As part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture a new landscape ornament has appeared on an elevated spot above the little town of Haworth, best known as the home of the Brontë sisters. Creative Director Shanaz Gulzar commissioned four artists to create site-specific works for Penistone Hill Country Park. The project is called Wild Uplands as the artworks are sited on a lofty and lonely common (the wily, windy moors of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights) that is only ten miles or so from busy Bradford.

County Durham-based artist Steve Messam has created The Tower, a 10 metre high arched structure clad in the raw fleeces of two breeds of sheep that can be found on the local hills: the Lonk and the Derbyshire Gritstone. In his own words Messam ‘draws inspiration from geology, cultural histories, and farming methods, to create installations that bring a sense of place to life’.

Messam’s work references both the importance of wool to the development of Bradford, and the very stone that was used to build the handsome stone town in the nineteenth century (it became a city in 1897). Close to The Tower is a former quarry, and abandoned blocks of stone can be seen scattered on the hillside.

The Tower is built of blocks of plywood and steel mesh around a steel and aluminium frame. The blocks are clad in the untreated fleeces, which echo the muted beiges and greys of the building stone from the quarry.

There’s an immersive sound walk that accompanies the artworks, created by Opera North, or you can just enjoy the ever-changing soundscape of the breeze rustling through the grass and (when the Flâneuse visited) the song of the meadow pipits.

Visitors can walk up to the four installations from Haworth village, or it’s a short level stroll from Penistone Hill car park. The temporary landmark can be seen until 12 October 2025 and there’s more information on the Tower and the other artworks here.

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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.

Sir Richard (1574-1631), 1st and only baronet, or Black Dick if that’s the version you prefer, built a new mansion at Whitley Beaumont which remained in the family until the early twentieth century. Sir Richard is commemorated with a magnificent monument in St John’s, Kirkheaton.

… also shown here, with an appreciative visitor, in a lovely watercolour sketch by Huddersfield artist Peace Sykes.

The tales of Sir Richard and his dissolute lifestyle may or may not be true, but he never knew the Palladian temple. It was built in the middle of the eighteenth century, as a landscape ornament and banqueting house, for a later Richard Beaumont (1719/20-1764). The architect was possibly James Paine (1717-1789), who was married to Richard’s sister Charlotte, and who worked on the house at Whitley Beaumont in the 1750s. It was extant by 1760 when a visitor admired the grand Terrace Walk which led to the ‘Temple’. A domed banqueting room, once decorated with ornate plasterwork, stands above a basement that probably housed a kitchen for the servants (although it is sometimes said to be an ice-house).

The next generation of Beaumonts remodelled the park south of the house to a design by Capability Brown. By the middle of the twentieth century, this part of the park had been exploited for its coal reserves, but the terrace and temple north of the house remained largely unchanged, although greatly neglected. The Beaumonts had sold up in the 1920s, having auctioned the mansion’s fixtures and fittings in 1917.

The estate was once more offered for sale in 1950, when it was auctioned in lots. The auctioneers didn’t even consider that a private owner might make the ‘impressive mansion’ their home, and although ‘renovation as an institution’ was a proposed use, it seemed to be taken for granted that it was ‘eligible for demolition’. Lot 2 was ‘The Avenue’ which included that ‘local landmark known as The Temple’.

As predicted, the house was indeed pulled down soon after the sale in 1950, and the materials sold. Local boy Brian Tattersfield began to visit Whitley Beaumont just as demolition started, and explored every corner of the estate. In his own words it became a ‘lifelong obsession’. Whenever a busy career (as one half of the acclaimed design studio Minale Tattersfield) allowed, he returned to his early Box Brownie photo’s and sketches, and created finished pen and ink drawings. Although the dome of the Temple was gone when he first visited, he always preserved the building’s dignity and showed it intact.

Today the temple is a ruin. Vandals and thieves have long-since stripped the lead from the roof (where was the terrifying ghost of Black Dick when he was needed?), and the internal floor is long gone, leaving a gaping hole inside the building. The soot-blackened shell remains a local landmark and can be seen from nearby public footpaths.

Thanks to Katina Bill, Senior Curator, Kirklees Museums and Galleries and Brian Tattersfield for their invaluable help with this post.

