Painshill, or Pains Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, was the creation of the Hon. Charles Hamilton. From 1738 he landscaped the valley of the river Mole and decorated his estate with an enchanting array of garden buildings, including this pavilion which is known as the Gothic Temple. In 1953 Barbara Jones wrote that she feared the park was ‘beyond help’, but thanks to an amazing restoration project, which began in the 1980s and continues today, it has been returned to its former beauty and elegance.
Temple
The Garden Temple and the Pantheon, Ince Blundell, Merseyside.
In 1761, Henry Blundell was given control of the Ince Blundell estate by his father. He had recently married Elizabeth Mostyn and the couple settled into the mansion house, which had been built earlier in the century. Blundell was an avid collector, with the funds to indulge his passion, and after his wife’s early death he spent time in Italy before returning to Ince Blundell to build two temples ‘purposely for the reception of statuary’.
Freddie’s Folly, The Gibberd Garden, Harlow, Essex
In the 1970s the Coutts Bank building in central London was partly remodelled to a design by the architect Sir Frederick Gibberd. A new glass entrance was designed to replace the columned central section of the facade on the Strand. As work progressed Gibberd salvaged some of the redundant masonry to reuse at his Essex home. There he indulged in what the Architects’ Journal called ‘that virtuous activity’ of building follies.
Follies for breakfast.
In the 1980s follies played a part in promoting a new breakfast cereal: special packs of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain contained picture cards featuring ‘Gardens to Visit’. The twenty cards were illustrated with views of gardens in Britain and Ireland, all of them open to the public, and five follies or quirky garden ornaments were among the cards to be collected. As the blurb on the box announced ‘Most of us are enchanted by the magic of a beautiful garden’.
The Seat on the Mount, Holkham, Norfolk
In the 1740s William Kent designed a new garden ornament for Thomas Coke of Holkham. An artificial hillock was constructed on which the temple was to stand, giving it the name the Seat on the Mount. The temple was later pulled down, but fragments of the four busts which once decorated it were salvaged, and incorporated into a cottage in a nearby village. The Flâneuse has written about follies built from the remnants of houses, but a cottage decorated with the remnants of a garden temple is something new.
‘Features and Follies’ of Scotland
Hubert Walter Wandesford Fenwick, architect turned architectural historian and writer, was a regular contributor to The Scots Magazine, a monthly publication that claims to be the oldest magazine in Britain still in publication, having been launched in 1739. In 1965 Fenwick wrote an article about ‘Features and Follies’, in Scotland, illustrated with his own very attractive colour sketches.
The Temple of Theseus, Exmouth, Devon
In the early decades of the nineteenth century Lord Rolle of Bicton House in Devon, developed land by the sea in Exmouth in a bid to attract tourists. He made ‘commodious gravel walks’ and created gardens with rustic benches, as well as building elegant marine residences. Lord Rolle also granted a lease on a plot of land to one William Kendall, who in 1824 built a ‘very pretty’ house modelled on the Temple of Theseus in Athens.
Black Dick’s Temple, Whitley Beaumont, West Yorkshire
Many follies have lurid tales attached telling of wicked acts and/or ghostly goings-on and a classical temple, high on the Whitley Beaumont estate near Kirkheaton, doesn’t disappoint. It is known locally as Black Dick’s Temple, after Whitley Beaumont’s owner in the early seventeenth century, Sir Richard Beaumont. Local legends tell that Sir Richard ran up such huge debts gambling that he had to live a double-life as a highwayman. He is said to haunt the site and, of course, there are whispers of a network of secret tunnels under the building.
Rex Whistler and Renishaw, Derbyshire: panoramas and papier-mâché.
Eighty years ago this month Sir Osbert Sitwell and his good friend Rex Whistler were discussing how materials such as papier-mâché, much used in theatrical set construction, could be used in the ‘arts of landscaping and garden design’. Once the war was over they planned to erect a dramatic eye-catcher at Sir Osbert’s Renishaw home. But two months after their meeting came tragic news: in July 1944 Whistler was killed in action in France.
The Pigeon Cote, Kirkleatham, North Yorkshire
In 1934 a local paper published a ‘Cleveland Ramble’ featuring a walk around Kirkleatham village. The author looked across the park to the ‘elaborate castellated pigeon-cote’ which was described as a ‘startling example’ of the extravagant ‘pseudo Gothic craze’ of the later 18th century. Only a couple of decades after this account was published the castellations were gone, and the pigeon cote was cracked and crumbling, and soon to disappear.