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.

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.