With the summer holidays in full swing, the Flâneuse is heading to the seaside for this week’s story. In the late 1960s Richard Attenborough filmed parts of Oh! What a Lovely War on the Brighton seafront. When filming was over, he donated a seaside kiosk that had featured in the film to the Brighton Festival. In May 1970 the architect Sir Hugh Casson transformed it into a ‘small folly built – or at least embellished – in Brighton rock’.
The Folly, Belchamp Walter, Essex.
Belchamp Walter, in Essex (but very close to the Suffolk border) is the quintessential English village with a manor house and church at its heart. But on a field boundary behind the hall stands a less common feature – a curious, and very clever, folly facade.
The Monument, Lemmington Hall, Northumberland (via Surrey)
In rural Northumberland an elegant stone column rises in a field. A passer-by would guess it to be an eighteenth century ornament, and they would be right: work to erect it was completed in 1786. But it was not built in Northumberland, where it has stood for a mere century. The monument actually started its life at Felbridge in Surrey, some 350 miles to the south.
The Summerhouse, Long Melford, Suffolk
Towards the northern end of the lengthy village street of Long Melford, in Suffolk, stands Melford Hall. In a corner of the garden, overlooking the road and the green opposite, stands a rutilant brick summerhouse. Once furnished with a table and chairs, the little building must have hosted the most elegant intimate parties.
The Summerhouse, Sticklepath, Devon.
On the quiet main street that runs through the village of Sticklepath, near Okehampton, stands a former works known as the Finch Foundry. It has been redundant since the 1960s, and is now a museum. Passing through an arch to the side of the works, the visitor is surprised to find a tranquil garden and beyond it a burial ground where the only noise is the rumbling of the river Taw. In the corner of the burial ground is a little thatched shelter, and more recently it has been joined by the most perfect of nineteenth-century rustic summerhouses.
The Summerhouse, or Lookout Tower, Boscastle, Cornwall
On a promontory overlooking the harbour at Boscastle stands a squat white building bedecked with flags and antennas. It started life in the middle of the 18th century when it was erected as a summerhouse and eye-catcher by Cotton Amy, whose Botreaux Castle estate included the harbour and lands around it. In 1821 the land was purchased by Thomas Rickard Avery, a local merchant and, depending on who you believe, a ‘notorious wrecker’.
Browne’s Folly, Monkton Farleigh, Wiltshire
In 1848 a brief note in local newspapers announced that a ‘lofty tower’ had been erected on Farleigh Down. Commanding the ‘most extensive and magnificent prospects’, the tower was built by Wade Browne, who had recently settled at Monkton Farleigh. The tower stands in Wiltshire – although very close to the border with Somerset.
The Jungle, Swinethorpe, Lincolnshire
Early in the nineteenth century, Samuel Russell Collett moved to a farming estate at Swinethorpe in Lincolnshire. There he constructed a ‘romantic seat’, in the form of a sham castle, which by 1824 was known by the curious name of ‘The Jungle’.
Pagoda and Bridge, Hythe, Hampshire
In December 1888, a ‘good property of modest pretensions’, with about 30 acres, was offered for sale near Hythe, on the Hampshire coast. Forest Lodge was marketed as a ‘most enjoyable residence for a yachtsman’ and was purchased as a country base by John Beach Fleuret, a London auctioneer and noted sailor. Fleuret immediately set to work remodelling the house and ornamenting the grounds. The major feature was a lake with a boathouse and bridge, both in a Chinese style. The only reminder today is a couple of blurry, but invaluable, photographs.
The Automobile Association and Follies
In 1950 the Automobile Association (A.A.) published a handbook for drivers which included maps and a gazetteer of the towns and villages of England and Wales (Scotland had its own association). As post-war paper shortages eased, a new expanded edition was published in 1958 which included illustrations of the sites a motorist might expect to see as they travelled sedately along the roads of Britain (as the maps make clear the motorway network was then at a very early stage of development). Alongside the churches, monuments, castles, historic pubs, chalk figures and gibbets there are more than thirty follies for the driver to spot along his way.