In the early 19th century the Reverend William Wordsworth (1783-1869) built an observatory on high land near the village of Monk Bretton. The lofty landmark was demolished in the mid-20th century, and is known today only from a few photographs.

Wordsworth (a distant relative of his namesake the poet) studied at Oxford and was then ordained into the priesthood. He was curate at Mersham, in Kent, and Domestic Chaplain to Viscount Palmerston, before moving to the parish of Ardwick on the edge of Manchester. By 1824 he and his wife had moved to Monk Bretton, near Barnsley, where he had inherited his grandfather’s  estate. There Wordsworth lived the life of a country gentleman, and became a respected magistrate.

No architect is known for the tower, which is also known as Wordsworth’s Folly, Burton Castle (Burton being a corruption of Bretton widely used in the 18th and early 19th centuries) or Monk Bretton Castle. Originally it was called the Summer House, and it is marked as such on the 1st series Ordnance Survey map published in 1841. The surveyors would have been sure of its name, for they used the tower as a triangulation point when working on the map series. A sketch map, copied from the surveyor’s drawing, survives showing that the tower had views to the ‘dome on Pontefract Church’ (St Giles), 10 miles away, as well as several other churches and another pleasure pavilion, the belvedere at Bilham, almost 8 miles away.

By the time the revised 1st edition map was published in 1855 the tower was called the Observatory, and the village held their 1857 Floral & Horticultural Show in the adjacent ‘Observatory Field’.

Wordsworth’s tower was his ‘calm retreat’, and from the summit he enjoyed a panorama that encompassed views to Barnsley, Wakefield, and the great estates of Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Bretton Park. Every lofty tower in Yorkshire claims a view to York Minster, but at least Wordsworth admitted to the use of a telescope, as described in this extract from On the Observatory at Monk Bretton by the Barnsley Poet Thomas Lister:

Should optic power assist the sight,
The eye may speed its joyful flight,
Where nobler scenes expand-
See Ebor’s sacred splendour smile-
With awe regard that mighty pile!-
The glory of our land.

In 1895 locals appealed for the Observatory Field to be made into a recreation ground, and the tower to be made accessible to the locals, many of whom had ‘no idea what a noble prospect there is from the top’. Such a park it was argued would be unrivalled locally ‘in the matter of beauty of situation and the extent of prospect it would command.’ The campaign was a partial success, and maps from the first years of the 20th century show a ‘Cricket and Football Ground’ had been established in the shadow of the observatory, although there is no evidence that the tower was opened to visitors. Monk Bretton Cricket Club still play at the ‘Castle Ground’.

In 1953 a beacon was lit at ‘Monk Bretton Castle’ to mark the coronation of the new queen. Sadly this was its last hurrah, and Barnsley Council demolished the deteriorating tower for safety reasons a few years later.

For some years the tower was framed by the twin columns of Monk Bretton’s very unusual and attractive war memorial, erected in 1920 to remember those who did not return from the First World War. The columns, which now also commemorate those lost in World War II, were moved across the road in 1978, where they are sited in a neat little garden of remembrance.

It is still possible to stand on the site of the tower, close to an O.S. trig point (at the time of writing inexplicably painted to represent a minion from the Despicable Me film franchise), and see a vast panorama over Barnsley and beyond. And the tower is at least remembered in the street names of a recently-erected housing development.

The belvedere at Bilham is a subject for another day, but to whet your appetite…

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The Folly Flâneuse is beginning to feel festive after a visit to Harlow Carr in Harrogate. The Royal Horticultural Society’s Yorkshire garden is bathed in colour on selected evenings until the end of the year, and of course a highlight for this particular visitor was the beautifully lit Folly.

