joseph Locke, June 10, 1862.’

Phoebe Locke died in 1866 and left the bulk of her fortune to her sister, Sarah McCreery. In 1871 McCreery travelled to Barnsley with an architect, Richard Phené Spiers, to discuss a substantial enlargement to the park in memory of her sister. The purchase of an extra 20 acres took some time to complete, and it wasn’t until October 1874 that the deeds were presented to the town. William Barron, famed for his work at Elvaston Castle in Derbyshire, was appointed to ‘lay out the whole of the park in the form of an ornamental garden’. The Board of Health ensured everything met with the ‘cordial approval’ of Miss McCreery and Spiers.

Spiers meanwhile had been drawing up plans for a monument to Mrs Locke which would sit on the highest point of the park. In July 1875 the papers announced that an ‘elegant tower of observation’ was to be constructed, and in 1876 the design was exhibited at the Royal Academy with the caption ‘Memorial Tower to Mrs Locke; now being erected in the Locke Park, Barnsley, from the design and under the supervision of R.P. Spiers.’ Spiers had studied architecture in  Paris, which was considered very unusual at that date, and the tower was believed to be ‘somewhat of the nature of one in the park at St Cloud, near Paris, destroyed three years ago’; this was the Lanterne de Démosthène, which was desecrated during the Franco-Prussian war. Spiers knew the building well, having captured it in a watercolour sketch in 1858. One can see the influence of the central shaft, but it is far from a slavish copy and Locke Tower is a wonderfully quirky and individual structure. “Did they use an architect?”, asked The Folly Flâneuses’s uncouth companion.

The park extension and tower were formally opened in August 1877 on a day of great festivities marred only by torrential rain. Another medal was produced bearing an image of the tower with, on the reverse, the words ‘In recognition of the generosity of Miss McCreery who on the 7th August 1877 added 20 acres of land to the park of Barnsley previously presented by her sister Phoebe Locke.’

The park was greatly appreciated by the ‘working classes’ who organised a subscription to erect an ornamental fountain to thank Miss McCreery. The fountain was also designed by Spiers. Joseph Locke himself had been commemorated with a larger than life bronze statue by the sculptor Baron Marochetti in 1866. However it is the monuments to the sisters Phoebe and Sarah which are of greatest historic significance, being rare dedications to non-royal women in a public park.

The Friends of Locke Park continue to campaign for investment in the grade II* listed tower and the park. In 2013 the public were readmitted to the interior after £80,000 was spent on the structure but further funding, estimated at around £250,000, is needed to restore the exterior.  A tall hedge and gates are now in the place which rather spoil the proportions, but keep out the vandals. The weather vane with Sarah McCreery’s monogram was blown off in a gale early this century and the Friends hope funds can be found to return it to the tower. Sadly philanthropists like the Lockes and Sarah McCreery are in short supply in the 21st century.

The Locke Park Tower is open to the public on the afternoon of the first Sunday of each month courtesy of the Friends of Locke Park http://www.friendsoflockepark.org.uk

For more on St Cloud http://www.saintcloud.fr/articles/dathenes-saint-cloud-lhistoire-dune-lanterne

The design for the memorial fountain is in the RIBA collection and can be seen here https://www.architecture.com/image-library/ribapix/image-information/poster/design-for-a-memorial-fountain-in-locke-park-barnsley-south-yorkshire-plan-and-elevation/posterid/RIBA99117.html

Now near neighbour to a Rotherham housing estate, Keppel’s Column originally stood in open ground on the edge of Scholes Wood on the Wentworth Woodhouse estate. An obelisk had been proposed for the site as early as 1769. Its original purpose was as an eye-catcher to terminate the southern vista from the new principal front of the Wentworth House mansion, balancing the pyramidal Hoober Stand to the north which is dated 1748. Keppel’s Column was clearly visible from the top of Hoober Stand, as was the Lady’s Folly, which featured here recently https://thefollyflaneuse.com/ladys-folly-tankersley-south-yorkshire/.  All three ornamental buildings could be seen from each other, and when guests were taken by carriage to climb a tower, or take tea in a summer house, they served to display the vast size of the Marquis of Rockingham’s estate.  

Rockingham originally asked his architect John Carr to build an obelisk on a pedestal base. This early design was to incorporate one of the four obelisks which stood on the lawn by Wentworth House. Carr designed a 45 foot tall tower on which the obelisk would sit. This obelisk-topped plan was abandoned with work not far advanced.*

The next iteration of the eye-catcher was discussed in 1776. By this date it had been decided to add another 78 feet to the structure as it currently stood and to finish it with a balustraded viewing platform. This became known as the Great Column or the Scholes Column.

In 1779 Rockingham asked Carr to remodel the Great Column as a ‘Naval Column’ to commemorate ‘Naval Honour and Naval Integrity’. The impetus for this change was the inconclusive battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778 following which there was a dramatic dispute between Keppel and one of his commanders, Sir Hugh Palliser. This led to Keppel being court-martialled on charges including undue haste in quitting a battle and failing to pursue the enemy. Keppel was a Whig and Palliser a Tory and the court-martial was as much, if not more, about Tory and Whig political rivalry as it was about the events at sea, and both parties used it to gain political advantage.

