In 1938 readers of the Surrey Advertiser were baffled by an announcement that the Earl of Inchcape was seeking permission to build a ‘Martello Tower’ on his Chinthurst Hill estate. Following up on a notice published the previous week, the paper felt the need to explain to its readers what a Martello Tower was. The article described the purpose of the defensive towers that had appeared during the Napoleonic wars, and the writer then concluded that ‘it seems improbable that Lord Inchcape’s proposed tower will be exactly similar to the coastal originals’.
Tower
The Tower, Rookesbury, Hampshire
In 1826 Charles Heathcote Tatham exhibited a view of a ‘tower now erecting’ at the Royal Academy. The tower was a belvedere, eye-catcher and summerhouse on the Rookesbury estate, near Wickham, where a substantial new house, also designed by Tatham, was under construction.
Curiosities of Town and Countryside
In 1941 Batsford published a new title by Edmund Vale called Curiosities of Town and Countryside. With a striking cover by Brian Cook, featuring the triumphal arch at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, the jacket blurb promised the reader ‘freaks, eccentricities and follies.’
Fragments and Connections
The Flâneuse recently attended the Garden Museum Literary Festival, the annual celebration of gardens and books organised by London’s Garden Museum. It blossoms at a different venue each year, and in 2025 it was held at Iford Manor, near Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, where stands this exceedingly pretty summerhouse.
Browne’s Folly, Monkton Farleigh, Wiltshire
In 1848 a brief note in local newspapers announced that a ‘lofty tower’ had been erected on Farleigh Down. Commanding the ‘most extensive and magnificent prospects’, the tower was built by Wade Browne, who had recently settled at Monkton Farleigh. The tower stands in Wiltshire – although very close to the border with Somerset.
The Automobile Association and Follies
In 1950 the Automobile Association (A.A.) published a handbook for drivers which included maps and a gazetteer of the towns and villages of England and Wales (Scotland had its own association). As post-war paper shortages eased, a new expanded edition was published in 1958 which included illustrations of the sites a motorist might expect to see as they travelled sedately along the roads of Britain (as the maps make clear the motorway network was then at a very early stage of development). Alongside the churches, monuments, castles, historic pubs, chalk figures and gibbets there are more than thirty follies for the driver to spot along his way.
Follyphilia.
In November 1960, The Queen magazine published a special issue that asked the question ‘What’s so different about the British?’ Amongst the contributors were Norman Parkinson on ‘British Clothes’, Ambrose Heath on the British and cooking and Laurie Lee on the village of Slad. And what could be more British than follies, the subject discussed by Nicholas Guppy, and illustrated in wildly extravagant fashion by cartoonist ffolkes.
Portobello Tower, Hilton Hall, Staffordshire
Travellers on the M6 might have called in to Hilton Services to break their journey. Few will know that only a few fields away stands a tall prospect tower, although they may have caught a glimpse of it from the motorway. The belvedere was built in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Vernon of Hilton Park in commemoration of the taking of Portobello in 1739.
Polly Peachum’s Tower, or the Mount House, Bolton Hall, North Yorkshire
Bolton Hall in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, was the seat of the Dukes of Bolton. The 3rd Duke’s mistress (and later wife) was the acclaimed actress and singer Lavinia Fenton, best known for creating the role of Polly Peachum in the premiere of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. In the 19th century writers told the romantic tale that this tower was built as a summerhouse retreat for the Duchess, but it actually began life years earlier as a hunting stand.
The Wallace Monument, or Barnweil Tower, Ayrshire
The gruesome tale is told that William Wallace, the famed Scottish soldier, stood on Barnweil Hill, near Tarbolton in Ayrshire, and watched as the barns in which he had trapped English soldiers were set alight. He is supposed to have uttered the words ‘The barns o’Ayr burn weel’, giving the spot its name. Few people seem to have genuinely believed this story, but in 1854 the decision was taken to erect a tower on the hilltop to commemorate ‘the matchless Sir William Wallace’.