Close to Prestwick Airport, a few miles from Ayr, a handsome monument stands on high ground. It was erected in the middle of the eighteenth century to commemorate a local boy, of very humble beginnings, who had made a fortune in the service of the East India Company. The monument came close to total collapse before, hurrah, a local campaign secured its future.

Macrae is said to have left his native Ayr when little more than a boy and found work on boats leaving the busy port. He worked his way up the ranks to the influential position of Governor of Fort St George, a British power base at Madras (now Chennai) in India. In his time as Governor (he held the position from 1725-1730), Macrae ‘acquired a handsome Estate’, and he returned to Britain a wealthy man in around 1731. In 1736 he was said to be laying out his fortune in ‘purchasing Lands’ and this included an estate at Monkton, near Ayr, which he called Orangefield in honour of William III – Macrae also funded the erection of a statue of William of Orange in Glasgow in 1735.

Four years after Macrae’s death in June 1744, work began on his monument. No records have been found to explain the planning behind the structure – there is no inscription and the architect is unknown. We don’t even know who commissioned the monument, although Macrae’s sole heir and executor the Countess of Glencairn, née Elizabeth Maguire, seems likely. Whilst there has been speculation that the structure was intended as Macrae’s mausoleum, his will simply requests that he be ‘decently buried’.

John Swan began work on the monument in 1748, but the near complete structure is recorded as having collapsed the following year before being rebuilt in 1750 (and this is corroborated by the discovery of damaged stone in the rubble infill during the restoration). This information, the only early history of the monument the Flâneuse can find, is recorded in the second volume of James Paterson’s History of Ayr, published in 1852, and all later descriptions of the fine monument rely on his account.

A century after it was built surveyors mapping the county of Ayrshire noted ‘Macrae’s Monument’ as a ‘very prominent object’ (earlier maps simply mark the structure as ‘Monument’). It is unsurprising then that in the second half of the nineteenth century it was used as a landmark for the hunt, with many reports of the hounds and their prey racing by. Robert Bryden (1865-1939) took this view in 1912, and by that date the monument was ‘in a rather dilapidated condition’, although no major issues can be seen in his fine etching.

In 1967 an officer from the National Monuments Record of Scotland visited the site. He wrote that the ‘small pylonic monument’ was ‘well executed’ and noted the maritime motifs which featured on the four faces. There was however ‘considerable decay of the stonework’, although some repointing was underway when he visited.

These motifs include a shell, dolphins, a stylised castellated building on a rock, a trident and an anchor. Mr Hay’s detailed investigation of the monument took longer than expected, with an added delay caused by his Land Rover getting stuck in a stony patch. Disgruntled and hungry, he finished his report with the note ‘No lunch’.

The tower continued to decay, and by the end of the twentieth century it was in a most precarious condition, having been damaged in a storm. The monument was restored in the early years of the current century under the auspices of the Three Towers Trust working with Ayr-based ARPL Architects. There was strong support from the landowner, Glencara Estates, and from the local community, as well as funding from Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The obelisk had to be taken down to enable the rebuilding of the square base, and the shaft was re-erected once that had been consolidated.

Macrae was buried in Monkton churchyard, but no stone marks the spot (although a modern headstone records that he is interred somewhere in the churchyard). The story is told locally that a group of Macrae’s friends, in high spirits after a two-day drinking spree, exhumed his body from the churchyard and re-interred it in the newly-completed monument. Human remains of four adults and two children were found in the monument during the restoration work, but were thought to be of a later date. Like much else about the monument, the identity of those whose remains were found remains a mystery.

In the jet-setting 1940s Macrae’s former estate became home to Prestwick Airport, with the mansion as its centrepiece – Orangefield is probably the only country house to end its days with an air traffic control tower plonked on its roof. The building is sadly no more.

The monument (upgraded to Category A in 1994), was once a distant landmark, but is now on the edge of a new housing estate and is easy to reach from the road named…

The Flâneuse thanks Susan Kellerman for sharing her research into the monument, undertaken at the time of its restoration. Thanks also to Peter Drummond, of Peter Drummond Architects. Peter was part of the ARLP team at the time of the restoration.

This is the 400th post to be published after 8 years of the Folly Flâneuse. Thank you for reading!

Late in the eighteenth century, the Grant family lost their livelihood in their native Scotland and set out to find work in the rapidly developing industries of Lancashire. Pausing to rest on their journey they admired the ‘beautiful valley’ of the River Irwell, which reminded them of Speyside. Decades later they bought the ground, and erected this tower to commemorate that moment.

William Grant (1769-1842) recounted this history in a letter of 1839. He told how he found work in Bury, historically Lancashire but now Greater Manchester, and with his brothers became ‘very successful’ in the textile business (the ‘rags to riches’ story of the brothers is said to have inspired the characters the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens). In 1827 the family added the Park Estate to their considerable land holdings, and there, as Grant wrote, they erected a ‘monument to commemorate my father’s first visit to the valley’. Almost immediately the building became known as ‘Grant’s Tower’.

