architecture, belvedere, Buckinghamshire, eyecatcher, Folly, garden, garden history, landscape, Mausoleum, Pagoda, Suffolk, Temple, Tower

Recording Britain

The Dashwood Mausoleum, West Wycombe. Image ©fotoLibra/Scott A. McNealy.

This weekend the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Thinking of the events of 1939-45, the Folly Flâneuse was reminded of a wartime project to document the changing rural and urban face of Britain. At a time when the future seemed uncertain,  ‘Recording Britain’ commissioned artists to portray the country as it then was, creating a visual history for future generations.

architecture, eyecatcher, Folly, garden, landscape, Obelisk, sham church, Suffolk, Tower

The Tattingstone Wonder, Tattingstone, Suffolk

Squire White of Tattingstone Place in Suffolk wanted an eye-catcher to enrich the view from his mansion. Rather than start from scratch, he simply enlarged and embellished a couple of existing cottages, adding a tower and some gothic windows. He called his folly The Tattingstone Wonder, and the story goes that he declared that the local people were wont to wonder at nothing, so he would give them something to wonder at.