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When first built the handsome gazebo in the grounds of Crow Nest in Dewsbury would have had views over the estate’s fine gardens and pleasure grounds. At the end of the 19th century Crow Nest was bought for the people of Dewsbury, and has now been a public park for 130 years. The Temple remains an ornament to the park, but sadly today it has a rather forlorn appearance.

Information about the Crow Nest estate is quite hard to find (and it shouldn’t be confused with Crow Nest at Lightcliffe, which is not far away). We know that in 1733 it was purchased from the Bedford family by Samuel Burroughs (c.1695-1761), a Master in Chancery and author of important texts on the legal system. Upon his death in 1761 the house passed to his recently widowed daughter, Sarah, who arranged for Crow Nest to be let the following year. The ‘exceedingly pleasant house’ was described as ‘fit for a Gentleman’s family’ and came with gardens, orchards and pasture. There is no mention of the temple, although two maps show it was extant at that date.

The first visual evidence for the gazebo is on a plan of the River Calder surveyed by the engineer John Smeaton in 1757 (the house is mistakenly named as ‘Crows Mount’). The gazebo can be seen in a corner of the walled grounds, and traces of these walls can still be seen attached to the temple today. A map dated to c.1766 shows the gazebo and mansion in more detail.

In 1785 Crow Nest was sold to Richard Milnes, but in 1798 he was declared bankrupt, and the estate was once more offered for sale. The ‘Most Valuable and Truly Desirable Estate’ was described as ‘situate upon an eminence, commanding a most extensive view’. It was bought by the Hague family who remodelled the mansion and remained there for almost a century until they sold the estate to Dewsbury Corporation, who wished to create a public park for the townsfolk. The park opened in 1893 with a day of ‘holiday and public rejoicing’.

The town plan of Dewsbury produced by the Ordnance Survey office in 1852 shows the Temple at the end of a long straight path which was terminated at the other end by a summerhouse. At that date it had two adjoining walls, one of which was  connected to an arch, seen in this photograph. Although ‘old castellated arches of Norman design’ were mentioned in 1889, they had disappeared by the time the 25″ map was published in 1894 and the Temple was by then a free standing structure.

The building is not named on the 1850s 6″ Ordnance Survey map, but is called ‘The Temple’ on the 25″ map surveyed in the late 1880s (but not published until 1894). By the time a revised edition of the map was published in 1907, Crow Nest Park had been created with lake and island, bowling green and, of course, a bandstand. The designer, William Cox, incorporated the Temple into the layout of the park, surrounding it with ornamental shrubberies. From the upstairs room of the gazebo there was a panorama of the whole park and the countryside beyond.

A lovely watercolour in the collection of Kirklees Museums calls the building the ‘Observatory’, but it is likely that the term was used in the sense of a belvedere or gazebo, a building from which the view could be admired, rather than as an astronomical tower. Locally the story is told that a tunnel leads from the mansion to the Temple, and that one of the owners of the estate used it to to escape from his bad-tempered wife – a tale attached to more than one folly.

In the early 20th century a group of retired Dewsbury men known as ‘the Veterans’ Parliament’ used the Temple as a shelter in which to meet. Judging by their age the men had probably served in the wars in South Africa, and the park houses a memorial to the friends they lost which was unveiled by Baden-Powell in 1906. By 1937 the men were in their seventies and finding the stairs in the building a challenge. Bemoaning the lack of facilities to ‘mash a pot of tea’ they left for alternative accommodation.

Soon after that date Britain was at war again, and the maintenance of ornamental buildings was not a priority. At date unknown the elegant roof was removed, and it became a rather grand store for park equipment. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘quite elegant’, the Temple was listed at grade II in 1985, but is bricked-up and sadly neglected today.

In 1894 a committee was formed to establish a museum in the mansion, and it was a popular attraction for over a century. Sadly the Dewsbury Museum was closed in 2016 after the council withdrew funding as part of a programme of austerity measures. A long campaign to keep the building in community use was unsuccessful, and the house (grade II) currently stands empty. Crow Nest Park is listed at grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

The Temple delighted the families who made Crow Nest their home for a century and a half, and has been an attractive feature for the visitors to a public park for another 130 years and counting. It is sad to see it neglected today.

Thanks to Katina Bill of Kirklees Museums for her help with this post.

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Early in the 19th century Benjamin Farrer built a tower close to his home in Fagley, then a village on the edge of Bradford. The elegant edifice declined after its builder’s death and survived for less than a century. But that was time enough to accumulate the usual fanciful folly stories.