The architect is not known, and few early descriptions of the tower can be found, but we can assume that the Grants used the tower as a belvedere and party venue. There were wedding festivities at John Grant’s Nuttall Hall in 1848 and banners were hoisted on Grant’s Tower, high above the house (Nuttall Hall was demolished in 1952 and the grounds are now a public park).

The public were initially invited to visit on set days, but by 1892 it was open daily and a popular destination for picnic parties. Refreshments were available, and no doubt picture postcards were also sold – many different views of the tower were in circulation.

In the early years of the twentieth century the tower could be discovered in many kitchens  as it featured on the label of a ‘delicious relish’ called Tower Sauce. Manufactured by Scott & Rosse of Bury, this condiment could, if one believed the advertisements, aid digestion, produce an appetite and ‘please every palate’.

It is first mentioned in newspaper ads in 1904, and the marketing department hit their stride in 1905 when a housewife could send the company three one penny stamps and in return receive a free sample of the sauce and six picture postcards. The cards were ‘guaranteed to be free from advertisements’ – were they perhaps views of the tower?

By 1911 the tower was ‘showing signs of neglect’ and in 1914 the interior of the tower was said to be in a ‘ruinous condition’. There were plans to repair the ‘famous Lancashire landmark’, but the outbreak of the First World War meant that plans were shelved.

Around 1940, with another war underway, Ramsbottom Urban Council began negotiations with the tower’s owner, Sir Peter Lawson, to take control of the tower as soon as the hostilities were over. No agreement was reached, and soon after the tower was closed to the public as unsafe. In September 1944, when ‘Ramsbottom’s weather beaten landmark’ collapsed, the local paper reported that this ‘did not come as a big surprise’. The more dangerous walls of the truncated tower were demolished, and only the roofless lower storey was left standing.

In 2017 Bury Council granted the owner of the tower (it had by now changed hands) permission to repair and reroof the remains of the tower to prevent any further damage to the interior. The renovated remains can be seen from the public footpath that passes the tower.

The Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from you – the comments box is at the bottom of the page if you would like to share any thoughts. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each week please see below. Thank you for reading.

When Archibald Hogg of Bandrum House built this tower as an observatory and summerhouse in the 1840s, Saline had the ‘well-merited reputation of being the Paradise of Fife’. The village, built along the valley of the Saline Burn, is surrounded by hills and from the eminence called Bandrum this tower enjoyed a prospect of the undulating landscape to the Firth of Forth and beyond.

The story told locally is that the tower, known as the Temple, replaced a wooden structure, which had been erected by the previous owner in around 1805. Construction of the stone tower began in 1845 under the supervision of Lewis Mercer who worked alongside his brothers. Stone stairs lead up to an upper floor, now collapsed, with a fireplace and windows giving an amazing view to Bandrum House and the surrounding countryside.

Lewis Mercer (c.1809-1867) was an architect and mason who lived in Saline and designed and built a number of buildings there. A simple stone marks his burial place in the village churchyard, but the most curious monument to him is his head, carved in stone, which sits outside a house on Main Street in the village.

A poem, published in a local paper in 1888, tells that the from the tower there was a view to Stirling and across the Forth to Edinburgh. The Pentland and Ochil hills, could be seen, as well as the mountains of Ben Ledi and Ben Lomond. The writer recalled his childhood visits to the tower:

‘Twas here I used to sit and gaze upon
The glimmering landscape, as the setting sun
Went down behind Ben Lomond’s lofty peak,
And tinged the hilltops with a golden streak.

The tower (listed as Category C) is now a roofless shell but remains a popular landmark, and rewards the hike up from the edge of the village.

Follow the footpath opposite the entrance to Midfield Terrace in Saline (the path is overgrown and is best left until winter when the nettles and thistles are less ferocious – the Flâneuse speaks from recent experience). Or you could take a leisurely drive into Saline on the B913 and admire the distant tower on its hillside as you approach the hamlet of Cowstrandburn. From this road you will also be able to appreciate the tower’s relationship to Hogg’s seat at Bandrum House, now a nursing home.

Saline was once home to another curiosity – a group of stone figures carved in the 1820s by sculptor George Forrest. Depicted are Tam o’ Shanter and Souter Johnny, characters created by Robbie Burns, and Symon and Bauldy from the poem The Gentle Shepherd by Allan Ramsay. From 1832 Forrest exhibited his sculptures on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, where they were described as ‘one of the most popular and attractive exhibitions in the Scottish metropolis’. The collection was gradually dispersed after his death in 1852, and these four figures found a home in the grounds of Kirklands House in Saline. They were sold to Fife Museums Service in 2010. Whilst Symon and Bauldy await conservation, the restored statues of Tam and Johnny can now be seen outside Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries.

Thank you for reading. Further information is always welcome so please scroll down to the comments box to share your thoughts.

