In 1807 the 9th earl of Winchelsea built a rustic retreat deep in woodland in his park at Burley-on-the-Hill. The building was known as ‘The Hermitage’, and soon became the subject of tales which were somewhat fanciful, even in the fantastical world of follies.

George Finch (1752-1826) succeeded his uncle as the 9th Earl of Winchelsea in 1769. The Burley-on-the-Hill estate that he inherited included the elegant mansion on its hilltop site, a building which will be familiar to anyone who has driven near Oakham in Rutland.

The parkland was home to a vast wood, cut through with straight rides in a star shape by a previous generation. In one of the segments of the woodland Finch built a summerhouse in the form of a hermit’s abode. The floor was a mosaic of pebbles and the knucklebones of sheep, and featured a ‘W’ for Winchelsea and the date 1807, which is assumed to be the date of construction.

In 1858 a local newspaper described the Hermitage as ‘an object of interest and amusement’ and encouraged readers to walk the ‘narrow and meandering’ path through the woods to find the rustic cottage, which was built almost entirely of wood except for a huge chimney built of rough stones. There were two rooms – a bedroom with wooden bed and straw mattress covered with sacking, and a front parlour. The centrepiece of this room was a ‘huge block of wood’ which served as a table. The table was by that date already covered in graffiti, as the many visitors had carved their names or initials into the surface. Despite this vandalism, the Hermitage remained ‘constantly open for inspection’.

The same account introduces the first ‘history’ of the building. In brief, a man wanted by debt-collectors went into hiding in Burley Woods (he is not named in the report but locally he is remembered as a Mr Booth or a Mr Bennett). Being ‘sufficiently versed in construction’, he built the ‘humble tabernacle’ and only ventured out occasionally for provisions. Eventually, the bailiff found his secret hideout and tried to take him into custody, but the fugitive locked the bailiff in the hermitage and ran for it. The bailiff, being a stout man, was allegedly stuck in the cottage for days until rescuers found him, much to the amusement of the locals.

An alternative version of the tale has the lurid twist that the fugitive was in fact a murderer. To atone for his crime he sequestered himself in the woods and lived as a hermit, bound by oath not to speak to his fellow men. A short distance from the Hermitage was a smaller rustic shelter called Soloman’s Hut, and according to the legend this is where food was left for the hermit to collect.

Still more diabolical is the history recounted in 1911, which has an ancestor of the Finch family selling his soul to the devil. When Satan tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to keep his word, a deal was struck that the bond would be broken when a Finch had spent 7 years in solitary confinement in the Hermitage. Until this was accomplished the devil would retain his hold over the family. The report concluded that ‘within living memory’ one member of the family had managed two years of isolation before he ‘lost his reason’. Clearly the writer didn’t believe a word of the nonsense he was feeding to his readers, and he concludes with the anti-climactic ‘At any rate, it is a fact that there is at Burley to this day a Hermit’s cell’.

Barbara Jones described the Hermitage in the first edition of Follies and Grottoes in 1953. She thought it a ‘magnificent example’ of the hermitage genre of landscape buildings, and was amazed to find the interior intact. The furnishings included ‘three triangular stools of remarkable rustic discomfort’, and the vast table was still in situ. Her wonderful sketch shows just how intricate the fan-vaulted ceiling was, with branches for the ribs and huge elm bosses.

The Hermitage was visited by architect Neville Hawkes (1910-1988) in 1955 and his photograph shows that by that date the building was looking a little shabby and protected by a barbed-wire fence. Hawkes was probably accompanied on that visit by his son, William (1939-2024), and a year later William and a schoolmate returned to explore the building. Their status as pupils at the local public school of Uppingham gained them permission to visit the Hermitage, and for future historians this would be one of the best decisions the estate office ever made. Young Will, later to train as an architect, recorded the floorpan of the building in a lovely sketch.

Only six years after Will Hawkes visited, the Hermitage was set alight. On Thursday 5 July 1962 the Oakham firemen fought to save the structure, but it was totally destroyed (N.B. Barbara Jones gives the date 1965 which she was given in error by the estate office). A police investigation was launched, but it is unclear if the perpetrators were ever found and the blame is generally pinned on ‘schoolchildren’. The demise of the Hermitage caused great sorrow to an anonymous correspondent with the local paper. The writer remembered picknicking there with ‘the late Squire Finch’ and wished everyone to know that the ‘story of the Burley hermit is a myth’.