Farrer (1761-1833) built the tower in 1828 and placed upon it a tablet with the inscription:

NOT FOR ANY MERIT. PURE, SINCERE LOVE AND ESTEEM CAUSED THIS TOWER TO BE ERECTED TO PERPETUATE TO ENDLESS AGES THE MEMORY OF SUSAN, JOSEPH, JOHN AND SAMUEL JOBSON, UPRIGHT HONEST PERSONS. ERECTED BY BENJ. FARRER, A.D. 1828.’

In 1876 the local historian William Cudworth painted Farrer as a man who was very careful with his money, calling him a ‘bachelor miser’. He told how Farrer, a wool merchant, would walk to York to sell his goods rather then pay for transport, and concluded that few lamented his death. According to Cudworth those named on the tower had scraped together ‘bits of property’ which they left to Farrer, a man as ‘penurious as themselves’.

Published more than forty years after Farrer’s death, it is not clear how much of Cudworth’s account of his parsimony was fact, and how much had been embellished in the intervening years. Later published sources have been based on Cudworth’s writing, so the story has been perpetuated now for almost 150 years.

What is certain is that the four people commemorated by the tower are Farrer’s mother, Susan (or Susannah) and her three younger siblings: Samuel, Joseph and John. As each of the siblings died, their money and property passed to the last surviving brother, John, and it was he who chose his nephew Benjamin as his heir.

John died in 1826 and Farrer then erected the tower in memory of his mother and uncles, which must surely redeem his character a little: he can’t have been such a skinflint if he was willing to invest some of his fortune in a fancy folly? The roof of the tower was completed by Farrer’s builder, Joseph Watson, in the autumn of 1828, with finishing touches to the interior the following year, when the ‘cubard Doors’ were fitted. Sadly, what purpose the tower served has long been forgotten, but presumably it served as a belvedere, eye-catcher and pic-nic pavilion. It is marked on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map simply as ‘Tower’.

By the time Cudworth was recounting the history of the tower in the 1870s the tower had become a ‘conspicuous object’ in the grounds of Thomas Milner’s Spire Nurseries in Fagley (the area around the tower was known as Spire Fields). Milner leased the ground from the Farrer family from sometime before 1859 until 1882 when the business was liquidated: locals recalled that Milner used the lower storey as a tool shed.

Farrer’s descendants sold the Fagley property, including what had become known as ‘Tower Fields’ in 1899. Sometime around then the upper storey was occupied by a ‘fish hawker’: an undignified end for this once fine tower. Picture postcards of the tower were produced in the early 20th century, but by then the turret was roofless and had become known as the Spy Tower (possibly a contraction of Spire Tower), with the accompanying story that children used to climb the tower to spy on courting couples in the lane below. And of course there were tales that it was haunted, and local children would dare each other to run down the narrow lane that passed it.

In May 1915 it was reported that one side of the tower’s base was bulging, and that ‘it does not seem probable the tower will stand another twenty years, let alone endless ages’. In fact it didn’t survive another year, and by early January 1916 had been ‘reduced to a heap of stones’. The Bradford historian Arthur Harrison remembered seeing the plaque ‘leaning against a shed’ in a nearby quarry in the 1930s, but it is not known to survive today. For some years ‘hummocky rubble’ marked the site of the tower, but the land has since been developed and no trace of this fine tower remains.

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome, as is any further information about the tower. You will find the comments box if you scroll down the page (only your name will appear online, your email address remains private).

Until the middle of the 19th century visitors to Harewood House, near Leeds, could open the doors of the Saloon (today known as the Main Library) on the piano nobile and ‘walk out upon the fine portico’. From there they could admire the lake and plantations created by the finest landscape designers of the 18th century, and on the horizon they would glimpse a fine domed temple.

Harewood was built by John Carr for Edwin Lascelles (1713-1795) who was created Baron Harewood in 1790. In 1780, soon after the house was complete, Lascelles commissioned Carr to design a temple for the elevated ground south of the house. Carr (1723-1807) annotated his elevation drawing with the title ‘Temple of Venus’ and it shows an octagonal central drum surrounded by an arcaded basement and a colonnade around the first floor.