In 1823 the Rev. Oliver Raymond was instituted into the Rectory of Middleton, a village which although very near Sudbury in Suffolk, just sneaks over the boundary into Essex. On 9 November 1841, Queen Victoria gave birth to her first son, Albert Edward (the future Edward VII). Almost immediately he was given the title Prince of Wales, and Raymond marked the occasion by planting an avenue of trees which became known as the Prince of Wales Avenue.

Partway along the avenue Raymond (1794-1889) erected a ‘handsome entrance gate’ of brick and flint, inset with older carved stone which is thought to have been salvaged from local church rebuilding projects. The fragments carry a star, emblem of the De Veres of Hedingham Castle, so the stone is said to have been salvaged from a church under their patronage, but no firm evidence has yet been found.

Around the arch is the inscription: PLANTED BY OLIVER RAYMOND LLB RECTOR OF THIS PARISH IX NOV MDCCCXLI THE DAY OF HRH THE PRINCES BIRTH.

By the time Barbara Jones saw it in the middle of the twentieth century, the arch had become a picturesque ruin. It is not clear if this was as a result of natural decay or of vandalism, but the arch was certainly the haunt of those intent on carving their names in the stone, with graffiti evident today from within the first decades of the arch being completed.

Raymond remodelled his parish church of All Saints and improved the graveyard. In September 1853, a newspaper report likened the burial ground to a ‘miniature Pere-la-Chaise‘. Raymond had apparently removed years of accumulated soil and trimmed back the overgrown cypresses and laurels to create a park-like setting.

A contemporary poem entitled ‘Middleton Church-Yard’, questioned why a burial ground should only display ’emblems drear to view’, and praised the planting of flowers at Middleton:

Then there let many a flower unclose
Its blossom to the Spring,
There let the Lily and the Rose
Round them their odours fling.

Raymond had built a new rectory, in white brick, where he and his family lived. The rooms were hung with a number of works by Raymond and his family, and he also built up a substantial art collection of Old Masters and works by contemporary artists, including local boys Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable.

In 1853 the ‘picturesque little church’ and the rectory were described as amongst the ‘most attractive objects in [the] neighbourhood’. Two decades later a visitor wrote that ‘around this bijou of a church Mr Raymond has lived to see noble oaks arise, planted by his own hand, and vistas flourish, looking over a great extent of country’.

Church and rectory were approached along a drive which curved past an ‘ornamental sheet of water’, seen in the engraving above. In Raymond’s own words, the view from the rectory across the pool was ‘unusually imposing and picturesque’.

In January 1881, in ‘blinding sleet’, a cab driver swerved on the Rectory’s drive and skidded onto the frozen pool, where the ice gave way. The driver and horse were rescued, but the partially submerged vehicle had to be hauled out the following day.

Raymond quickly erected a string of pedestals by the lake, each topped with an urn and connected by iron fence-panels.

One pedestal carries a carved inscription reading CAVE STAGNUM – beware of the pond. A ‘time-stained’ notice, in which Raymond explained his actions, was reportedly discovered by a workman in the 1950s: it read ‘To prevent a future accident of the kind this Barrier was erected by Oliver Raymond, L.L.B., R.D. Rector of the Parish of Middleton, Essex, February 17 1881. GOD save the Queen!’.

Raymond died in 1889, having lived in Middleton as curate from 1818 and then as Rector from 1823. His children erected a new reredos in the church in memory of his seventy years as priest in the parish.

The rectory is today a private home but the church and pool can be seen. The arch stands on a public footpath across the field from the lane leading to the church. Remnants of the avenue survive.

The Rev. Oliver Raymond was a younger son of the Raymonds of nearby Belchamp Hall, where another curious arch was erected and architectural fragments were reused.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and further information are always welcome. The comments box is at the foot of the page –  a reminder that only your name will be published and your contact details remain private.

Close to the border between Wales and England stands a simple, but elegant, stone tower. It was built in the early nineteenth century, but was later abandoned and left to decay. It was renovated in the 1980s, and again more recently, and is now a lofty holiday let.

The tower is actually in Herefordshire, but its postal address is Hay-on-Wye which is just over the border in Wales. It was built in the park of an estate called ‘The Moor’, which in the 1820s was home to the extravagantly-named Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre – the family name being extended in 1824 as a condition of an inheritance.

Architect George Phillips Manners (1789-1866) remodelled the house at The Moor in the 1820s, and is thought also to have designed the tower. The original purpose is unknown: the Historic England listing suggests it was a water tower, but if so it must have doubled as an eye-catcher and belvedere. It is marked simply as ‘Tower’ on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 1880s.

The house at The Moor was let to tenants in the later nineteenth century, and occupied by the United States Army during the Second World War. In peace time it was considered too large to be used as a family home and, when an institutional use could not be found, it was demolished in the 1950s. The tower was not maintained, and by 1964, as the photo’ above shows, it had fallen into desuetude.