Harrogate’s Royal Spa Concert Rooms, which had been ‘sinking into dereliction for many years’,  were demolished in 1939-40, just a little more than a century after they were built. Originally known as the Cheltenham Rooms, capitalising on that town’s reputation as a chic spa resort, the building was later renamed the Royal Spa Rooms. Harrogate Corporation did at least have the foresight to put the fine Doric columns and pediment that made up the building’s portico into storage, but it was some years before an alternative use was found. In 1961, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, keen to preserve the masonry, presented it to the Northern Horticultural Society for incorporation into the expanding gardens which had been opened at Harlow Carr on the edge of Harrogate a decade earlier.

The directors of the garden initially intended that the entire portico would be rebuilt as a ‘Grecian Temple’. ‘After all’, the society’s magazine reported, ‘no ornamental garden of any pretensions should be without one.’ Seats were to be placed under the pediment ‘to give rest to the weary and joy to the lover of the classic Attic line embowered in a woodland setting’. After delays caused by minor issues such as planning permission, the columns were eventually set in place as an eye catcher at the end of a long vista in 1964, ‘and a beastly inconvenience it was to the staff trying to create a garden’ wrote a former Honorary Director of the gardens, in slightly less poetic mode.

Unfortunately putting up the columns proved more expensive and arduous than expected and a combination of lack of funds, and worries about the safety of erecting the pediment, meant that it was never added. But whilst there is no shelter, the colonnade perfectly fulfils its role as a garden feature. The masonry from the pediment seems eventually to have been used to build the retaining wall behind the columns.

In the late 1990s plans were announced to build a new Exhibition Centre in Harrogate and, controversially, it was suggested that the Harlow Carr columns be returned to the central Harrogate site to support a modern glass pediment. Cutting a long story short, replica columns were used and Harlow Carr got to keep its folly.

Harlow Carr is not the only garden to make use of recycled columns. To pick just two of many potential examples – the feature known locally as ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’ in Barnsley’s Locke Park (above) began life as part of the Post Office and was moved to Locke Park in 1879.

And in Manchester’s Heaton Park a considerably more ambitious relocation of part of the redundant early 19th century Town Hall was erected in 1912. Sadly it is now in need of stabilisation and has been fenced off for a number of years.

Glow at Harlow Carr can be seen on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays until 28 December 2019. The Folly can be viewed across the gardens, but for health and safety reasons can not be visited during the illuminations. It is however freely accessible during normal opening hours. Full details here https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/harlow-carr/whats-on/glow-winter-illuminations

Locke Park and Heaton Park are public parks and can be visited during daylight hours.

Thanks to the Curious Confidante (and beautifully coiffed daughter) for alerting me to this event, and for their cheerful company. And to Bettys for the excellent, and very welcome on a chilly evening, coffee.

Joseph Locke was a railway pioneer. Sheffield born, he achieved great wealth, but business and a career in politics took him away from his native Yorkshire. He remained hugely popular in Barnsley and never forgot the town where he moved as a small boy, which benefitted ‘to a large extent in his liberality’. There was great sadness when his death was announced in September 1860, aged only 55.

The following year Locke’s widow, Phoebe, announced that she intended to create a ‘recreation ground’ for the people of Barnsley as a ‘mark of regard and affection for her late husband’, and 17 acres of land were bought from the estate of the Duke of Leeds. The Chairman of the Board of Health declared himself  ‘exceedingly well pleased with the plans for laying out the ground’, and the local newspaper reported that it was a ‘most munificent gift, and would prove … a pleasure to the inhabitants.’ 

Mrs Locke asked a Mr Edwards, an engineer from her late husband’s railway company Locke & Errington, to travel to Barnsley and prepare plans for laying out the ground. The opening of the park was marked with processions and a general holiday, and commemorated by a medal with a profile of Joseph Locke. On the reverse was a wreath of laurels and the legend ‘The Locke Park, given to the inhabitants of Barnsley by Phoebe, widow of the late Joseph Locke, June 10, 1862.’

