On the edge of Alnwick, in Northumberland, stood Swansfield House, an elegant villa that in the late 18th century was home to Henry Collingwood Selby (1748-1839), agent to the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland of Alnwick Castle. Following the lead of his monument-building patrons, he embellished his small estate with a tower, a column, and a curious gothic structure.

In 1789 Selby had married Frances Wilkie, and they settled at Swansfield with its ‘beautiful walks and plantations’. Soon after the couple commissioned a watercolour from the artist John Downman: the work is particularly poignant, for Frances died in childbirth on the first day of August 1790. The child survived, and was named Frances Wilkie Selby in honour of her mother.

Henry Collingwood Selby erected a monument to his wife in St Michaels’ church in Alnwick, and lived on at Swansfield for another five decades. As well as looking after the Duke of Northumberland’s affairs, he was also Clerk of the Peace for Middlesex for more than six decades. His story is not well documented, and the little we know tells that he was kind to the poor of Alnwick, but struck a hard bargain in business – ‘the Duke of Northumberland’s rapacious steward’, was Horace Walpole’s damning description.

On 30 May 1814 the Treaty of Paris was signed, and it seemed that the Napoloeonic Wars were over. Selby decided to erect a monument to commemorate the end of the war with France, and made plans for a column on Camphill, a ‘commanding eminence’ in the parlance of the day, above Swansfield House. Initially it seems he intended the column to be topped by a statue, and he paid 40 Guineas for a ‘fine 6ft Statue of Peace and Victory, with wings, a caduceus, olive branch, cornucopia etc’ from Mrs Coade’s artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth, London. The order also included 4 tablets for inscriptions to ‘fix on the column’ (16 Guineas), and the cutting of the letters for the inscriptions (£21 3s 9d). No architect is recorded, but a strong contender is Newcastle-based David Stephenson (1757-1819); he was architect to the Duke of Northumberland and a regular customer of Mrs Coade.

Three panels praised key figures in the war: Vice Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson for the campaigns at sea and the ‘decisive victory at Trafalgar’; Field Marshall the Duke of Wellington for having ‘vanquished the armies’; and The Right Honourable William Pitt for his statesmanship during the conflict. The fourth praised the ‘persevering and victorious efforts of the British Empire by sea and land’, and of course preserved for posterity the name of Henry Collingwood Selby, erector of the column.

However, by the time the column was ready to be topped with the statue, it had become apparent that Britain would have to wait a little longer for the ‘peace and victory’ represented by the figure. The ‘downfall of Napoleon Buonaparte’ celebrated in the inscription was short-lived – in Spring 1815 he had escaped and was once more governing in Paris. The idea of the terminating statue seems to have been abandoned, and the Camphill Column is topped with a simple ball, as illustrated in William Davison’s A Descriptive and Historical View of Alnwick published in 1822 (above).

But the figure did find a home on the lawn in front of the house, as shown in another engraving in the same book, and this time it was accompanied by an inscription which brought matters triumphantly up to date with the Battle of Waterloo and Napoloeon’s subsequent surrender:

The Pillar on the Camphill
records the events which led to
the first overthrow of NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE
and the Peace of MDCCCXIV,
this Statue is designed to commemorate
the return of NAPOLEON from Elba, his triumphal entry into the capital,
and his resumption of the sovereign power
in France;
the annihilation of his army
by the DUKE OF WELLINGTON
and PRINCE BLUCHER
at the ever-memorable Battle of Waterloo,
his second abdication,
his surrender to the British Fleet,
and his confinement in the island
of St. Helena;
the second capture of Paris,
the second restoration
of the Bourbon monarch,
and the Peace of MDCCCXV

Another landscape feature stood not far away. This was an ‘unfinished tower […] intended as an observatory’, which the late T.L. Adams had begun before his death, and which Selby now owned. In 1815 Selby celebrated allegiances closer to home and inserted a tablet with medallions of the profiles of the Duke and Duchess, and the ducal coronet. These medallions may have been a gift from the Duke and Duchess, who must have ordered a number from the Coade manufactory. Two appear on the Brizlee Tower, and two at Hulne Abbey, both within Hulne Park, part of the Alnwick Castle estate. Others remain unused in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland.

Frustratingly, no views of the tower are known to survive, but again thanks to Davison we know that the inscription on the tower read:

To the memory of his early patrons the most noble HUGH and ELIZABETH DUKE and DUCHESS of NORTHUMBERLAND, not less eminent for their virtues than distinguished by their rank,
this tribute of grateful affection is dedicated by HENRY COLLINGWOOD SELBY MDCCCXV

Swansfield Tower became one of the noted landmarks on the Alnwick skyline, joining the monuments built by the dukes of Northumberland – Ratcheugh Crag, a hilltop eyecatcher (c.1783), Brizlee Tower (c.1781), and the Percy Tenantry Column in the town centre (1816).

