In the middle of the eighteenth century William Aislabie began to create a landscape garden on the banks of the River Ure, near the village of Grewelthorpe. In contrast to his grand estate at Studley, a few miles away, there were few manicured lawns or geometric pools, and instead Hackfall was a ‘sequestered and most romantic place’. Dotted around the grounds were summerhouses and shelters, including a dramatic hilltop tower called Mowbray Castle.

Word soon spread that Hackfall was a place worth seeing, and early visitors recorded their admiration for the place: ‘never was there seen a finer assemblage of wild and variegated nature’ wrote a tourist in 1785. Although visitors frequently refer to the ‘imitations of ruins’ in the pleasure grounds (there’s also a sham-ruin banqueting house), the earliest specific reference by a visitor to ‘Mowbray Castle’ found to date is from the 1780s, which tallies with an account in the archive suggesting work was ongoing in 1778.

By 1801 the gardener, who gave tours of the grounds, estimated that around two hundred parties visited each season. The Yorkshire weather was not always kind, but it didn’t spoil the experience. In 1792 Lord Torrington found ‘so much to admire, so much to celebrate’, despite the rain falling ‘in buckets’. And in 1799 another tourist wrote that he knew of no other place that gave so much pleasure’ even though it ‘rained the whole time’.

When first built Mowbray Castle could be seen from almost every spot within the pleasure grounds, and its ‘isolated situation’ was described as having an ‘extremely happy effect’. William Gilpin, whose comments on landscape were widely-read, criticised the buildings at Hackfall, but few were in agreement. In 1796, the Duke of Rutland wrote that ‘We did not find any room for censure’.

A poem written in 1859 suggested that the castle was an ancient fortification:

Now turn thy steps towards the right,
And view that grand imposing sight –
Tis Mowbray Castle, in decay,
The relics of a bygone day.

But Georgian visitors recognised it as a sham, a ‘very excellent imitation of an ancient ruin’, and praised its natural appearance.

Aislabie’s descendants sold Hackfall to a timber merchant in 1933, and much of the woodland was felled. Happily, the folly survived this period of neglect (although the short section of wall with an arch seen in the early images is lost), and was consolidated as part of a masterplan to restore the pleasure grounds and buildings after Hackfall was purchased by the Woodland Trust in 1989 (with strong support from the Hackfall Trust and other local groups). Sadly the vistas to and from the castle are now largely lost because of tree growth.

Around the time the folly was under construction a boy was born who would grow to great fame as an artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner was born on 23 April 1775, 250 years ago this week. He visited Hackfall in 1816, and later worked up one of his sketches into a watercolour now in the Wallace Collection, London.

Hackfall is in the care of the Woodland Trust and is freely accessible to walkers.

J.M.W. Turner clearly admired follies – he painted/sketched the tower at Tabley in Cheshire, Cook’s Folly near Bristol and the Gibraltar Tower in Sussex amongst many others. Click the link in red for events planned to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth in 1775.

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Sir Peter Byrne Leicester inherited the Tabley estate in 1742. At that date the mansion and adjacent chapel were picturesquely situated on an island in a lake, but Sir Peter had new ideas. In around 1760 he called in John Carr of York to build a new mansion, in the Palladian style, on higher ground about half a mile from the old. With the new hall complete Sir Peter did not demolish the old hall and chapel on the island, but instead left them standing to be admired as ‘ornamental features in the landscape’ (although he had little choice as the terms of his inheritance compelled him to keep the old mansion in repair). Sir Peter’s son would later add a tower as an eye-catcher and picnic pavilion.

Sir Peter died in 1770 when his son and heir was only 7 years old, and his widow managed the estate until Sir John Fleming Leicester 5th Bart (1762-1827) came of age. Sir John studied at Cambridge before setting off on the Grand Tour, returning in 1786 to his Cheshire estate.

Work to remodel the lake and build the tower was started soon after Sir John’s return and continued until around the end of the eighteenth century. In 1826 William Carey, Sir John’s biographer and art adviser, published some anecdotes of his patron’s life. He wrote that Sir John always had ‘some plans going forward for the embellishment of his domain’ and that he had erected the tower and remodelled the lake to create a ‘fine piece of water’. Sadly he is vague on dates, simply noting that this took place ‘some years ago’.

The lake and tower (it is always simply ‘the tower’) were used for ‘aquatic parties’, with Sir John having a small fleet of ‘ten or twelve pleasure vessels’, all built to his own specifications. He was described as a skilled sailor, making excursions on the lake ‘safe and agreeable’.

Sir John’s great passion was contemporary British art, and in the first decades of the nineteenth century he commissioned many artworks, including a number of views of his new lake and tower.

Perhaps most famous of the views of the tower at Tabley are two works of 1808 by J.M.W. Turner showing the lake and tower on a calm morning and in a ‘brisk gale’. They became separated in 1827 when works from the late Lord de Tabley’s London house (Sir John was created a Baron in 1826) were sold at auction to pay his debts. Lord Egremont purchased the ‘calm morning’ view, and it can be seen today at Petworth House in West Sussex.

Happily, its partner, showing the tower on a windy day, was sent to Tabley House where it remains today.

In 1874 the Old Hall was described as an ‘ivy-clad ruin’, although it was still furnished and could be visited by tourists, and some rooms housed estate staff. At the same date the chapel was recorded as being in ‘excellent preservation’ as it was still in regular use. Around fifty years later the situation changed dramatically when the island on which the buildings stood succumbed to brine subsidence (briefly – the pumping out of liquid brine causes the land above to become unstable). The mansion on the island was damaged and the contents and many of the internal fittings were salvaged before the inevitable total collapse – only a small section still stands today.

To save the chapel Cuthbert Leicester Warren (1877-1954) had it taken down and rebuilt close to the eighteenth century mansion in 1927. Material salvaged from the Old Hall was used to create the Old Hall Room which links the chapel to the mansion. Cuthbert’s son John, who died in 1975, was the last private owner of the Tabley estate (there’s more on him next week).

Tabley House and its collection are now owned by the University of Manchester. The house is leased to a care home, but the state rooms on the middle floor are home to the Tabley House Collection of paintings, furniture and decorative arts. The collection is open regularly between March and October.

The grade II listed tower, once an eye-catcher from the piano nobile, can today only just be made out in the distance as the overgrown trees on the tiny island hide the tower and cast shadows. The University sold the parkland to the Crown Estate in 2007 and sadly there is no public access. Happily we have Sir John’s pictorial record, and there’s the rather more modern medium of a YouTube film here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGU2dnGl_9M

For more on Tabley House http://www.tableyhouse.co.uk

Thank you to the Tabley House Collection and ArtUK for making these wonderful images freely available.

Watch out for part II next week which features a charming period in the tower’s existence. Thank you for reading and do get in touch via the comments section below if you’d like to share any thoughts.