This first suggestion was quickly abandoned and Carr drew a new design with the central tower flanked by two wings ‘to allow a covered way to the upper room’. He was paid for all three drawings in December 1780. The section shows a grand interior, with a domed ceiling with decorative plasterwork. The name ‘Temple of Venus’ probably references the pigeon house which Carr remodelled to create the temple, doves being an attribute of Venus. There is no record of a statue of the goddess being placed in the temple, and in fact, the name disappears completely after the one inscription on Carr’s elevation, and it becomes known simply as ‘the temple’.

After the drawings were presented there was then an unexplained gap of 14 years when nothing seems to have happened. Then in 1794 there was a flurry of work to execute Carr’s designs: the pigeon house was cleaned, stone, timber and lead taken to the ‘temple’, and in 1796 the interior was plastered and a marble chimney piece was fitted. In the midst of all this work Edwin Lascelles, Lord Harewood, died and was succeeded by his cousin Edward Lascelles (1740-1820, created 1st Earl of Harewood in 1812). Once complete the temple became a popular destination for walks from the house.

The temple, whilst still an eye-catcher from the mansion, was later put to a more practical use as a dwelling house. At the time of the 1841 census it was home to John Lister, an ‘agricultural labourer’ and his 2 sons and 2 daughters. By 1851 Lister had died and the temple was home to his daughter Elizabeth, who had formerly been in service at Harewood House, and her siblings.

By 1855 Lord Harewood was considering demolishing the temple and had the materials valued. In 1857 wood and lead were stripped from the building, and in 1859 full demolition began: the earl’s agent wrote that it was ‘exceedingly well built and difficult to pull down’ and it eventually took 145 man-days to dismantle the temple and sort the materials. Much of the stone was reused at John Sawer’s nearby farm at Lofthouse.

The temple was then largely forgotten, although the ground around it remained known as Temple Wood. In autumn 2001 Harewood was the focus of an episode of the BBC’s House Detectives at Large. The BBC filmed archaeologists from the University of Bradford investigating the site of the temple, and uncovering the foundations of the octagonal central block and the two side wings. The clay pipes and pottery found on site were utilitarian, and probably dated from the period when the Lister family were in residence. So thorough had the clearance been in 1859 that a single block of dressed stone was the only remnant above ground.

One fragment of the temple might survive. In the private northern pleasure grounds a substantial stone urn stands as a feature. Its dimensions correspond with the urn on John Carr’s reworked plan, so perhaps this ornamental fragment was salvaged from the demolition in 1859 and given a new home.

John Carr was born in 1723 so this year we celebrate the 300th anniversary of his birth. Whilst the temple is gone, as is the portico on the south front (swept away by Sir Charles Barry when he remodelled the house in the 1840s), Harewood House, its stables and many estate buildings are still very much a monument to Carr’s skill and imagination as an architect.

The site of the Temple of Venus is not publicly accessible, but the view across the lake to the house that it enjoyed can be appreciated from the footpath which enters the park at Lofthouse Lodge, south of the house on the A61.

Also born 300 years ago in 1723 was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Harewood House is marking the occasion with a new look at his many works there, including the chance to see the portrait of Edwin Lascelles at close range and out of its grand frame. Reframing Reynolds can be seen until 28 August 2023, but if you can’t make it by then the portraits are always on display https://harewood.org

Thanks to Susan Kellerman who was the Folly Flâneuse’s partner-in-crime when first researching the temple many years ago, and to Rebecca Burton, Curator and Archivist at Harewood House.

Top image: View in the park at Harewood (detail). An intriguing view attributed to Harriet Lascelles with a design for a bridge (unexecuted) added in an unknown hand. Courtesy of the Harewood House Trust.

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Robert Elam bought the Woodhouse Grove estate at the end of the 18th century and set about improving his new home and laying-out new pleasure grounds. On a wooded mount, overlooking this new landscape, he erected a tall stone belvedere which survives today. 

Elam (1759-1826), a member of the Society of Friends, rebuilt the house and landscaped the grounds, adding a stone bath house and a network of gravel walks. There was a hot-house and a green-house with vines and he planted ‘English Fruit Trees’ and ‘most kinds of American Apple Trees’. These had been imported by Elam himself, presumably through his contacts in the Quaker world of merchants. A visitor in 1802 admired the ‘extremely beautiful’ gardens.

