In 1922 the writer and illustrator Charles George Harper penned a series of three articles about follies for The Architect magazine. Harper was a prolific author and had noted many follies as he toured the nation, often including them in his books on the topography of Britain. The articles were illustrated with his own vignettes of some of the buildings he admired (or censured). As for the foibles, which some may find a rather weak description of the eccentricities of Harper’s character, read on…

As ever in a feature on follies, the author had to deal with the question of a definition. Harper (1863-1943) concluded that a folly was a ‘pleasant fancy’ in the shape of a garden-house, a gazebo or perhaps even a ‘skyline freak’. As he continued, ‘now we have settled the nature of follies, the next thing will be to find some’. This, he thought, would be far from difficult, as the ‘land abounds with them’. Harper was sure that once a folly had been found, ‘the traveller who happens to be of a speculative turn of mind will find his curiosity greatly piqued to learn the story’.

Harper began with the building which he thought was ‘architecturally the most interesting’: the Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire. This was, he wrote, a building in which ‘Sir Thomas Tresham gave full outlet to his peculiar bent of mind’ by building a structure in which all measurements and decorations were governed by the ‘mystic three’.

In Cornwall Harper visited a ‘prime curiosity of the gruesome kind’ in the form of the mausoleum of Sir James Tillie. The monument was then derelict, but peering through a small gap the statue of Tillie could be seen – a ‘ferociously ugly man, with scowling countenance and great protruding paunch.’

Jack Fuller of Sussex (best known as Mad Jack Fuller) was described as ‘one of those squires who could not leave a hill-top alone in its natural beauty, but must needs place on it something in the way of a building, generally something ugly’. This was illustrated with a view of the Sugarloaf, supposedly erected to help Fuller win a bet that he could see Dallington church spire from his home. In fact he couldn’t, and the story goes that the cone was erected in a great hurry to ensure he won the wager.

William Beckford was noted as a man who frittered a fortune building towers, and an elegant sketch of his surviving tower in Bath was included in the article.

Harper was known for his strong opinions, and wasn’t afraid to air them in print. An anonymous review of his The Marches of Wales in The Athenaeum in 1895 noted how he went into ‘rhapsodies on discovering a Conservative cobbler’ but ‘shrieks against Dissenters, teetotallers and Radical politicians’. He was also accused of passing a ‘somewhat unjust judgment on the character of the Welsh people’.

To this list of pet hates might be added the women who were (to his mind) threatening the established order. In particular, Harper was no fan of the increasing numbers of female journalists who had ‘invaded newspaper offices’ and who were all more interested in the ‘cut of a dress’ than the ‘fall of a statesman from office’. He makes this sweeping statement in 1894, in a book that was a curious departure from his usual travelogues: Revolted Women: Past, Present and to Come. After what Harper called Eve’s ‘stupendous faux pas‘, he wondered why womanhood wasn’t content to ‘sit, for all time, humbly under correction, satisfied with her lot’ instead of aspiring to rule men while they had ‘no efficient control over [their] own hysterical being’.

But back to follies…

Harper also noted that not everything called a folly was actually a built structure with an interesting history. As an example, he gave the hilltop clump of trees in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) which had long been known as Faringdon Folly. One wonders what he made of the tower that Lord Berners erected on the summit only a decade or so later: no doubt it would have fallen into the ‘skyline freak’ category.

All of the follies mentioned are publicly accessible. Most have been covered in these pages – the search function will take you to the relevant posts.

Assuming she can control her own emotions (Harper didn’t think this possible of any females, especially writers) the Flâneuse will be back with another folly story next week. Thank you for reading.

In 1941 Batsford published a new title by Edmund Vale called Curiosities of Town and Countryside. With a striking cover by Brian Cook, featuring the triumphal arch at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, the jacket blurb promised the reader ‘freaks, eccentricities and follies.’

The Flâneuse recently ordered a copy online and whilst waiting for the postman to arrive began to do some background research. She was baffled to find the reviewer in the Hampstead News writing that amongst the buildings featured in the volume were ‘monstrosities like Lansdown Tower, Bath, and the Sugarloaf Folly, Sussex’. William Beckford and ‘Mad’ Jack Fuller may have built structures that weren’t to everyone’s taste, but ‘monstrosities’ seemed a little harsh.

And then the book was delivered, and all became clear. As he states in the book’s preface, Mr Vale (1888-1969) excludes follies from his study of curiosities for the simple reason that he has ‘always cherished a profound and contemptuous dislike for these monstrosities’. His publisher, Harry Batsford, is adamant that follies should be included in the book, but Vale is resolute that he won’t write about them, and continues that follies are ‘interlopers’ as they are ‘decidely eccentric and not accidentally so’.