Some years later the Penoyre family offered it to John Nankivell, an artist and friend, for the sum of one pound a year, subject to him renovating the ‘gutted’ structure. Work was described as ‘almost complete’ in 1989 after Nankivell had fitted out the tower with architectural salvage, including ironwork from a hotel in Ilfracombe and doors from a convent in Wantage.

Early this century the tower reverted to the family, and in 2018 work began to restore the tower as a holiday let. The London-based practice MICA was commissioned to create completely new interior spaces, and even ‘squeezed in an extra floor’ to give more space. Jenkinson Builders of Brecon carried out the work, which was completed in 2021.

A little distance from the tower stands an obelisk which would have been visible from the tower, but is now masked by mature trees. This was once one of a pair, but as a photograph taken in 1964 shows one column had fared better than the other, and that in the foreground collapsed soon after this picture was taken. The story is told that the obelisks were built to create employment at a time of need, with the stone being collected from nearby fields.

In the 1950s Barbara Jones noted ‘fragments of a tablet’ inscribed ‘B.S. Penoyre’ and dated 1826 at the foot of one of the obelisks, and concluded that they were built by Anna Maria Brodbelt in memory of her father, Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre. However her father was still alive, if failing in health, in 1826 (he died in January 1827) so either Jones misread the date or another explanation is still to be found.

The tower and surviving obelisk are both listed at Grade II.

The Moor Tower is available to book via this link. There is no general public access to the tower or obelisk.

You can read more about the restoration project by clicking here.

There’s a short illustrated article on John Nankivell’s time at the tower in an early edition of Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship. Thanks to a superb digitisation project you can read it here.

Thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or further information,

Blagdon Hall stands close to the former Great North Road, a few miles north of Newcastle upon Tyne. At the end of the lake stands a circle of Doric columns known as The Temple. The columns were first erected as part of a rotunda ,with an unusual domed roof, at Heaton Hall, on the edge of Newcastle. Part of the grounds of Heaton Hall later became a public park, but when it looked as if the Temple was going to be a drain on corporation funds, it was removed to Blagdon in around 1937.

Matthew Ridley (1711-1778) of Heaton Hall was a successful businessman and represented Newcastle as mayor and as Member of Parliament. He succeeded his father to Heaton Hall in 1739, by which date the ‘beautiful house’ already stood amongst avenues, gardens and a wilderness. Ridley added a new stone front to the existing brick mansion, with towers at the corners and by 1766 Heaton Hall was noted by Sir Roger Newdigate as a ‘well looking house with round Towers at each End sashd & modern’ (confirming that the house was remodelled by Matthew Ridley, and not by his son Sir Matthew White Ridley in the 1770s as has previously been stated). An account in 1787 confirms that the architect of the new front was William Newton of Newcastle.

Ridley must also have been laying out his grounds in the then fashionable natural style: the park was described in 1769 as planted with ‘small clumps of young forest-trees’ (there is a tantalising mention of the landscape designer Richard Woods leaving Harewood in Yorkshire to visit ‘Mr Ridley’ in Northumberland in 1765). The watercolour below shows that there was a vista through a plantation to the Temple as a distant eye-catcher when approaching the estate.

The Temple probably also dates from this period of improvements. It is described as a ‘tempiato’ in Wallis’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland… of 1769, and in the 1770s William Beilby painted it for the Duchess of Northumberland’s album of views. It may also be the work of William Newton, although no evidence is known to survive.

Sadly no trace survives of some ‘mock ruins’ built by Ridley ‘as ornamental objects from Heaton Hall’. This folly, also extant by 1769, stood on an eminence at nearby Byker and as well as being an object from Heaton Hall, it gave a ‘most extensive prospect’ of the town of Newcastle and the shipping on the Tyne.

The Ridleys left Heaton in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the estate became home to the Potter family. In 1878 Addison Potter sold part of the pleasure grounds to the Corporation of Newcastle for use as a public park – this portion included the ‘ornamental temple-like building’, which was one of the first things to be seen when entering the new park via the South Gate. The Gardeners’ Chronicle magazine liked how the corporation had conserved the pleasure garden ‘very much as it was as a residential place’. Picture postcards show the Temple at the top of a slope, with steps rising through a rockery, although it is not clear if this was created by the Potter family or if it is a later landscaping by the Parks department.

In 1932 the Potters sold Heaton Hall, and the remainder of its ground, to a firm of builders. Under the headline ‘The End of Heaton Hall’ the local paper announced that the hall would be razed and the land developed for housing.

Meanwhile, the Temple in the park was not being kept in good repair and in December 1936 a corporation working group discussed its future. The councillors were divided, with some wishing to see its immediate demolition and others keen that it should be repaired. By that date Viscount Ridley of Blagdon (the viscountcy was created in 1900) had already been consulted, and had agreed to take the columns if the Temple was to be pulled down. The vote was won 4:3 in favour of keeping the Temple, but by autumn 1937 no action had been taken and it was roped off from the public and declared unsafe. Contractors were called in to give estimates for taking the structure down and re-erecting it at Blagdon – a deal must have been struck and the columns were moved the few miles to Blagdon. History does not seem to record what happened to the domed roof, but the columns form a charming eye-catcher at the head of the lake.