The grounds already featured a mount, and a vignette on a late 18th century map shows it topped with a summerhouse. Elam replaced this with a square belvedere, and planted the mount with larches and firs through which winding walks led to the summit. Like many follies of the period, the tower is said to have been constructed to give employment in a time of economic hardship: local legend says that Elam had all of the stone carried by hand to create more work.

The ‘nearly Forty Feet high’ tower was built of red brick faced with stone, and roofed with lead. From the castellated rooftop there was an ‘extensive and varied View of the surrounding Country’. Elam and his guests could enjoy views of the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The passage of boats on these two busy waterways added much to the ‘picturesque beauty of the scene’.

Sadly Elam would not enjoy his new home for long. Having spent extravagantly on his new home, the story goes that he found himself in financial difficulties and was forced to put the estate on the market. This may be myth, but for some reason the estate was offered for sale in 1802, and when a buyer was not found the ‘justly-admired Residence called Woodhouse Grove’ was offered at auction in Leeds a year later.

In 1811 the estate was back on the market, having been advertised as ‘very cheap’. It was purchased by the Wesleyans to be used as a ‘large seminary of education’, and has continued as a school ever since.

Elam settled in Roundhay, near Leeds, but his brief period of ownership of Woodhouse Grove was remembered. William Greenwood’s The Vale of Apperley, published in 1822, featured his folly:

Charming the view which here the eye commands,
To Woodhouse Grove, where Elam’s Tower stands,
And Aire is seen to glide with devious flow,
‘Neath it’s fair banks where spreading osiers grow…

The tower inspired a schoolboy drama written by Old Grovian Arthur Lincoln Haydon, who was a pupil at the school in the late 1880s. He went on to be the editor of the hugely popular Boy’s Own Paper and author of ripping boarding school yarns such as Terry’s Thrilling Term.

In 1929 Haydon published The Secret of Tuff’s Tower, in which Harrowcliffe school, with its folly tower on a mound, is a thinly-disguised Woodhouse Grove (the author admits as much in his dedication). What dastardly deeds are underway in the ‘square turret of the tall building [which] stood out sombrely above the tops of the elms’? It goes without saying that the plucky pupils solve the mystery, and outwit the ‘villainous, rough-looking’ gang printing counterfeit money in a vault below the tower.

Known to generations of pupils as the ‘Observatory’, the leaded roof is now gone, as is the staircase, but the hollow shell of the tower remains a dramatic landmark. Woodhouse Grove continues as a school, with the tower a prominent feature of the school badge. The grounds are strictly private, but Elam’s Tower can be glimpsed from nearby roads, particularly in the winter months when the surrounding foliage has died back. The tower is listed at grade II.

R.A.H. Goodyear was another Woodhouse Grove old boy who wrote a schoolboy adventure featuring a folly. You can read about it here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/faringdon-tower-faringdon-oxfordshire-and-a-novel-idea/

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In the early 18th century Bramham Park, just south of Wetherby in West Yorkshire, was the seat of Robert Benson, 1st Baron Bingley. His laying-out of the park was summarised by Lady Oxford after her visit in 1745: ‘Lord Bingley has adorned a barren country in a most delightful manner with water and wood walks’. The next generation continued his work, and their additions included a little gothic temple which could be seen from different viewpoints in the gardens.

Benson died in 1731, and the title expired with him. Bramham passed to his daughter Harriet, and her husband George Fox, and the couple continued to improve the landscape. In the summer of 1750 the prolific diarist and traveller Bishop Pococke visited Bramham and wrote that there was a ‘Gothick building not quite finished’. The architect of the little temple is not known, but in fact all that Harriet and George really needed was a competent stonemason, for the design was taken directly from a recently published pattern book: Batty Langley’s Ancient Architecture of 1742.

Batty Langley (1696-1751) first dabbled in garden design before switching his focus to architecture. He was an excellent self-publicist, and confidently described his designs as ‘Exceeding every Thing thats Extant’. His brother Thomas supplied the engravings, but seems to have received little of the credit.

Pattern books were guides to the latest taste in architecture, with engraved designs that could be copied by gentlemen and their builders. Sometimes the plates just provided inspiration, and the plans could be tweaked to suit their purpose, but at Bramham however the design was followed very closely.

In the 19th and into the 20th century the building was surrounded by formal flower beds and statuary, as shown in this sketch and watercolour, and in the many postcards views that were printed.