Phoebe Locke died in 1866 and left the bulk of her fortune to her sister, Sarah McCreery. In 1871 McCreery travelled to Barnsley with an architect, Richard Phené Spiers, to discuss a substantial enlargement to the park in memory of her sister. The purchase of an extra 20 acres took some time to complete, and it wasn’t until October 1874 that the deeds were presented to the town. William Barron, famed for his work at Elvaston Castle in Derbyshire, was appointed to ‘lay out the whole of the park in the form of an ornamental garden’. The Board of Health ensured everything met with the ‘cordial approval’ of Miss McCreery and Spiers.

Spiers meanwhile had been drawing up plans for a monument to Mrs Locke which would sit on the highest point of the park. In July 1875 the papers announced that an ‘elegant tower of observation’ was to be constructed, and in 1876 the design was exhibited at the Royal Academy with the caption ‘Memorial Tower to Mrs Locke; now being erected in the Locke Park, Barnsley, from the design and under the supervision of R.P. Spiers.’ Spiers had studied architecture in  Paris, which was considered very unusual at that date, and the tower was believed to be ‘somewhat of the nature of one in the park at St Cloud, near Paris, destroyed three years ago’; this was the Lanterne de Démosthène, which was desecrated during the Franco-Prussian war. Spiers knew the building well, having captured it in a watercolour sketch in 1858. One can see the influence of the central shaft, but it is far from a slavish copy and Locke Tower is a wonderfully quirky and individual structure. “Did they use an architect?”, asked The Folly Flâneuses’s uncouth companion.

The park extension and tower were formally opened in August 1877 on a day of great festivities marred only by torrential rain. Another medal was produced bearing an image of the tower with, on the reverse, the words ‘In recognition of the generosity of Miss McCreery who on the 7th August 1877 added 20 acres of land to the park of Barnsley previously presented by her sister Phoebe Locke.’

The park was greatly appreciated by the ‘working classes’ who organised a subscription to erect an ornamental fountain to thank Miss McCreery. The fountain was also designed by Spiers. Joseph Locke himself had been commemorated with a larger than life bronze statue by the sculptor Baron Marochetti in 1866. However it is the monuments to the sisters Phoebe and Sarah which are of greatest historic significance, being rare dedications to non-royal women in a public park.

The Friends of Locke Park continue to campaign for investment in the grade II* listed tower and the park. In 2013 the public were readmitted to the interior after £80,000 was spent on the structure but further funding, estimated at around £250,000, is needed to restore the exterior.  A tall hedge and gates are now in the place which rather spoil the proportions, but keep out the vandals. The weather vane with Sarah McCreery’s monogram was blown off in a gale early this century and the Friends hope funds can be found to return it to the tower. Sadly philanthropists like the Lockes and Sarah McCreery are in short supply in the 21st century.

The Locke Park Tower is open to the public on the afternoon of the first Sunday of each month courtesy of the Friends of Locke Park http://www.friendsoflockepark.org.uk

For more on St Cloud http://www.saintcloud.fr/articles/dathenes-saint-cloud-lhistoire-dune-lanterne

The design for the memorial fountain is in the RIBA collection and can be seen here https://www.architecture.com/image-library/ribapix/image-information/poster/design-for-a-memorial-fountain-in-locke-park-barnsley-south-yorkshire-plan-and-elevation/posterid/RIBA99117.html

Some great news. A joint statement from Barnsley Council, the National Trust and the Northern College was issued early this morning announcing that the future of Wentworth Castle now ‘looks more secure’. The three bodies have been in discussion since the site closed in April 2017, and now plan on ‘working collaboratively’ towards a reopening in 2019. Wentworth Castle is the only Grade I listed Park in South Yorkshire and has an outstanding collection of follies and landscape buildings, including Stainborough Castle pictured here. The house (which houses the Northern College and is not currently open to the public), the gardens and the landscape buildings were restored at great cost, largely thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, to secure their future. This new alliance must build on that work to ensure that Wentworth is enjoyed by the people of South Yorkshire and beyond.

The full press release is here:

https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/news/new-partnership-set-to-secure-the-future-of-wentworth-castle-gardens-in-south-yorkshire/