Blagdon Hall is a private home but the gardens open for charity on a few days each year. You can find forthcoming dates here.

Heaton Park, with adjoining parks along the valley of the Ouse Burn, is a Grade II registered public park and is freely accessible.

The Flâneuse is grateful to Dr Michael Cousins for sharing his transcript of the travel diary of Sir Roger Newdigate. Thanks also to Fiona Green for sharing her research into Heaton Park and to Richard Pears for information on Blagdon Hall.

Thank you for reading. As ever your thoughts or observations are very welcome. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

In 1857 an anonymous article appeared in The Builder magazine under the title Architectural “Follies”. The author used the word ‘architectural’ to distinguish from examples of folly in literature and art: he thought there were far too many books with an eccentric choice of subject, and that there were many follies ‘perpetuated on canvas’. Sadly, he failed to develop this theme, and the reader is left wondering what exactly he had in mind (the Flâneuse is making the assumption that at this date a journalist writing for a building trade magazine was almost certainly male). Happily, he was a little more forthcoming when he moved on to follies of the built variety.

The ‘Chinese bridges and temples of George III’ were confirmed as architectural follies in his mind, as was George IV’s Pavilion at Brighton.

His next two examples were recent additions to the streets of London. Today we would consider them monuments, but to the writer they were the very height of folly. The first was an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in London, which he described as ‘an undoubted architectural folly’. More than one statue of the military hero, atop his horse, Copenhagen, could be found in London, but the author is probably referring to the colossal bronze by Matthew Cotes Wyatt that was hoisted onto the Wellington Arch in 1846. Our writer was not alone in disliking the vast statue, which was thought out of proportion to the arch. When the gateway was moved in 1883 to enable road-widening, the statue was taken down and, after much debate in the House of Lords, moved to a new home in Aldershot.

The writer then makes a brief mention of the ‘never-to-be-forgotten monument once at King’s-cross’. The Flâneuse hadn’t forgotten it – she had never even heard of its fascinating history.

The building was erected in 1830 as a memorial to King George IV, and topped with a cheaply made and, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘very uncomplimentary effigy of majesty’. This shoddy statue (when seen at close range) survived only until 1842, and the whole structure was pulled down in 1845, having apparently served as both a pub and a police station, although presumably not at the same time.

Whilst conceding that many a folly is a picturesque object, the author disliked sham ruins, believing that they mislead the tourist who might sketch them ‘in the belief of their antiquity’ only to have ‘all feelings of romance or poetry’ dashed upon discovering they were follies.  He likened their disgust to that felt by Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter’s Scott’s The Antiquary of 1816. Oldbuck, a gentleman who sees a lost settlement in every bump in a field, fights hard to regain his dignity when the ‘prætorium’ he describes to his guest is announced to be the ruins of a shelter built only twenty years earlier.

Curiously, the writer doesn’t name any actual sham ruins in his tirade, so here are two of the Flâneuse’s favourites, the castles at Balcarres in Fife and Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

Our high-minded author thought money frittered on follies could be better spent on building schools or cottages, so that the ‘labourer would have felt that he was bestowing his handiwork on matters of utility’. One suspects that as long as he was being paid, the labourer wouldn’t really mind what he was constructing: it’s unlikely a workman ever downed tools in protest when offered several shillings to knock up a sham castle (and, of course, what the writer didn’t mention is that some sham ruins were erected to create jobs and an income for those in need).

The Flâneuse disagreed with many of the author’s assertions, but happily she was wholeheartedly in concordance with his conclusion that follies are ‘worthy of thought’. Indeed they are.

The mention of Oldbuck reminded the Flâneuse that The Antiquary must surely have influenced the builder of a folly tower at Horsmonden, in Kent, which was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. You can read about the folly tower here.

There’s more information on the King’s Cross monument here.

Thanks for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information.

Earsham Hall stands near Bungay in Suffolk, but is actually just over the county boundary and in Norfolk. In the later years of the eighteenth century it was home to William Windham and within the grounds stood this elegant classical pavilion, which terminated a vista. It was originally built as a greenhouse, but in 1784 the architect Sir John Soane was asked to convert the building, which had a front ‘enriched with columns, niches and other ornaments’, into a ‘music-room’.

Arriving at Earsham in August 1784, John Soane quickly sketched out the proposed alterations to the greenhouse. Windham (c.1706-1789) must have been happy with the new design as the masons were quickly instructed to start work. Soane made eight further visits to check on progress, before submitting his bill in 1786.

Soane published a section of the building in his Plans, Elevations and Sections of Buildings Erected in the Counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Hertfordshire et caetera [sic] of 1778. Plate XLV shows the interior and the text gives a comprehensive picture of the Music Room when work was complete: ‘The ceiling is highly finished with stucco ornaments in compartments, as are also the circular ends; the walls are stuccoed and decorated with paintings in chiaros oscuro and other enrichments. The chimney-piece is of white marble, and the floor is paved; it being with the possessor to have the building as elegant as possible.’ The paintings are gone, and the fire surround removed, but the beautiful plasterwork and paved floor survive.