In 1828 there was a devastating fire in the mansion at Bramham, and the house then stood empty for many years (although the gardens were maintained as the family continued to live nearby). In the first decades of the 20th century Col George and the Hon Mrs Lane Fox set to work to restore the house and grounds. They converted the Gothic Temple into a water tower, removing the original pointed roof, and fitting concrete beams on which the tank could sit under a flat roof.

In 1958 the next generation, Col ‘Joe’ and the Hon Mrs Lane Fox (the current owner’s grandparents), restored the interior plasterwork, with the support of the Historic Buildings Council and the expertise of the Plastering Instructors at Leeds College of Technology and Halifax Technical College. The Hon Mrs Lane Fox then commissioned the garden designer James Russell to lay out the grounds around the temple and the adjacent bowling green and dogs’ graves.

In recent years the present owner, Nick Lane Fox, has remodelled the area, and reopened views into the Black Fen parkland, as was originally suggested in John Wood’s 1728 design for the park. All but a couple of the best trees were removed, and the meadows replanted with traditional grasses and wildflowers. Nick is very pleased with the results (although not so keen on the days he had to spend digging out thistles), with the meadows now looking as ‘if they have been there forever’. He has plans to rebuild the roof to the original pointed design as soon as funds are available.

Almost certainly contemporary with the building at Bramham was the Gothic Temple at Davenport House in Shropshire, the seat of Sharington Davenport. The temple, based on the same Batty Langley design, is sadly long gone, but some years ago historian John Harris recognised the temple’s design source when examining a painting of Davenport House by Thomas Robins. Sharington Davenport was laying out his grounds at Davenport House in the same period that the Bramham temple was erected. 

Also based on Langley’s design is the frontage of an ornate cottage in County Kildare in Ireland. Lady Louisa Connolly added the gothic facade to an existing cottage in 1785, creating an eyecatcher from the river walk on her Castletown estate.

Touring Painshill in Surrey in 1761 Horace Walpole, aesthete and social commentator, noted ‘the Gothic building […] taken from Battey Langley’s book’. Unlike the Bramham or Castletown buildings, the Painshill temple is not a literal translation of any of Langley’s published designs, and it is not clear why Walpole made the connection. But it did give Walpole, who was no fan of Langley, an excuse for a moan: he thought the temple an ‘unmeaning edifice’ and objected to the use of the gothic style for a garden pavilion because, he opined, ‘the Goths never built summer-houses or temples’.

The gardens and landscape at Bramham can be explored, but prior arrangement is necessary as the park is sometimes closed for special events https://www.bramhampark.co.uk

Batty Langley Lodge at Castletown is available for holidays via the Irish Landmark Trust https://www.irishlandmark.com/property/batty-langley-lodge/

The temple at Painshill (GII*) is just one of the beautifully restored landscape ornaments in the park https://www.painshill.co.uk

The wonderful Robins painting of Davenport House is on long-tern loan to the Bath Preservation Trust and can be seen at their museum No 1 Royal Crescent in Bath https://no1royalcrescent.org.uk

You can find out more about Thomas Robins and his wonderful views of gardens in Cathryn Spence’s excellent and lavishly illustrated new book on his work: Nature’s Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden https://www.stephen-morris.co.uk

For more on Batty Langley see https://thegardenstrust.blog/2017/08/05/batty-goes-gothick/

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Bretton Hall, near Wakefield, is now best known as the home of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where artworks have been displayed in the open air, and in purpose built galleries, since 1977. But long before these works arrived, the park was home to a collection of ornamental garden buildings, including the enchanting tiered tower called Bella Vista.

Bretton Hall was the seat of the Wentworth family, and in the second half of the 18th century Sir Thomas Wentworth (later Wentworth Blackett, 1725-1792) remodelled the park with lakes, planting and follies, including a double-faced temple (see link below) and a grotto. Bella Vista  (sometimes Belle Vista) was probably designed by John Carr of York, who was active at Bretton in the 1760s and 70s, and representations on estate maps from the early 19th century show that a tiered structure was built, close to this original design.

Bella Vista stood high above the mansion, with sweeping views across the Bretton parkland and beyond, and was backed by woodland called the Bella Vista Plantation. Although constructed to this elaborate design as an eye-catcher from the house and pleasure grounds below, Bella Vista was also a belvedere, a destination for carriage rides and picnics, and it it also had a more practical function as a lodge.

