Polly Peachum’s Tower, or the Mount House, Bolton Hall, North Yorkshire

Bolton Hall in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, was the seat of the Dukes of Bolton. The 3rd Duke’s mistress (and later wife) was the acclaimed actress and singer Lavinia Fenton, best known for creating the role of Polly Peachum in the premiere of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. In the 19th century writers told the romantic tale that this tower was built as a summerhouse retreat for the Duchess, but it actually began life years earlier as a hunting stand.

An estate map of 1723 shows a square enclosure, either walled or paled, in which stands a tower with a domed roof, suggesting that the tower was extant in the lifetime of the 2nd Duke (1661-1722). The map gives very little detail but only a few years later the engraver, print publisher and antiquarian Samuel Buck (1696-1779) produced a ‘Perspective View of the Hall and Castle of Bolton, &c’. Bolton Castle was the former family seat and stands a few miles north west of Bolton Hall.

His working sketches and finished pen and ink drawing (dated 1727) survive in the Gough Collection at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. They show that the upper floor of the tower was accessed by an external staircase, and that the tower was surmounted by a large statue of a figure blowing a horn – which would seem to confirm that the tower was a hunting stand to view the chase. The finished engraving shows a herd of deer on the move through the park.

The tower is named on Buck’s finished drawing as ‘Mount House’, although an estate map of 1737 showing the footprint of the tower has the altogether simpler annotation of ‘Lodg’. An exact date for the tower has not been found, but as previously noted it is probably the work of the 2nd Duke of Bolton, who ‘greatly improved’ the house and grounds before 1718. The tower would have been used as viewing platform for spectators enjoying the chase in the park below, and as a banqueting house for refreshments.

As John Byng, later Viscount Torrington noted, by 1792 the Bolton Hall estate was ‘in wild neglect and disorder’, and a letter in the family archive dated 1793 confirms that the ‘Temple in the Park’ was by then ‘dilapidated’. In that same year John Anderson of nearby Swinithwaite wrote that the temple should be saved as it was ‘an ornament to the Dale’, but he was a particular fan of eye-catchers, having built his own in 1792 (link below).

In 1798 the cupola of the Mount Tower collapsed in strong winds, and the lead was removed before it could be pilfered. The architect John Foss (the designer of Anderson’s tower) proposed adding ‘little turrets’ to the corners to retain its role as an eye-catcher in the park, but there’s no evidence that this was ever done, and the tower seems to have been abandoned and allowed to slip into romantic ruination.

Only one reference to Lavinia Fenton having ever having set foot in Wensleydale has been found. In 1792 John Byng was given a tour of Bolton Hall and shown the bed in which ‘Polly’ had ‘always modestly slept alone’. It is impossible now to know if this story is true, or if the aged retainer was embellishing the story in the hope of a generous tip.

The idea that the tower was a favoured retreat of the Duchess seems to have first appeared in print in the middle of the nineteenth century when W.G.M. Jones Barker published The Three Days of Wensleydale or Valley of the Yore. In 1854 the book erroneously claimed that the summerhouse was ‘built so as to resemble a ruined tower’ and that it was erected ‘for the accommodation of the famous Lavinia Fenton’ (Lavinia by then would have been Duchess of Bolton, having married the duke in 1751 after the death of his first wife). Ten years later the tale was further embellished when it was said that ‘village tradition asserts that when the lady warbled here, the Duke used to listen to the strains at Bolton Hall’. In 1925 Edmund Bogg, in his Beautiful Wensleydale, romanticised the history still further: ‘in the tranquil charm of summer evening twilight she would give out her voice in beautiful melody, which was eagerly listened to by the dalespeople’.

The ruined lodge continues to enjoy a wonderful panorama of Wensleydale, taking in the family seats of Bolton Castle and Bolton Hall (rebuilt after a fire in 1902).

Bolton Hall is home to Thomas, 9th Lord Bolton and his family. There is no public access to the hall or the grade II listed tower, but you can appreciate the view the tower enjoys from nearby roads and from a public footpath that runs above it. Bolton Castle, the former family home, can be visited.

Access to the path above the tower was restricted when the Flâneuse visited – these lovelies lolloped over to say hello, and they were just a little too lively to tempt her to walk through the field.

Read more about the Temple at Swinithwaite here. For more on Bolton Castle click this link.

Thanks to Val Helpworth of the Yorkshire Gardens Trust for sharing extracts from the family correspondence. Her research into the history of the Bolton Hall gardens and pleasure grounds can be read here. 

And many thanks to the Garden Historian who alerted the Flâneuse to the Buck sketches in the Bodleian Library.

And as ever thank you for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page and the Flâneuse is always pleased to hear from fellow folly fans.