Selby died at Swansfield in February 1839 at the age of 91. His estate passed to his great-nephew, who immediately tried to raise an income by letting the tower, by now known as the Stonyhill Tower, as a dwelling. Potential tenants were told that there was a ‘fine view of the sea’, and that it would make a ‘pleasant residence for a small family’. The tower was again offered to let in 1857 and 1861, but soon after it must have been abandoned. By the middle of the 1860s the ‘three storied castellated tower [which] forms a good feature in the surrounding Landscape’ was ‘getting ruinous thru’ neglect’. That deterioration must have continued as it does not appear on the subsequent maps, and is largely forgotten today.

Selby’s descendants sold Swansfield House to the Duke of Northumberland, and it stood until the 1970s when it was demolished, and a new house erected in its place. A substantial part of the former park is now home to the Alnwick Castle Golf Club, and the Grade II* listed column sits in a small copse within the grounds. The fate of the statue to Peace is sadly unknown.

Also surviving is a very curious feature with gothic detailing. Historic England lists the building at Grade II, and suggest it is early 19th century, which fits with Selby’s building spree, but neither they, nor anyone else, seem to be able to give it a history or a purpose. It is a short stretch of wall with gothic detail, echoing decoration seen at nearby Camphill Cottage and on Alnwick Castle. It is not marked or named on OS maps, and for now remains a total mystery.

For Ratcheugh Crag see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/ratcheugh-observatory-longhoughton-northumberland/

For Brizlee Tower see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/brizlee-tower-alnwick-northumberland/

Thank you for reading. If you have any further information, or wish to share your thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box below. 

A prominent feature in the extensive demesne of Alnwick Castle is the Observatory on Ratcheugh Crag, a ‘stupendous and romantic rock’. The building was one of a number of landscape features planned by Hugh and Elizabeth, 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, in the 1770s, but the sham-ruined eye-catcher was not completed until after her death.

Ratcheugh Crag is an outcrop of basalt, and a watercolour in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland, dated to the mid 1770s, shows it bare. The crag, which is visible from Alnwick Castle, was a popular destination for an excursion, and in 1773 the Duke and Duchess noted their decision to build ‘A Ruin at Radsheugh’, and to lay out a new road along the rocky escarpment. The Duchess died in 1776, which may have put plans on hold, but a visitor in autumn 1782 noted an ‘unfinish’d building above the rock’, and this became the pavilion that stands today.

As work continued to complete this folly, the Duke, or rather the architect Robert Adam, went back to the drawing board and in 1783-84 a series of magnificent designs for a greatly extended symmetrical range ‘proposed to be erected upon the top of a Rock near Alnwick Castle’ were executed. A number are in the Sir John Soane museum, and at Alnwick there are wonderful highly-finished designs for a range in a castellated style (below) and an alternative in an ecclesiastical manner.

But these grand plans were never executed. At Alnwick there is a drawing of Ratcheugh by John Lambert which is annotated with the words ‘drawn from Mr Bell’s original design’. John Bell was the Duke’s mason and builder, and had accompanied the late Duchess on tour, sketching the buildings she admired. This wording suggests that it was Bell’s design that was under construction in 1782, and complete by 1784 when Adam noted on one of his plans (above) that ‘the part shaded light already executed by the Duke’.

The Duke had a new drive laid to the crag to enable visitors to arrive in comfort, and in 1785 the Duke took a guest to admire the ‘building imitating the Ruins of an Old Castle’. The upper room was glazed on all sides, and from it Alnwick could ‘be viewed to great advantage’. The panorama also took in the Cheviot Hills and the North Sea.

The Duke died in 1786 and early the next century his son added an extension to the the ruin (not illustrated) to provide a home for the Keeper, which became known as Crag Cottage. The 1844 tithe map calls the hilltop folly the ‘Ratcheugh Tower’ and by the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1867 (surveyed 1861-4) it is marked as ‘Observatory’. The surveyors noted it as a ‘Mock Ruin of which the Observatory forms the Apex’, adding perceptively that it had been ‘erected about a century ago to add to the effect of the naturally beautiful landscape’.

The Crag was celebrated in a very curious poem by John Scafe, an Alnwick-based poet and geologist. In 1820 he combined his interests to write King Coal’s Levee, or Geological etiquette, a versified study of stone, which Goethe described as containing ‘all the knowledge of Geology a man wants’.

