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 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, suggesting it was not his work. 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.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are welcome, as is further information. Please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch.

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.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts can be shared by scrolling down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

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.

Driving into Kirkoswald from the south, the Flâneuse was convinced that she had discovered a charming hilltop folly. But she was wrong, and this building has a very particular purpose – it is the belfry to the church in the hollow below, and was built on higher ground so that the church bells could ring loud and clear across the district. As it was clearly also built as an ornament to the landscape, the Flâneuse concluded it was worthy of inclusion here.

Whilst detached belfries can be found in a number of locations, the one at Kirkoswald, which stands about 8 miles north of Penrith in the unitary authority of Westmorland and Furness (in the ceremonial county of Cumbria), is thought to be unique in that is stands at such a distance from the church. According to the Victoria County History, the tower was in existence by 1568, and it has been suggested that it was originally a simple timber structure. The weather vane carries the date 1743, so the pyramidal-roofed tower shown in old views may have been erected at that date.

Early descriptions give little detail on the style of the building: in 1794 the detached belfry was described simply as ‘peculiar and remarkable’, but we know that in 1814 the tower was whitewashed and a ‘very conspicuous object’, as shown below.

By 1890 the belfry was described as being ‘in a somewhat dilapidated condition’ and, as the inscription above the door notes, the tower was rebuilt in 1893 in memory of the late vicar John Henry Ransome (1877-1892). The parish raised funds of around £600 to fund the rebuilding, which was carried out by a local man, Mr A. Watson.

This must have been one of the smallest commissions in the career of the Carlisle architect C.J. Ferguson (1840-1904). Ferguson specialised in ecclesiastical buildings in Cumberland and Westmorland where he restored numerous churches, and was author of several new ones. Ferguson designed a new upper storey for the belfry, complete with a battlemented roof and corner turret, built in the vibrant pink sandstone common in the Eden Valley. The three ‘very ancient bells’ were rehung, with two first undergoing renovation work at the famous Taylor’s Bell Foundry in Loughborough (two are still in the tower and the third can now be seen in the church).

The church can be found at the end of an avenue known as the ‘church flags’. This pavement was laid by the Fetherstonhaughs of The College, the seat across the road from the church. It is just the prettiest of approaches, appreciated by visitors since the 1530s according to the notice board.

The Grade II* listed tower is easily seen from the road into the village. The church is usually open to visitors in the summer months and is full of interest.

Your observations are very welcome – scroll down to find the comments box if you have any thoughts to share. Thank you for reading.

In 1956 John Betjeman’s poem ‘Lord Barton-Bendish’ was published in The Saturday Book, an annual anthology of words and pictures edited by John Hadfield. It told the tale of the eerie mausoleum of Lord Barton-Bendish – but neither baron nor burial place was real.

In December 1955 Betjeman (1906-1984) visited the ‘very pretty village’ of Letheringsett, in Norfolk. He met up with friends who included the Reverend C.L.S. Linnell, who was both vicar and historian of the parish church, and Wilhelmine ‘Billa’ Harrod, the writer and architectural conservationist. Linnell and Harrod were working together to compile the Shell Guide to Norfolk (Betjeman was the series editor).

At nearby Letheringsett Hall lived the 3rd Baron Cozens-Hardy (1873-1956) who according to the impertinent Betjeman was ‘in his dotage’ and part of a ‘very pompous’ family. In the village church Betjeman saw the monument to Cozens-Hardy’s father, Herbert Hardy Cozens-Hardy (1838-1920), Master of the Rolls, and 1st Baron Cozens-Hardy and it captured his imagination.

Betjeman invented a mausoleum in which Lord Cozens-Hardy might have spent his eternal rest – he had spotted a hilltop copse of trees in which he thought such a structure might stand. On his way home from Norfolk, on a ‘very cold train’, he composed a poem about the imaginary tomb, which begins:

Oh Lord Cozens-Hardy!
Your mausoleum is cold;
The dry brown grass is brittle
And frozen hard the mould.