Frustratingly, Soane’s published description is ambiguous – he notes that the building was ‘intended for a greenhouse, and completed for that purpose’. Was the greenhouse also a Soane design, or is it the work of another architect? Soane did not publish an elevation of the building, although his bill to Windham notes that he made a drawing of the ‘outside’. Greater minds than the Flâneuse have failed to reach a conclusion, although all can agree that the building we see today is an absolute delight.

The estate was maintained into the early years of the twentieth century, with the gardens, then owned by Captain Meade, being opened for fetes and flower shows. Regular readers will know that the Flâneuse loves a diversion, so she was intrigued to discover that one of the ‘well-known floriculturalists’ who exhibited was Mr H. Rider Haggard, better known as the author of adventure stories. In the 1940s the estate was dispersed, with the house being sold to a school. Captain Meade retained ownership of the Music Room, which gradually disappeared inside an overgrown shrubbery.

In 1953 Ian Nairn, soon to become admired as a journalist and broadcaster, was an RAF officer stationed in Norfolk. During flights he looked out for anything of architectural interest: spotting the pavilion from the air, he returned to explore on foot. He shared his find with Dorothy Stroud, the ‘Inspectress’ of the Sir John Soane Museum in London, and she included the Music Room in her article on Soane’s early works published in the Architectural Review in 1957 (as Gillian Darley has noted, Miss Stroud did not acknowledge Nairn’s discovery). It was probably at the instigation of Nairn and/or Stroud that the National Buildings Record commissioned photos of Earsham in 1954, showing that the building was then being used as a rather elegant junkroom.

One of the Directing Editors of the Architectural Review was Nikolaus Pevsner. In 1959 he visited Earsham to see the Music Room and, having fought his way through the shrubbery to reach the building, he described it as ‘going to rack and ruin’. Concerned for the future of the building, he suggested it might find a new home at Portmeirion, the Welsh village where Clough Williams-Ellis was rehousing architectural waifs and strays. The elegant garden building was described by Pevsner as a ‘little gem’ and a ‘peach for Portmeirion’, but before any further action could be taken the building was listed at grade I in December 1959, ending any question of moving the structure.

The school closed in 1973 and a few years later Earsham Hall became home to the Derham family. The house is their home, and they run a number of businesses from the former stables and ancillary buildings.

The Music Room remained with the Meade family, and in the 1990s work began to convert it into a holiday let. Renovation was not fully complete when the buildings, adjacent workshops in various stages of conversion, together with the overgrown kitchen garden, were brought to the market by Savills. Happily the Derham family was the purchaser, and the properties have been reunited with the house, offices and pleasure grounds.

The house and gardens are private, but open for occasional tours. The courtyard is home to an antiques centre, shops and tearooms and you can glimpse the house as you drive in. Their is currently no public access to the Music Room, but the plan is for it to be available as a holiday rental in due course: the Flâneuse is grateful to the Derham family for permission to see this gorgeous garden ornament. You can read more about the businesses and special events at Earsham Hall here.

Williams-Ellis missed out on a second music pavilion. In 1957 it was suggested that the facade of the Music Room in Lancaster might find a home at Portmeirion. Happily, that too was saved to remain in situ, and it now houses a Landmark Trust apartment, with magnificent plasterwork in the principal room.

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On the wooded slopes overlooking the west bank of Windermere in Cumbria (formerly Lancashire) stand the truncated remains of Sowler’s Tower. Although no great beauty today, this curious structure has an absolutely fascinating history. According to one source it was the last resting place of its builders, the Sowlers of Sawrey Knotts, with Mrs Sowler apparently spending eternity within the tower in a glass-topped coffin. The tower is indeed a mausoleum, but its residents are not the Sowlers.

Robert Scarr Sowler (1815-1871) was the son of the editor and proprietor of the Manchester Courier, a role he later inherited. He also had a career in law as a Queen’s Counsel and was active in politics in the ‘Conservative Cause’. Like many other Manchester businessmen he decided upon a house in the Lake District where he could pass ‘such leisure time as he had at command’.

In 1861 he purchased some parcels of land on Sawrey Knotts, advertised as ‘very eligible building sites’ on land ‘tastefully interspersed with Ornamental Trees’. He had a new home built which he named after the location, Sawrey Knotts. The architect was Miles Thompson (1808-1868), who had trained with the well-known Websters of Kendal, and the house was described as ‘just about being completed’ in 1863 (although the datestone gives the year 1866). Immediately behind the house a tower was erected to take advantage of the view.