‘However I must not rant’ Vale writes (rather too late in the Flâneuse’s opinion) and he introduces Mr Charles Bradley Ford who has come to the rescue by writing a final chapter on follies, and thus allowing Vale to maintain his moral high ground. However this is all a little tongue-in-cheek, for ‘Charles Bradley Ford’ was the pen-name of Harry Batsford and his colleague Christopher Fry: when the company was hit by the financial crisis of the early 1930s, it was cheaper to write the books themselves using a pseudonym.

The publishers also had the last word on illustrations, so many ‘monstrosities’ can be found pictured in the book, including those featured here, although to add to the confusion some of the photographs are of structures that are not even mentioned in the text. And of course the dust jacket features a famous landscape ornament.

‘Ford’ begins his chapter with the obligatory note on the difficulty of defining a folly. He continues that the subject of follies is an ‘amusing and engaging byway’, but with a nod to Vale he continues that to some they are ‘detestable and deplorable excrescences’. Ford believes that follies ‘add to the gaiety of the countryside’, although he draws the line at obelisks which are ‘dull and commonplace in spite of the efforts of lightening to reduce their number’.

The Illustrated London News called the book ‘delectable’ and it is certainly a handsome volume. The argument for and against follies it contains is decidedly odd, but most entertaining: an excellent addition to any folly fan’s library.

The Flâneuse first spotted the striking dust jacket in a new Batsford publication – The Book Cover by Paul Dimond. The book explores 150 years of the vibrant covers designed for Batsford publications.

All of the follies pictured here are extant, and all can be visited or seen from a public road.

Thank you for reading. There will be more monstrosities next week. Scroll down to the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts.

In 1908 T.W. Wilkinson submitted an article on ‘Remarkable Follies’ to Wide World Magazine. This popular publication was launched in 1898 and was aimed at men, and in particular what one writer has called ‘armchair adventurers’. It specialised in true-life tales of derring-do with titles such as ‘The Underground Pirates’ and ‘Across Africa by Boat’. One wonders what the readership made of Wilkinson’s article: exciting as follies are, they don’t quite have the drama of ‘A Subterranean Duel’.

Perhaps it was to compete with such adventures that Wilkinson launched into a dramatic introduction:

‘There is no stranger human foible than that which finds vent in the erection of what are popularly known as “follies”. It impels men to begin building without counting the cost, and to create freakish and unnecessary structures, with a consequent enormous waste of money; and its results are seen all over the countryside in half-finished undertakings, architectural atrocities, sham antiquities, and other more or less ridiculous objects. Incredible though it may seem, it is none the less a fact that millions – literally millions – of pounds have been spent on such superfluities’.

After that controversial conspectus Wilkinson goes on to discuss, very briefly, around 20 follies – all fairly well-known examples, with some accompanying photographs. Despite his introduction he isn’t particularly disparaging in most cases, and he even concedes that Ralph Allen’s sham castle on the Bath skyline is ‘picturesque’. A curiosity of his paper is that he uses the word “freaks” as a synonym for “follies”, and to stress this both words almost always appear in inverted commas. Thus the Egyptian Well at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire is a “freak” which ‘appears as if it has just strayed from the British Museum’ (Wilkinson seems oblivious to the fact that this was the builder’s intention).

And Beckford’s Tower on the edge of Bath is noted as ‘one of the most elaborate towers of the freak variety’.

As well as isolated “freaks” such as the foregoing (as Wilkinson wrote) there were also examples of groups of follies built by one man ‘in whom the passion for erecting such things developed into a monomania’. Wilkinson picked out the Brightling “follies” of Mad Jack Fuller and the scattered “follies” of J.S.W.S Erle-Drax on his Dorset estates.

As well as Drax’s elegant tower at Charborough there were, according to Wilkinson, two or three sham antiquities, a huge mausoleum, and other “freaks”. The mausoleum stood in the churchyard at Holnest and was indeed huge – Wilkinson would no doubt have approved when it was pulled down in 1935.

The Charborough Tower still stands and is claimed as inspiration for Thomas Hardy when he was writing Two on a Tower.

Wilkinson ended with the question ‘Is “folly” building dying out now?’. His conclusion was that it didn’t look like it. But he picks the most unlikely structure to argue his case – a factory chimney in Bingley in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. Whilst a very functional feature of the Roundhill Tannery, the chimney must have qualified as folly in Wilkinson’s eyes as it was unlike any other chimney, and would have been much more expensive than a conventional design. According to another contemporary account of the chimney, each brick was placed 3.16 of an inch out of place so that when it reached a height of 50 feet each face would be opposite the compass point where it had started. Sadly the chimney was pulled down in the early 1970s.

In conclusion Wilkinson makes the bizarre and unqualified statement that “folly” houses are ‘actually now under construction in various parts of the country’. The Flâneuse would love to know which structures he had in mind.

Thanks to Sheila Donaldson of Bingley and District Local History Society for telling me the history of the chimney.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are very welcome – please scroll down to the bottom of the page to get in touch. Please note that only your name will be published and not your email address.