Comments on: Jezreel’s Tower, Gillingham, Kent

By: Jezreel’s Tower: Medway’s Missing Landmark - Medway, She Wrote

Jezreel’s Tower: Medway’s Missing Landmark - Medway, She Wrote — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:39:33 +0000

[…] Jezreel’s Tower, Gillingham, Kent (The Folly Flaneuse, 5 August 2022) […]

By: Editor

Editor — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:01:45 +0000

In reply to John Malaiperuman. It was certainly a behemoth of a building. I find the audacity of Jezreel's design quite dazzling, and like Gwyn, who commented earlier, I wish I had been able to see the building for myself.

By: Editor

Editor — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 11:53:09 +0000

In reply to Wim Meulenkamp. Thanks for telling us about this fascinating building Wim. I shall enjoy finding photographs online.

By: Editor

Editor — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 11:51:00 +0000

In reply to Caroline Kernan. Hello Caroline. I'm pleased you found the story of interest. Someone suggested yesterday it looked like a piece of brutalist architecture. It really was a unique structure.

By: Wim Meulenkamp

Wim Meulenkamp — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 11:44:39 +0000

One of best follies ever, in more than one sense. There is a parellel concerning
a similar building project undertaken by Jeanne or Jenny Merkus (1839-1897), an extremely wealthy heiress from the Dutch East Indies. But she went one better. First she started out by trying to liberate the Balkans from the Turks, by providing the Serbian rebels with funds, weapons, and of course cigars (she liked to smoke them herself), and eventually even an all-female detachment of Amazons. Merkus is still regarded as a hero/saint by the Serbs. One of her other interests, being very devout, was providing a residence for the Lord when He would return to earth. In the 1870s she had a villa built for Him in Jerusalem, at the ready for the Second Coming. The complimentary bars of soap had, so to speak, already been distributed to the guest rooms, when, alas, Jenny’s fortune dried up. By the 1950s the shell of the building was demolished. Photo’s exist.

By: John Malaiperuman

John Malaiperuman — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 10:17:19 +0000

Definitely the biggest folly ever….
but what a waste of effort…. hardly a ‘landscape ornament’, but nevertheless thanks for the fascinating story behind it.

By: Caroline Kernan

Caroline Kernan — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 08:28:18 +0000

Karen this is amazing. When I first saw it through my slightly myopic eyeballs I thought Cold War. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you. Caroline

By: Editor

Editor — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 05:58:39 +0000

In reply to Gwyn Headley. Good morning Gwyn and thank you for your complimentary comments. I too would love to have seen this extravaganza and to have seen Jezreel drive up in the fur coat and carriage paid for by his followers. It must literally have been the talk of the town in its brief heyday.

By: Gwyn Headley

Gwyn Headley — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 16:34:11 +0000

My Saturday morning treat is learning stuff from The Folly Flâneuse. But I am so impassioned by Jezreel’s Temple that I broke my rule and read it a day early, on Friday. O Lord, forgive me.
It’s up there in my top ten folly regrets, that I never saw it standing. My only excuse is that I didn’t have a driving licence before it was demolished. Still, La Flâneuse’s numinous description and the as always excellently researched illustrations once again bring it back to life for me. Thank you.
Incidentally the Jezreelites shared a tenet of belief with Jehovah’s Witnesses. The next time a member of that liberal, loving sect comes knocking on your door, ask them this: if their faith tells them that only 144,ooo true believers are going to make it through dem pearly gates, what’s going to happen to the rest of the 8.5 million members of the cult? Including, presumably, the poor sap standing on your doorstep?