Thence to Ratcheugh Crag he pac’d:
– A little wilderness of taste
Dropt on the fertile lands,
And still, by ducal visits graced,
The hoary summit stands.

Northumberland Estates has restored the building, and it continues to be used by the Percy family. There is no public access, but there are occasional open days for local charities, and Ratcheugh Crag and its folly can be admired from public rights of way and the road.

For some stunning drone photos of the observatory, and a short film, visit https://fabulousnorth.com/place/view/ratcheugh-observatory/

Thank you for reading, please scroll down to the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts. 

On the edge of the town of Wigan stands Haigh Hall, described in 1745 as a ‘good old house and wood in a very pretty situation’. On rising ground above Haigh Hall (pronounced Hay) there once stood a substantial landscape feature which housed an observatory. A pair of paintings with an interesting history help tell the tale. 

Lady Bradshaigh (née Bellingham, 1705-1785) was a close friend of the popular author Samuel Richardson, whose Pamela was one of the bestsellers of the day. In 1750 she asked the artist Joseph Highmore to paint Richardson, but in tribute to their friendship the writer asked that Sir Roger and Lady Bradshaigh and their home also be included in the portrait.

The Bradshaighs had recently been painted by Edward Haytley (aka Heatly, Hatelely) as shown above, so they had a second version painted to be used by Highmore in his painting of Richardson. Curiously, it varies in significant detail: the couple have changed their outfits, Sir Roger (1699-1770) strikes a different pose, and Lady Bradshaigh is attended by her pet fawn instead of her dog. A constant in both paintings is the folly, top right.

The painting above is now in the collection of the Museum of Wigan Life (the other is in a private collection) and it is possible to see the observatory in some detail. The folly looks to have been constructed as an eye-catcher in the form of a sham ruin and consists of a central pavilion, pierced with an arch, and flanking walls with arches. By the 1770s it was known as the Observatory, possibly after some rebuilding work in the 1760s, for which accounts survive. Haytley’s portrait, painted in 1746, shows Sir Roger with a telescope, giving further evidence of his interest in the firmament. As so often, there was a claim of countless counties being visible from the structure; 18th century accounts disagree as to whether it is 12 or 13.

A sketch dated 1826 shows this remodelling of the central pavilion to create a room with large windows, and this building is reminiscent of Robert Adam’s Ratcheugh Observatory for the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. It is not known when the building disappeared, but by the late 19th century there was another observatory on the site, a simple wooden tower built for Lord Crawford (1871-1940)*, also a keen astronomer. A tiny fragment of this later structure survives but the 18th century observatory has literally disappeared: Wigan Archaeological Society has tried in vain to find its foundations.

In the 18th century visitors to Haigh Hall were fascinated by a material called cannel (or candle) coal which was mined on the estate. This was an extremely dense form of coal, used for the usual purposes of providing heat and light (it burned very brightly), but also as a decorative material that could be carved into ornaments and was often passed off as a rare black marble.

At Haigh Hall it was used for a much larger project: the building of a summerhouse for Lady Bradshaigh. What made the summerhouse such a novelty was that although made of coal, it was entirely clean to the touch, and much was made of the fact that young ladies could sit in it without leaving a mark on ‘their most delicate vestures’. It must have been built sometime between 1742, when Sir Roger took over the estate, and 1772 when it is described by a visitor. Sadly no trace remains, and one can’t help but wonder if it ended up on the fire once it became unfashionable.

The big question is whether the Observatory and Summerhouse were one and the same building; no early visitor mentions both. The 1796 estate map shows a structure in the location of the folly shown in the portraits, but with no detail. The building in the portraits shines golden, and certainly doesn’t appear to be coal black. The Crawford Muniments in the National Library of Scotland, currently uncatalogued, may reveal more in due course.

Haigh Hall is now a very popular country park http://www.haighwoodlandpark.co.uk

The handsome hall (remodelled in the 1820s) is currently empty and in need of a purpose after a failed hotel venture.

Examples of cannel coal and the painting of Sir Roger and Lady Bradshaigh can be seen in the Museum of Wigan Life https://www.wigan.gov.uk/Resident/Museums-archives/Museum-of-Wigan-Life/visiting-the-museum.aspx

* Sir Roger died without issue and the baronetcy became extinct. The estates passed, via a niece, to the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres.

Brizlee Tower* stands high on Brizlee Hill, near Alnwick, and overlooks Hulne Park, a detached pleasure ground close to the Duke of Northumberland’s principal park at Alnwick Castle. It was built in the late 18th century as a prospect tower and eye-catcher, and also as an object to be visited on a drive from the castle through Hulne Park.