Keppel was acquitted and the charges against him dismissed as malicious. Rockingham was a friend and political colleague of Keppel, and had attended his trial in the company of other prominent Whigs who claimed Keppel as a hero. Prints, coins and gold boxes were circulated celebrating the acquittal and hailing it as a victory for justice.

Keppel himself visited Wentworth in August 1779. By that date the column must have been practically complete and the Admiral ascended the ‘true Doric column’ with Rockingham and John Carr to admire the view of ‘rivers, towns, gentleman’s seats’ as well as the ‘smoke from the foundries on the Don’. The column is described as being ‘inscribed to Naval Justice’, but if this was a literal inscription, in the form of a tablet on the column, it has been lost.  In December of that year it was decided that the column was to be terminated by a 30 foot high statue of Admiral Keppel, and the base embellished with carved ships’ prows in in the style of the rostral, or victory, columns of ancient Greece and Rome. For reasons unknown, the statue and prows were never added and the column shows the scars today of the constant changes to the design. When calculating the height of the column John Carr would have planned the entasis, a technical term for the slight bulge in a column which allows the eye to see the sides as parallel (if built straight, the sides of the column would have appeared to be concave). Because the column was terminated at a lesser height than originally planned the column appears to bulge as the entasis is not correct.

The formal event to ‘christen the Naval Column in honour of the Admiral’ took place in October 1780 when a ‘number of the nobility and gentry assembled’. As they approached a 21 gun salute was fired, and three cheers were raised by the gathered crowd. A band played and an ‘elegant cold collation’ was served. The party then ascended the 220 steps and a number of loyal toasts were drunk. The union flag was flown along with the words ‘Admiral Keppel for ever, the pride and glory of Great Britain’.

Newspaper reports of the monument and celebrations frustrated the Tory press, as lines published in response show:

Heroic deeds immortal are,
And need nor Stone nor Brass;
But Keppel’s must be told by these,
Or in Oblivion pass.
Do let the Stone, Good Rockingham!
A trust for once declare;
His Party Deeds, and not his brave,
By you recorded are.

The column was publicly accessible well into the 20th century, but was boarded up in the 1960s as unsafe. Sadly it became separated from the Wentworth Fitzwilliam estate and current owner, Rotherham Borough Council, urgently needs to address the building’s future. Thanks to the advent of drone photography there are short films on You Tube that show both the stunning views that were once to be enjoyed and worryingly the poor condition of the building. Despite occasional repairs the grade II listed structure is now urgently in need of restoration and is on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register.

UPDATE October 2021: In March 2021 listed building consent was granted conditionally for works to repair the column and restore access. In October 2021 the column was one of the beneficiaries of a grant from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund. Work is now underway.

UPDATE September 2021. Work on the column is now complete. Public access to the interior is by pre-booking only from April to October.

The column can be accessed from the nearby road, the heroically named Admiral’s Crest. Lady’s Folly is gone but you can read more here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/ladys-folly-tankersley-south-yorkshire/Hoober Stand, the Rockingham Monument and the other estate follies can be visited in the summer season https://wentworthestate.co.uk/visiting/monuments-follies/as can the Wentworth Woodhouse mansion, now in the care of a preservation trust https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk

*Rockingham’s heir, Lord Fitzwilliam, was determined to recycle the obelisks, and after an aborted plan to incorporate one into his monument to his uncle, Fitzwilliam eventually relocated all four obelisks to form a sort of guard of honour around the Rockingham Monument.

Root houses, so named because they incorporated natural materials such as tree trunks, branches, bark, moss or heather, became key features of gardens and parks in the 18th century. On the Cannon Hall estate near Barnsley a particualrly lovely example can be found. It stands at the end of a ride through Deffer Wood, with views out onto a green meadow.

Richard Payne Knight summed up the genre in his poem The Landscape in 1794:

The cover’d seat, that shelters from the storm,
May oft a feature of the landscape form,
Whether composed of native stumps and roots,
It spreads the creeper’s rich fantastic shoots;

Often such structures were associated with solitude and being, literally, at one with nature. Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall, near Barnsley, composed ‘Verses wrote in a Root House’ which begins:

Beneath these shaggy Roots grotesque & rude
A Spot retired for lonely musing made
Let all be peace – no lowering thoughts intrude
No passions fierce disturb ye gentle shade.

Spencer Stanhope’s poem describes how the country brought solace to his ‘harassed mind’. He seems to have had a rustic summerhouse at his seat at Horsforth, near Leeds, as well as this summer house at Deffer Wood, a short ride from Cannon Hall, so we can’t be sure which building is the subject of the poem. Deffer Wood was a favourite retreat, for hunting as well as relaxing, and Spencer Stanhope continued to develop the plantations in the early 19th century when he laid out new rides in the wood.

The poem concludes:

Such the loved leisure, such the genuine Joys
Of rural life ye healthful happy lot
Haste then from London’s wealth & smoke & noise
To Simple pleasures and the Sylvan Grot

The simple pleasures of Deffer Wood were threatened with smoke and noise in 1950 when a plan was announced to start open-cast mining in the wood. The local councils worked together to obtain a preservation order for Deffer Wood as a local beauty spot. The summer house had fallen into disrepair but was listed as Grade II in 1987 and then beautifully restored in 1991. The wood is owned by the Cannon Hall Estate which allows public access.

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