Betjeman sent the poem to Billa, with his thanks for her hospitality. His Norfolk friends soon heard about the composition and the Revd Linnell was agog, writing to Betjeman ‘Oh, please, please let me see the verse’.

Betjeman submitted the poem to John Hadfield, editor of The Saturday Book. Hadfield liked the poem, and wanted to publish, but was understandably nervous about using the name Lord Cozens-Hardy. Betjeman consulted the vicar: was the poem libellous, would it cause grave offence to the family? The vicar’s response is not known to survive, but was presumably in the affirmative, so the poem appeared in The Saturday Book under the title ‘Lord Barton-Bendish’, with artist John Piper imagining how the mausoleum might have looked. There does not seem to be a record of why Barton Bendish was the chosen alternative: it is the name of a Norfolk village, nowhere near Letheringsett, and was presumably picked for its scansion and pleasing alliteration.

But Betjeman didn’t try very hard to disguise who the poem was about, and Letheringsett remained the setting. In what was a spectacular piece of mistiming, The Saturday Book was published in September 1956 and the 3rd Baron Cozens-Hardy died only a month later.

The poem was published under its original title of ‘Lord Cozens-Hardy’ in John Betjeman’s Collected Poems in 1958. Lord Cozens-Hardy’s family wrote to the publishers to ask that they might print a reply to refute the ‘creepy’ atmosphere of Betjeman’s poem: the poet described the ‘curious mausoleum’ as a sinister place which the villagers avoided after dark in case they encountered the ghost of Lord Barton-Bendish. Joan Silvester Horne, a member of the Cozens-Hardy family, did however exhibit a wonderful sense of humour by writing a pastiche of Betjeman’s poem. It began:

Oh my dear John Betjeman
Your poem is quite wrong…

Billa Harrod had been Betjeman’s hostess during his stay in Norfolk, and she too had advised Betjeman to change the name ‘in case of hurt feelings’. But there is a happy ending: in correspondence with the Norfolk author Peter Tolhurst, she wrote that Betjeman was later forgiven, and the Cozens-Hardys became friends.

Letheringsett Hall is now a care home, and there is no longer the ‘butler and a footman’ that Betjeman’s poem imagined serving tea on the lawn. Instead, when the Folly Flâneuse visited a few years ago (as the Covid pandemic drew to a close), the garden was occupied by the residents enjoying a rather jolly al fresco performance of Abba’s greatest hits.

Some sources claim that a copy of the poem, signed by Betjeman, can be seen on the wall of the Kings Head in the village. The Flâneuse couldn’t find it, and enquiring as to its whereabouts she was met with a shrug and a ‘John who? Never heard of him’.

The Flâneuse is indebted to W.S. Peterson’s John Betjeman: A Bibliography (2006).

Your thoughts and comments are always welcome – scroll down to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

The Flâneuse is taking a short break and will be back in two weeks.

This folly, both urban and modern, may come as something of a surprise after the elegant edifices of earlier centuries that usually grace these pages. It was built by volunteers to a plan drawn up by architectural students in the early 1970s, and today it provides a safe space for local children to play.

In the late nineteenth century blocks of tenement housing were erected in Islington to provide homes for labourers and artisans. Beaconsfield Buildings (designed by Charles Barry junior) had, by the middle of the twentieth century, deteriorated into slums known, ‘without affection’, as The Crumbles. They were cleared in the 1960s and 1970s. Part of the site became a park with a playground, and in one corner a folly was created using recycled materials such as the cobbles from the courtyards of the demolished buildings.

In 1971, Roger Moody, the local ‘playleader’, asked architecture students at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) to design a shelter for the new playground that was to serve 900 local homes and therefore ‘lots of children’. The team didn’t want a ‘boring box’ and it was decided to build a castle. Stone was salvaged from the site of the flats for use in the construction, and donations allowed the team to buy further materials.

Local children and their parents helped to build the sham fortification – in a division of labour that would be frowned upon in modern Islington, dads were asked to help with building work and mums ‘made the sandwiches’. The building was quickly christened ‘Crumbles Castle’.