Business often took Sowler away, but with his wife Frances (1813-1879) he spent part of the year at Sawrey Knotts, enjoying the lakeland scenery. On the piece of land called Sawrey Knotts Brow, the highest spot on his estate, the Sowlers built another belvedere with an even greater panorama of Windermere and the surrounding hills. A stone plaque on the higher tower, named as ‘Sowler’s Tower’ on O.S. maps, confirms the date of 1865.

As well as being a spot for admiring the view and picnicking, the tower was probably also a landmark for the hunt. In 1867 the local paper noted that ‘Reynard’ had ‘swept over Sawrey Knotts past the Giant’s tower’: to date this is the only reference found calling it by this name. In that same year, the Union Jack was flown from the ‘lower tower’ to mark the first roof timber being fitted into place at the new village church, and flags were flown from both towers on high days and holidays. Sadly, readers will have to use their imagination, for no early views of the tower can be found.

The architect of the tower is not known, but was most likely Thompson, who was working on the main house. The story is told locally that Sowler liked to look across the lake to the landmark when he arrived back at Windermere station after business had taken him away (the station hotel was designed by Thompson and may have influenced his choice of architect).

In 1978 architect and follyphiliac Neville Hawkes was taken to see the exterior of the tower by Captain Cedric Dand, of the Sawrey Knotts Hotel and Trekking Centre, as Sowler’s former home had become by 1970. Frustratingly, the Lake District’s notoriously unsettled weather meant that he didn’t take any photographs. Hawkes was told that in the tower there was a structure which housed the coffins of the Sowlers – Robert and his ‘wife Frances who predeceased him and her coffin was glass topped’.

It’s a great story, but one that doesn’t add up. Robert Sowler died first, in 1871, and was buried in St Saviour’s in Ringley, Manchester. Frances was also buried there in 1879. Frances commissioned a memorial window in her husband’s memory which was installed in St Peter’s, Sawrey in 1873 (Sowler had instigated the erection of the church in the mid-1860s). A second window commemorates Frances, and was erected by her sisters.

Captain Dand is remembered as a ‘character’: the ex-Cavalry officer made the news in 1966 when he and a Mrs Elizabeth Braithwaite (‘a businessman’s wife’) claimed to be the first to have trekked to the top of Scafell Pike on horseback. Was Dand pulling Hawkes leg with the tale that the Sowlers were buried in the tower, or did Hawkes misremember the story? Happily, there is a more accurate history of the tower: the building did indeed become a mausoleum, but not for the Sowlers and not until more than a century after the tower was first built in 1865.

Sarah Hilda Edmondson (1892-1963), whose father Robert Holt Edmondson was a major landowner in Sawrey, married Victor Whitaker (1887-1971) in 1923. The couple lived at Howe End in Far Sawrey (their neighbour Beatrix Potter presented Sarah with a copy of the newly-published Tale of Little Pig Robinson at Christmas 1930).

In 1940 the Sawrey Knotts estate was offered for sale, with the ‘well known Sowlers Tower’ and some grazing land being made available separately, and it would seem that the Whitakers bought the tower and land at that date. In 1956 plans were drawn up for what was euphemistically described as a ‘store’ at Sowler’s Tower. The plan shows that Sowler’s Tower was to be lowered to around 10 feet (3m) in height and left roofless: within this fortress of a shell the mausoleum was to be erected. According to the plan it was to be an eight foot (2.5m) square building with walls a whopping two feet (60cm) thick under a Westmorland slate roof.

When Sarah Whitaker died in February 1963, her will requested that her funeral should be carried out and her body ‘disposed of’ in accordance with her wishes, which had been communicated to her Trustees. No further information is attached to the will, but we know that Sarah was interred in the tower as Victor Whitaker’s will included the instruction that he was to be buried alongside his wife ‘in the Vault at Sawrey Knotts’. It also stipulated that his executors should ‘make provision for the upkeep of my grave and my wife’s grave’.

In a memorandum that accompanied his will, he also requested that a stone should be inserted at the vault to match ‘the existing one of Judge Sowler’s’. The simple stone was to carry the initials of he and his wife together with the dates of their death, and his notes include a sketch of how he wished it to look. He also asked that there be a ‘metal plate on outer door suitably inscribed’.

In 1978 Neville Hawkes was told that the vault was ‘in the corner’, so if the tomb designed in 1956 was erected, it must have been removed by that date. After Victor’s death in 1971 the door to the tower was blocked, and barbed wire and jagged glass was put up along the roofline, allowing no access to the interior. All we can be sure of is that Sowler’s Tower was lowered to become the strange, squat structure we see today (slate from the upper storeys scatters the hillside around the tower), and there are no memorial plaques to the Whitakers on the exterior of the building.

The family of the present owners of Sowler’s Tower added it, and the surrounding land, to their estate in 1984. The sale contract stipulated that the coffins were to ‘remain in their present positions without interference whatsoever’ in perpetuity. The Whitakers continue to requiescat in pace in their unusual mausoleum in this tranquil spot.

Sawrey Knotts and its outbuildings, including the belvedere behind the house, have been converted into a number of holiday homes and can be seen from a public footpath. There is no public access to the remains of Sowler’s Tower.