By 1881 it was home to a family of 11 – George Wilkinson, a labourer, his wife, and 9 children between the ages of 2 months and 24 years of age called Bella Vista Lodge their home. This remarkable feat was achieved by covering in the open arcade at ground level (which originally housed the stairs to the upper stories), and creating a series of small rooms to augment the existing internal spaces. An ingenious use of space, but it must still have been a bit of a squeeze. The upper tiers were probably removed at the time of this conversion.

Bella Vista fell into disrepair after the Second World War when Bretton Park had been requisitioned, and was demolished as unsafe in the 1950s. Only the entrance drive and gate piers survive.

The lost building was recreated a few years ago by two of the Folly Flâneuse’s favourite artists. In 2017-2018 the Yorkshire Sculpture Park held an exhibition of work by Ed Kluz, called Sheer Folly: Fanciful Buildings of Britain. To accompany the show Ed produced this delightful limited edition screen print of Bella Vista by moonlight:

Complementing Ed’s work, the exhibition also featured an exquisite miniature silver model of the folly by Vicky Ambery-Smith, who creates jewellery and small decorative pieces in silver and gold.

Bretton Hall is currently being converted into a hotel by property developers Rushbond (let’s hope they name a bedroom the ‘Bella Vista Room’, as was the case when it was a family home).

The gardens and pleasure grounds of Bretton Hall are home to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park https://ysp.org.uk. The site of Bella Vista is not within the YSP but can be seen from a public footpath.

For more on Ed Kluz see https://www.edkluz.co.uk and you can buy the screen print here https://penfoldpress.co.uk/products/bella-vista

You can see more of Vicky Ambery-Smith’s work here http://www.vickiamberysmith.co.uk

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Nostell Priory, not far from Wakefield in West Yorkshire, is a magnificent 18th century mansion built adjacent to the site of an Augustinian priory. Architect James Paine worked at Nostell for around 30 years, before Robert Adam was called in to add new wings and other works. Adam also designed one of the most luscious of lodges to be found on a country estate.

The new house was commissioned by Sir Rowland Winn, 4th bart. (1706-1765), whose family had owned Nostell since the middle of the 17th century. The original design was by gentleman-architect Col. James Mosyer, but it was modified by James Paine who went on to work at Nostell for 30 years. In the same period the grounds were landscaped with lakes and plantations. Sir Rowland was succeeded in 1765 by his son, also Rowland (1739-1785) and it was he, the fifth baronet, who invited Robert Adam to Nostell. Adam remodelled the stables, created stunning interiors, began ambitious (but ultimately largely unrealised) additions to the house, and designed new lodges.

In the 18th century the terms obelisk and pyramid could be synonymous, so whilst we today would think this structure pyramidal, it was known as the Obelisk Lodge. Adam drew up plans for the ‘Gateway for the Park’ in 1776 and work began immediately. The original drawings show that a pair of sphinx were to terminate the flanking walls, but if they are ever installed they are now lost without trace (see link below). The drive straddled by the lodge brought traffic from the important Pontefract to York road, and it must have been a great thrill for visitors to pass through this monumental lodge in their carriages, before sweeping down over the end of the lake and then climbing again for the mansion to burst into view.

There was accommodation for the gate-keeper in the two small rooms flanking the pyramid. With the arrival of the railway in the 19th century, the Obelisk Lodge was used less and a gate-keeper was no longer needed, although a colliery labourer, a stonemason’s labourer and gamekeepers (the lodge was well-placed to spot poachers entering the park) are recorded in residence over the century. The lodge was by now known locally as the Needle’s Eye (or Needle Eye), perhaps because of its similarity to the arch-pierced pyramid at Wentworth Woodhouse, about 15 miles away. It continued as a family home until the 1950s, but once empty began to decline.

By 1977, when surveyed for the National Monuments Record, it was dilapidated and the tip was crumbling. A decade later the lodge featured in the exhibition (and accompanying catalogue) Georgian Arcadia: Architecture for the Park and Garden, which was held to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Georgian Group. The ‘dramatic Piranesian conception’ was described as neglected and vandalised, and so it remained until the beginning of the 21st century.