There have been threats to the castle and the playground over the years but, with strong local support, it has survived and the park’s facilities have recently been upgraded. The Islington Play Association now operates Crumbles Castle as a space where children can ‘jump, climb, run and enjoy playing’ outside of school hours. What could be better than a folly castle as a place for children to ‘explore the world of their imagination’?

The Flâneuse would love to know the identity of the budding architects who rose to the challenge of building the folly. They are identified only as ‘Cathy and the two Bobs’. Please get in touch if you know more.

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

In 1789 Robert Raikes married the daughter and heiress of Thomas Williamson of Welton House, in the village of Welton, near Hull. Early in the 19th century Robert and Elizabeth Raikes moved to Welton House, and the property passed to them on the death of Williamson in 1809. In 1818 Raikes built an elegant classical rotunda in a romantic dale above the house, which was to be a mausoleum for his family.

Welton House was a substantial mansion and stood in grounds that had been laid out by the Williamson family ‘with such great taste and judgment’ in the later 18th century. There were plantations and rides and a prospect of the river Humber, with ‘innumerable boats’ passing by to enliven the view.

Above the house was a ‘highly picturesque glade, called Welton dale’, and it was on the high ground at the top of the dale that Raikes (1765-1837) placed his ‘small circular temple’. Raikes may have been inspired by the mausoleum his father had built in St Mary’s churchyard in Woodford, London (formerly Essex) in the last years of the eighteenth century, pictured below.

The mausoleum in Yorkshire was consecrated by the Archbishop of York, Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, in August 1825, and Raikes offered the surrounding land to the village as a new burial ground, the churchyard being full. This does not seem to have been fully implemented, although there are graves of members of the Holden, Reynolds and Fitzgerald families, who had connections to the Raikes of Welton.

Sadly the name of the architect has not been recorded, but there is no mistaking the builder for a plaque above the door bears the words AEDIFICAVIT ROBERTUS RAIKES ARMIGER MDCCCXVIII (Built by Robert Raikes Esquire 1818). It is a lovely design with doric pilasters and elegant details include carved reliefs of sarcophagi on the blank bays.

John Allen, minister of the Presbyterian church in nearby South Cave, saw the interior and recorded the inscription on a tablet inside the mausoleum in his The Stranger’s Guide to Ferriby, Welton, Elloughton and South Cave published in 1841: ‘Within this Mausoleum are deposited the mortal remains of Robert Raikes, esq., of Welton House, who departed this life on the 20th day of August, 1837, aged 72 years’. This is the only recorded memorial inscription in the upstairs chamber, although Allen records that Raikes’ first wife and an infant son by his second marriage were also interred in the vault. It is difficult to be sure which members of the family were later laid to rest in the mausoleum: the parish records do not distinguish between burials in the churchyard and interment in the mausoleum. The three ‘beautiful stained glass’ windows seen by Allen are sadly long gone.

The mausoleum originally stood in a pretty little enclosure of shrubs. Within this was a round courtyard and the mausoleum was surrounded by a ‘stone wall and iron palisade’. The wall survives but the ironwork is lost.

The ‘deep, picturesque glen’ of Welton Dale became a ‘place of great resort’ for the inhabitants of Hull and its neighbourhood, and especially those whose ‘avocations necessarily confine them to the pent-up city’.  Picture postcards show ladies in their Sunday best posing in the vale. Allen’s guide recommended the best places to pause and admire the views: these ‘stations’ included a rustic summerhouse, sadly long gone. Subsequent owners, the Harrison-Broadley family, continued to allow access as long as tourists obtained a pass from the farm bailiff in the village.

Not all of the visitors to the dale were content just to stroll and enjoy the scenery. In May 1914 local newspapers reported that thieves had ‘desecrated’ the mausoleum. Having failed to force the door to the mausoleum, they had instead prised up a stone slab to get into the vault. There they opened coffins in search of valuables and stripped lead from the caskets. As the ultimate indignity they propped up a coffin to provide a step to allow them to escape. The report was picked up across the nation with the Belfast Weekly News adding the subtitle ‘Shocking Story from Yorkshire’.