The park was designed by ‘the inimitable Brown’, aka Capability, working with local engineers and designers, and was also home to the ruins of mediaeval Hulne Abbey, embellished and repurposed by the Duke and Duchess as a banqueting house, pleasure garden and menagerie for exotic pheasants. This is one of The Folly Flâneuse’s favourite follies: the detail is just so joyful, or as historian Alistair Rowan so wonderfully put it: ‘at Brizlee there is fantasy and flamboyance’.

Brizlee Hill had been landscaped in the previous decades, and there were already plantations and a network of rides. A tower had been planned for the hill during the Duchess’s lifetime, but she died in 1776 before building had started, and it was left to her husband to erect it in her memory. Many early accounts of the 87 feet high tower are at pains to stress that the tower was ‘planned entirely’ by Hugh 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714-1786) . But whilst the location and the Gothick style were probably his choice, he did have just a little help with the detail from his friend Robert Adam. Adam’s drawings for the tower, prepared in 1777 and 1778, survive in the collections at Alnwick Castle and the Soane Museum, London.

Although the tower carries the date 1781, the ‘celebrated Tower at Brizlee’ wasn’t completely finished until 1783. The exterior is decorated with carved stones showing the Duke’s Order of the Garter, 12 coats of arms representing the couple’s lineage, and at first floor level two Coade Stone roundels showing the profiles of the Duke and Duchess. The finishing touch was ‘a curious grate on which a bonfire is kindled on extra-ordinary occasions’. This ironwork basket was made by industrialist James Sharp at his factory: Sharp grew up at the rectory in nearby Rothbury, where his brothers included the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp.

Visible from the first floor platform is a plaque inscribed:

Circumspice
Ego omnia ista sum Dimensus;
Mei sunt ordines,
mea Descriptio:
Multae etiam istarum arborum.
Mea manu sunt satae

(Look around. I have measured out all these things; they are my orders, it is my planting; many of these trees have even been planted by my hand).

The inscription begins circumspice which roughly translates as ‘look around’; the Latin word was most famously used in Sir Christopher Wren’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral. His epitaph reads si monumentum requiris, circumspice: (if you seek (his) monument, look around), which instruction guided the reader to look up at the beauties of the cathedral, Wren’s great achievement. The Duke was surely echoing this when asking visitors to gaze out upon the castle, pleasure ground, and productive farmland he had improved or implemented at Alnwick. The second part of the inscription is from the ancient Greek account of Lysander meeting Cyrus, the King of Persia. The words are Cyrus’s response to Lysander’s admiration of his gardens.

Most early visitors waxed lyrical about the Duke’s work, with one describing it as ‘well-imagined and in an excellent Taste of Gothick Solidity’ and another writing that the ‘elegant and lofty Belvidere […] will ever remain a noble specimen of his skill in Architecture’. One less generous tourist agreed the tower was elegant, but thought the inscription savoured ‘too much of vanity’.

From the top of the tower the view was bounded by the North Sea in one direction, and the Cheviot Hills in another. Looking south-east the mid-ground was dominated by a stunning view of Alnwick Castle and its park, with the River Aln running through. This is best illustrated in Girtin’s view from Brizlee of c.1800 and in a verse from one of the pastoral poems so beloved of the Victorians. Composed by John Lamb Luckley of Alnwick, and published in 1848, ‘Beautiful Brizlee’ extols the wonders of the spot:

Here Warkworth rears her ancient towers
Above the winding dale;
There Cheviot’s frowning summit lours
Far o’er the cultivated vale;
Hulner with her ruin’d altars lies
Beneath the mountain tree;
And varied views delight the eyes
From beautiful Brizlee.

By 1999 there were severe problems of water penetration and rusting ironwork which had left the slender stone balustrades unsafe and a range of other problems, which put the tower ‘at risk’. The Northumberland Estates commissioned specialist conservation architects Robin Kent Architecture & Conservation to carry out repairs with grant aid from English Heritage. After thorough investigations work started in January 2004 and the grade I listed tower was reopened by the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland on 21 November 2005.

The tower can be seen from walks in Hulne Park, and there are occasional charity open days, but there is no vehicular access. At the time of writing the park is closed due to the COVID19 pandemic, but in due course will reopen and you can find out more here http://www.northumberlandestates.co.uk/the-estate/walks-trails/

* aka Brislee, Brisley, Brislay, Briesley, Brislaw…

Note: The Folly Flâneuse is continuing to Stay Home. Special thanks to all those who have helped with images and expertise so these posts may continue to appear. This week particular thanks to Robin Kent.