In 2002 it was announced that £4.2 million pounds of Heritage Lottery Funding would allow the acquisition of this previously private part of the estate, as well as meeting the costs of a major programme of renovation and restoration at Nostell that included the Grade II* listed Obelisk Lodge. The singular lodge, which had become pointless in more ways than one, is now once again a magnificent parkland feature.

Nostell Priory was given to the National Trust in lieu of tax in 1953  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/nostell

For Adam’s drawing in the collection of the Sir John Soane Museum see http://collections.soane.org/THES92166

All modern photo’s were taken on rather lovely day in November 2020, when local restrictions allowed, and the National Trust team were doing an excellent job of managing safe access to the park.

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Above the village of Longwood, just outside Huddersfield, there stands what can only be described as a strange stump of a building. This is the  Longwood Tower, built by local men without formal design or architect, in time for the intriguingly-named Longwood Thump of 1861.

The Thump was the name given to the local holiday celebration, and the name is peculiar to Longwood. Nearby Kirkheaton had its annual Rant, and Almondbury a Rush, whilst Honley was a little more transparent with its Feast. At each games were played, picnics were eaten, and the ale flowed. In 1861, when the Longwood Tower (also known as the Nab End Tower) was built, there was considerable hardship in the area with many men out of work ‘during the manufacturing distress’. The unemployed men used their time to build ‘the conspicuous tower’ with the permission of the landowner, William Shaw of Botham Hall, and using stone from the adjacent quarry.

‘A Novel Erection’, ran the headline in the local paper, the Huddersfield Examiner, in August 1861. From the start the building was considered a ‘curious affair’, with its great mass of dry stones, but it formed the centrepiece of the Thump with feasting and fireworks lasting several days. The rustic date stone of 1861 is accompanied by the initials G.H. for George Hellawell, a stonemason who lived in the village and supervised the building. George Collier of Milnsbridge wrote lines to celebrate the opening:

On Longwood Edge there stands a Tower,
that end near Quarmby Clough,
and if you stand out by the church,
you’ll see it plain enough.
This Tower was built by men and boys
of Longwood, that is true,
and if you want the height of it
it’s twenty-nine feet two.
So come my lads and lasses gay,
come, and join the throng,
we’ll have a spree this Longwood Thump
in eighteen sixty-one.

The tower provided a backdrop to cricket matches between local teams, including the Lumb Challenge Cup of 1889 where ‘the mighty Armitage Bridge crumbled to small pieces, and fell a ruined wreck in sight of the mythical structure of Longwood Tower’. The Athletic News reporter joked that the victors, Cliffe End, had the edge because the ‘Bridgers’ were unused to the altitude of the ground and were exhausted by the walk up the steep slope.

In 1895 the Shaw family gave the tower and the surrounding land to the people of Huddersfield as a recreation ground. Three years later they paid for the already deteriorating tower (throwing the loose stones down the hill was apparently a favourite pastime) to be consolidated, but payment was accompanied with the proviso that it was then the sole responsibility of the town council.

The Longwood Thump had always involved music, and as well as Brass Bands there were choral performances, called ‘sings’. Longwood’s pioneering role in the development of this local tradition, led to their annual event becoming known as ‘the Mother of all Sings’. A hollow just below the tower was developed as an outdoor concert hall, although crowds overflowed across the whole hilltop: crowds were estimated at 5,000 at the 1893 event when Handel’s Messiah was among the works performed.

At a time when fundraising for the National Health Service has been very much in the news, thanks to the efforts of Captain Sir Tom Moore and others, it is worth remembering the days when there was no free healthcare, and charity was often the only hope. The Longwood Sing of 1869 was in aid of Samuel Shaw, an elderly music-lover who was sick. In 1896 the Sing raised funds for the Huddersfield Infirmary, and the organisers expressed a hope that surrounding districts would follow their lead. As the programme above illustrates, the sings have continued to raise funds for good causes.

It’s doubtful if the builders of 1861 expected their tower to be standing more than 150 years later, or thought that a British Prime Minister would one day climb up to their tower for the annual Sing, as Huddersfield-born Harold Wilson did in 1973*. In 2008 the Longwood Tower was restored by Kirklees Council at a cost of £200,000. Bullen Conservation inserted specialist anchors, or ties, to hold the building together and prevent collapse. It remains a popular spot, and long may the singing continue.

* Technically a former and future Prime Minster: Wilson had been PM 1964-70, and would return to office the year after his visit, serving as PM in 1974-76.