This was not the only attempt to gain entry to the mausoleum. In a 2004 oral history project, a local lady remembered sneaking in with her friends when ‘little lasses’ and finding the opened coffins. She recalled how they tucked the lead back around the coffin of a baby, but not everyone was so (relatively) respectful.

In 1960 two boys were cycling along when they spotted a skull atop a fencepost. One of the boys took it home and his family quickly made him take it to the police. Initially, the police thought it was from an ancient burial, and that is had been disturbed by work on a new road close to where the boys found the skull. The director of Hull Museums confirmed that this was not the case, and the Harrogate Forensic Science Laboratory found it to be a middle-aged female who had died in the nineteenth century. Eventually a youth confessed to entering the vault and taking the skull as a trophy, before panicking and abandoning it where the boys found it.

In 1967 another group of youths were found with a full skeleton propped up on the steps of the mausoleum.  Concerned locals had been trying to locate relatives of the Raikes since the 1940s, and this latest desecration led to further attempts to track down descendants of those in the vault. The question of who should pay for the repairs vexed these family members, many of whom had long ago left the area, with one muttering in 1967 that his ancestors ‘should have made a trust fund to maintain it’.

Some of the descendants, reluctant to invest in a restoration, thought that the mausoleum should be ‘pulled down’, so there was action behind the scenes to secure the building a grade II listing in February 1968. With the assistance of the East Yorkshire Georgian Society, Major General Sir Geoffrey Raikes appointed the architectural practice of Francis Johnson & Partners of Bridlington to oversee work to repair the mausoleum and make the vault ‘vandal proof’.

Visiting some years ago, the Flâneuse was able to walk to the mausoleum, but given the history of vandalism it is understandable that the owners of the woodland have now tried to protect the building behind a barbed-wire fence. The mausoleum can however be seen from Wauldby Road (title image and below) and glimpsed from the lovely footpath through Welton Dale – but only if you visit before the trees are in full leaf and recent tree-planting matures.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share any thoughts, memories or information please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

Overlooking the village of Braunton, in North Devon, a ‘prominent church-like’ tower was once a landmark on the heights of East Hill. It was however ‘less ecclesiastical’ than it looked, being a belvedere that was inaugurated in 1857 in commemoration of Sir Robert Peel and his efforts to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. Only a crumbling ruin remains today, which is a great shame as it has the most fascinating of histories.

The monument was the work of Thomas Mortimer (1798-1866) who lived at nearby Franklin Cottage. According to the 1851 census, Mortimer worked in the Civil Department of the Ordnance, and contemporary documents note him as a ‘linguist, politician and above all philanthropist’. As a ‘staunch liberal’ he had ‘deep sympathies with the working classes’, and is remembered as one who would ‘rather wipe the dew-drops from the brow of an honest labourer than salute the cheek of a duchess’. He was ‘an ardent admirer’ of Sir Robert Peel (below), to whom the tower was dedicated.

Mortimer was also a poet, and he composed some lines about Braunton, in which he described his reasons for settling in the village:

For here, contented with my humble lot,
I early built myself a lowly cot;
Where varied prospects, land and sea,
All tend to my felicity.

His ‘lowly cot’, which he named Franklin Cottage, stood in a large garden and a zig-zag path led up to Mortimer’s ‘pretty tower’ which had a rooftop terrace, complete with battlements and pinnacles, giving magnificent views.

The tower was described as ‘in course of erection’ when Billing’s Directory and Gazetteer of the County of Devon was published in 1857. When completed, the book announced, the tower would have a greenhouse in the lower storey, a study in the upper room, and an observatory at the top. The author was also informed that a bust of Sir Robert Peel was to be placed in a niche between the second and third floors.

Guests from the worlds of literature and politics met in August 1857 to inaugurate the tower, the building of which had been delayed by illness and death: Mortimer’s wife Elizabeth died in 1848 and his teenage son in 1854, and Mortimer himself had spent two years confined to his cottage with an illness from which he feared he would never recover. A flag was flown from the rooftop bearing three Ps for Plenty, Peace and Peel.