The Flâneuse is very grateful to the present owners of the tower for their help with this post.

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Henry Wyatt lived at Farmhill, an estate on the edge of Stroud, in Gloucestershire. In 1834 he built an arch at the end of a new drive to his house, with an engraved stone tablet announcing that the memorial was erected to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. His house is gone, and the land developed but, after some near misses, the arch survives.

Wyatt (c.1786-1847) was described as ‘Banker’ on the 1841 census return and he also served as a magistrate in Stroud. Little more is known of his life, although he was described in 1871 as having lived in ‘great esteem and usefulness’. He may have been present at the meeting of the Stroud Anti-Slavery Association in the summer of 1832, when a number of ‘eloquent speeches’ were given, and we know for certain that in 1838 he demanded the ‘complete emancipation’ of enslaved apprentices in the British Colonies.

The full inscription on Wyatt’s arch, seen as one entered his grounds, reads:

ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES,
THE FIRST OF AUGUST, A.D.MDCCCXXXIV

On the inner side are the words:

DEDIT DEUS LIBERTATEN
DETUR DEO GLORIA
(God gave freedom. Glory to God).

In December 1932 it was proposed that Farmhill House, which had stood empty for some time, be demolished. The estate was to be ‘divided into suitable plots for the erection of good class residences’. In 1933 it was announced that Council houses were to be built near the arch at Paganhill, and indignant local residents protested that this would ‘greatly depreciate’ the value of their homes. The local newspaper reported bluntly that the Council took ‘no action’ in response, and a housing estate was soon under construction near the arch.

By 1958 the arch was under threat. A local newspaper announced that it was ‘definitely to come down’ after the local authorities agreed that the ‘expense of repairing it was not justified’, and that it should not be a burden on taxpayers. Stroud Urban Council’s Finance Committee agreed to contact the Ministry of Works, asking them to remove the arch from the list of buildings of special architectural interest. The council then planned to pull down the arch and, in a rather paltry act of recompense, ‘erect a plaque in lieu’.

As discussions continued into 1959 it was clear that there were divisions within the powers-that-be. Councillor Stephens thought it a ‘monstrosity’ that ‘stuck out like a sore thumb’, but Councillor Horsfall thought it a ‘matter of history and tradition’ that the town should be proud of.

The ’eminent architect’ Clough Williams-Ellis was contacted by the Ministry of Housing, which body thought he might be able to give the arch a home at Portmeirion, the village he had created in North Wales. Clough agreed that it sounded a ‘most eligible inmate’ for his ‘Home for Fallen Buildings’, but his first wish was that it should remain in Stroud. In a letter to the Times he proposed moving it away from the ‘pedestrian’ housing estate and re-erecting it as the entrance to the town’s park. Clough began to lobby the Ministry of Works, asking Robert Cooke MP to do a ‘little wand waving’, but the Ministry declined to offer a grant. Gloucestershire County Council raised no objections to demolition and the arch seemed doomed.

If the arch was condemned, Clough announced that he was willing to give the ‘little pet of classical elegance’ a home. He had in mind a ‘superb position’ for it at Portmeirion, where it would stand at the head of the broad harbour steps. There, he wrote, it would ‘have the company of other distinguished but slighted monuments’.

Meanwhile, the city of Hull was celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of abolitionist and local boy William Wilberforce (1759-1833). The story of the arch reached the council and, horrified at the potential loss of the important monument, Hull’s Town Clerk wrote to Stroud Urban Council asking that they did not ‘destroy the arch’ before Hull’s councillors had discussed the possibility of dismantling it and re-erecting it in the garden of Wilberforce House.

With no grant support forthcoming the Chairman of Stroud District Council began to lose his patience, stating that ‘as the organisations who were so interested in its restoration appear to have no funds’ there would need to be a public appeal. He was perhaps surprised by the strength of local support for the arch, and after a £500 donation from an anonymous resident, the monument was granted a reprieve. It was restored in 1960-61, and subsequent work over the years, including a recent thorough renovation, has kept the monument in good condition.

One mystery which the Flâneuse has not been able to solve is what happened to the fine iron gates which were still in situ in 1959. Historic England documents give contradictory information – the listing record notes that the gates are now at ‘Doddington Hall’ but the 2013 publication Slavery and the British Country House states that they are now at ‘Dodington House’. Please get in touch if you have further information.

Today the arch has an extra level of protection. In 2007 its listing status was upgraded to II* as part of a programme to recognise historic buildings associated with the slave trade. The arch is believed to be the earliest memorial built to commemorate the abolition of slavery.

A stylised view of arch is also the logo of the adjoining Archway school which was built when Wyatt’s park was developed for housing.

For more on Clough Williams-Ellis and Portmeirion, his Home for Fallen Buildings, see this excellent new publication Portmeirion: The Architecture of Pleasure by Sarah Baylis.

Thank you for reading. Comments are always welcome. You can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page.