Happily, the long inscription was recorded before the tower fell into disrepair:

This tower was built by THOMAS MORTIMER, a Working Man, in honour of SIR ROBERT PEEL, the first British Minister who regarded the claims of Labour, and who when plainly perceiving the justice of FREE TRADE PRINCIPLES, promptly sacrificed his private predilections, and resigned his leadership of a powerful Party, in order to promote the permanent prosperity of the PEOPLE.

He filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he sent empty away.

While Grandeur’s sons seek Glory’s shrine,
At War’s grim Moloch kneel:
Let Labour lovingly incline
To Plenty, Peace and Peel.

One room in the tower was home to a display of local fossils, and built on at the base was a space described as of a ‘more NECESSARY than ornamental kind’ – in other words it housed a privy. This space was ‘dedicated’ to Benjamin Disraeli, who had clashed with Peel over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, and the inscription demonstrated Mortimer’s aversion to the man:

DISRAELI’S REFUGE
Sneering, jeering, satirical BEN –
Most specious of sophists and spiteful of men.

Inside the ‘refuge’ were what the reporter delicately called ‘some lines appropriate to the place’. This was presumably nineteenth century toilet humour, and the newspaper declined to elaborate further.

Within only a few years of Mortimer’s death the tower’s history had become muddled, with a gazetteer published in 1879 claiming that the tower had been erected in 1833 to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill. The tower seems to have been left to moulder and by 1936 it was overgrown with ivy and ‘battered by storms’. In that year the local parish council decided to buy the land at East Hill as a public open space, and to accept the gift of the tower from the then owner, Captain Stephen Chugg. The councillors thought the hillside would be the ‘perfect space to celebrate’ the forthcoming coronation (of Edward VIII, although of course it would be George VI who was eventually crowned).

The Flâneuse arrived in Braunton keen to visit the tower and this public space but was, alas, thwarted. For reasons unknown, the council’s purchase of the land does not seem to have gone ahead and, after driving round in circles, she couldn’t find any access to the tower.

Post-war, the condition of the tower had been raised, and an article in the local paper asked if there were any ‘Braunton people sufficiently interested in its preservation to take some action in the matter’. It doesn’t appear that there was any interest, and the tower continued to deteriorate.

By the time the Ordnance Survey map was updated in the 1960s it was described as ‘Peel Tower (Ruin)’. The tower was listed at grade II in 1985, but sadly there is little left of Mortimer’s platform for his views – political and panoramic.

Sir Robert Peel died in 1850 and he was buried at St Peter’s at Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire. With monuments and statues being erected across the country, his family chose to install a simple plaque in the church:

In memory of
The Rt Hon Sir Robert Peel, Bart.
to whom the People
have raised Monuments
in many places.
His Children
erect this in the place
where his body
has been buried.

Among the many monuments raised by the people was another ‘Peel Tower’. This was erected on Holcombe Moor, near Ramsbottom in Lancashire, and opened in 1852. Unlike the Braunton tower, the Flâneuse did not struggle to find this mighty landmark.

Thanks to Rosemary Madgett of Braunton Museum for her help with this post.

… and, as ever, thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts or further information. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each Saturday morning, please click the subscribe button.

Painshill, or Pains Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, was the creation of the Hon. Charles Hamilton. From 1738 he landscaped the valley of the river Mole and decorated his estate with an enchanting array of garden buildings, including this pavilion which is known as the Gothic Temple. In 1953 Barbara Jones wrote that she feared the park was ‘beyond help’, but thanks to an amazing restoration project, which began in the 1980s and continues today, it has been returned to its former beauty and elegance.

The open temple, probably one of the first ornamental buildings to be erected in Hamilton’s park (the earliest reference found to date is 1761), was constructed of wood treated to look like stone. As well as being an eye-catcher from the walks and rides in the park, its location was carefully chosen so that visitors would be led to the building from which they could admire a panorama which featured a Turkish tent, a gothic tower, a bridge, a hermitage and a classical temple. On a circuit of the pleasure grounds the visitor would also encounter a ruined Roman arch and a grotto decorated with sparkling minerals.

Barbara Jones described Painshill in Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. Her first thought was that Hamilton (1704-1786) was a visionary. She imagined him looking at the ‘naturally pretty’ valley and having the courage to turn it into ‘raw earth, puddles, planks and little naked trees’, knowing that ultimately it was ‘going to be alright’. Whilst Jones mused on the origins of the park, Rose Macaulay, whose Pleasure of Ruins was published in the same year, delighted in the decay, describing the neglected park as a ‘delicious wilderness of follies’.

A photograph of 1937, taken by Herbert Felton for the Architectural Review, shows the temple in reasonable condition. The art historian Osvald Sirén (1879-1966) explored Painshill in the late 1940s, and in his China and the Gardens of Europe, published in 1950, he described the Gothic Temple as being in a ‘better state of preservation’ than many of the other garden features (Sirén was spotted photographing the ruined buildings by a young John Harris (1931-2022). Happily for history, the nascent country-house snooper had ignored the ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs.)

Whilst some of the garden buildings were lost because of neglect, others had fallen victim to deliberate destruction: the hermitage was apparently chopped up for firewood in the 1940s. Harris saw the Temple of Bacchus as a crumbling wreck in the 1940s, and it had disappeared when he returned in 1954. When a visitor in around 1960 enquired after the temple he was told that it had ‘got a bit dicey so they took a tractor to it’.

By the 1970s the temple was rapidly falling into dereliction, and in February 1977 Elmbridge District Council served a repairs notice on the owner of the park and sent in a team to support the temple within a scaffolding shell. Two months later came big news when the council confirmed that, after some years of negotiation, they were to purchase 47 acres of the ‘much neglected Painshill Park’.

Heritage societies, including the Georgian Group, the Garden History Society and the Council for the Protection of Rural England had already been working behind the scenes to gather information, and in 1973 the historian Alison Hodges had published the first comprehensive history of the garden in Garden History, the journal of the Garden History Society. The Friends of Painshill was founded in 1975, with support from landscape architects, antiquarians, journalists, M.P.s and local residents.

It took until 1980 for the council to acquire a further 106 acres of the park. In 1981 the Friends issued their second newsletter, in which it was announced that ‘Elmbridge Borough Council have now appointed Mrs. J. Burford as the first full time administrator of the park’. One of the earliest structures to be restored was the Gothic Temple (grade II*), with work complete in 1985.

The Painshill Park Trust was founded in 1981 and work began to raise the required funds. One of the principal sources was the National Heritage Memorial Fund, created in 1980, which by 1988 had pledged £1.4 million ‘towards a management plan and towards continuing restoration work’. In 1988-89 the British Museum hosted Treasures for the Nation: Celebrating National Heritage, an exhibition showing the public how the fund was using taxpayers money to save the UK’s most important heritage treasures. Painshill was featured as an example of a garden rescued with the help of NHMF funds, and the text noted the garden as a rare example of one which ‘did not suffer violent change, but was simply abandoned to the hand of time’.

It is impossible to summarise here the vast amount of research, fundraising and building work that took place in the subsequent years (the restored and dazzling grotto alone is a magnificent achievement, and the Temple of Bacchus, toppled by tractor, has been reconstructed), so visit the website to learn more, or better still visit the park itself.

There are some who, whilst full of admiration for the restoration, have a nostalgia for the ‘mystical and wonderful’ ruinous park that they explored as a child, when it was in that condition which the artist John Piper called ‘decrepit glory’. As Henry Parr, who sent the Flâneuse the pre-restoration photographs shown here, wrote: ‘in its ruinous state, Painshill park was beautiful but mysterious, pretty but sinister, lovely but rather unnerving’.

The thrill of pushing through overgrown shrubs and stumbling across an abandoned temple might be gone but, thanks to the amazing restoration project, one once more sees Painshill as Charles Hamilton envisioned it.

There’s lots more on Painshill here. Thanks to historian Cherrill Sands for being an excellent cicerone.

Thank you for reading. As ever, the Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from readers with any thoughts or comments. Scroll down to get in touch.