Today only a handful of photographs and sketches of the Hermitage survive to record its history, although visitors to the Rutland County Museum might see a miniature model of the building. It was made by local resident William H. Sewell, aka Billy Bennett (1912-1985). The exact date of the model is not known, but it shows the building much as Neville Hawkes saw it in 1955, with the chimney partially collapsed.

The Burley-on-the-Hill estate descended to the Hanbury family, and by the middle of the twentieth century the woods had been closed to the public (there’s an interlude when the estate is owned by the later-disgraced entrepreneur Asil Nadir that needs only the briefest of mentions here). The house was converted into houses by Kit Martin in the 1990s, but the parkland remains with the Hanburys who are currently planning to create an ‘immersive visitor attraction’ called Wild Rutland. Perhaps the Hermitage could be recreated – what could be more wild than a solitary hermit’s cottage?

The Rutland County Museum has a fascinating collection, although please note that the model of the hermitage is not currently on display. Visit before 4 October 2025 to see an exhibition of the works of the artist Rev J.L. Petit (1801-1868) of which the highlight for the present writer was, of course, this view of the folly known as Old John in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

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In 1953 Barbara Jones published Follies & Grottoes, a ‘handsome book on a fascinating subject’. It was the first book to look at follies in any depth, and was well-received. Almost twenty years later it was announced that there would be a revised edition, for whilst the first edition was remembered as a pioneering book, it was ‘not a comprehensive survey’. Upon publication in November 1974 (fifty years ago this week) the new edition was judged ‘double the size and more than twice as good’.

Constable & Co. commissioned the first edition after Jones and Ralph Arnold, one of the directors of the publishing house, had become friends – Arnold had given Jones one of her first jobs in illustration in 1938. In February 1953 Bookseller magazine announced that ‘Barbara Jones has completed her long-expected work on Follies and Grottoes – a blend of melancholy, horror, genial extravagance and elegant conceits’.

In 1972 Jones was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to allow her to ‘revise and extend’ two of her books: The Unsophisticated Arts (1951) and Follies and Grottoes. The funding allowed her to travel across the nation to revisit follies and explore the many new ones which she had been made aware of since 1953. The book was originally to be published in 1973 and Constable & Co. plugged it as forthcoming in November 1972, but Jones had so much new material to work with that it would be November 1974 before the book was in the shops. It was priced at a then substantial £10: the reviewer for the Birmingham Daily Post wrote that the ‘mammoth’ book was ‘surely the last word on the subject’* with the caveat ‘as it should be at that price’.

One criticism of the 1st edition was the paucity of images, with Clough Williams-Ellis in The Spectator describing Jones’s ‘rather scratchy sketches’ as ‘starvation rations’. As well as including more follies, the 2nd edition also featured many more illustrations, although all are printed in black and white. These were mainly by Jones herself, but there are a handful by artist friends such as Mary Adshead (above), James Gardner, Bill Howell and Raymond Fieldhouse. Reviewing the new edition for the Times Literary Supplement, Julian Barnes summed up what Jones had achieved: ‘It is wholly thanks to Barbara Jones that the wider public knows about, let alone cares about, the towers, ruins, grottoes, tunnels, and other architectural oddities which adorn the countryside’.

Follies & Grottoes was featured in The Times in November 1974 as one of their recommendations of ‘Lovely presents for lovely people’, and the article was illustrated with one of Jones’s ‘dramatic ink drawings’: a view of the conical folly at Barwick Park (above). The Scotsman gave the book a mention, clearly delighted to find the Pineapple at Dunmore on the cover of the new edition.

Follies & Grottoes has long been out of print, so look out for a second-hand copy if it isn’t already on your bookshelves.

*Apparently not.

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Last week’s brief post on the sham Druid’s Temple, near Masham, was something of a preamble to The Folly Flâneuse sharing this wonderful letter written by Barbara Jones in 1949. Jones is, of course, the doyenne of folly-spotters, and in this missive she shares the ups and downs of researching for the first edition of Follies & Grottoes. It is a delight to read: camping at the Druid’s Temple, finding Hackfall, and best of all a run-in with the formidable Captain Fordyce, Agent to Lord Hothfield at Skipton Castle. Here’s the unadulterated letter in full:

The Follyhenge. Sunday a.m.
Dearest Tom
Yesterday was one of those days that happen to somebody else, not us. So much work on such follies never never before. I got up at six, rewrote article for Ambassador and made a fair copy (later in the day, it was actually registered and posted). Down to breakfast at 7.30: we were just out of Pateley Bridge SETTLE, last flop folly of a day of follies not only flop but WET, and were in a C.T.C. B&B, dirty beds, nothing to eat but bread & butter, gloomy sitting room to write in, all pure hell but 7/6 supper b&b — cheapest yet! Breakfast was more heavy starch food but we made a magnificent start to Skipton, straight into the risen sun, all gold and dew and long shadows of geese in the meadows. Skipton was PO, that touch of acidity that a good day needs: The wonderful Scaife follies resolved themselves into one shell room in the castle gate. Not open till 10.30. Draw? Without permission from Captain Fordyce? So I swep [sic] up to the Estate Office, which is cunningly arranged at the top of a vast spiral of medieval stairs so that one enters the prescence [sic] breathless. Oh, he is only the Agent, not God. I send in a card — impossible to see him, impossible to send a message, perhaps if I write permission might be given for a week hence. He is busy, he isn’t here, he’s going to a wedding. I leave card with request and Constables letter shall return in half an hour. Last thought — can I phone the actual owner. Enormous po. Back in half an hour, all smiles, JesusC has said YES, on condition that Lordie is sent a complimentary copy through the office. TOP PO from me. J.C has really left by now and cannot withdraw permission, so we go to the Shell House made by Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke. I only knew about her very nice ‘Arcadia’ — she built Yorkshire too. The shell house is charming, tiny and rough but  EARYL EARLY, dear, EARLY. A rough little female figure with a head like a football with cats’ ears is known as ‘Father Neptune’. Made drawing locked ourselves in, took long exposures with Syb. and away into the town. Coffee, pies for lunch, and a new racket — you take 3lbs of sugar to a stall and he sells you toffee (delicious) and fudge (smashing) for 1 11d a lb and the sugar, pound for pound. Toffee is controlled at 2 4d lb & they knock off the 5d you paid the grocer. Exit from Skipton, eating pies and giving Captain Fordyce a last loving Shugborough:

On thro’ superb moorland country to the hills above Pateley Bridge, where is the easiest & loveliest of hilltop follies — Yorke’s. You suddenly see across the bracken and heather 2 great shafts of stone, the remains of a folly of arches; a pleasant walk across the hilltop from the road and there it is. Photos & on. Awful recce by me with lipstick rubbed of [sic] from Congregational Minister, an old poppet but hopeless. Further try in P.B. Hopeless too. (While I am writing this, Bill is Syb Sibylling our 4th new & utterly unrecorded folly in 2 sq miles — one at every bend of the road. Culture-carrier — I am looking for a tall white-haired man in every bush. Little red open Austin goes by — everyone waves paws.)

Days and days later — forcing the pace. You are getting a most inadequate number of cards, & never never this pretty letter. Today I shall post it whatever. To revert to Good Saturday. Hackfall woods — a Tom Pot — was the next; by some miracle we gave ourselves times to decipher the hand of the master and didn’t cut it out — you arrive in the indicated village — Grewelthorpe, we think — and ask for the H. woods. “Why, there they are.” At last we realise that “there” is a gate into a field. Very dim. After 3 fields a little wood begins to straggle. Suddenly there is a lovely gothic stone folly and behind it, with no warning, the woods — great gorges packed with trees, no paths, and five more follies. We went down 60° screes covered with scrub and marsh underneath, & little flowers and ferns six feet high, and burdock three feet across and old man willowherb seven feet high and Kew fern house smell and everything. Really key. Supper brewed at sunset inside last folly.

Then Bill got the bit absolutely between his teeth & bashed on to Masham in the dale — lovely village built round a huge planted square — pub recce, and then he says he knows where Stonehenge is. We bash up dark lanes and he says “In that copse”. We cross moonlit stubble fields and enter a sold black wall of conifers. Hand in terrified hand we creep tho’, owls with daggers in their belts in every tree.

At last even Bill has had enough; it isn’t here. More recce and more recce and at last a cottage with a light on in the moors. 11pm. I knock & say “I’m sorry to disturb you so late — would you please tell me where the Druids’ Circle is” Why, yes, explicit directions & never a hair turned. Up the English. We go along a rising lane, leave the car, take to the open moor seeing here & there a tall stone and finally by a pine wood, flanked by monoliths, lies the stone circle, in full moonlight on the moors. Bill has been brewing up this one secretly all day. All effort, all gloomy Grisels are justified. It is smashing. We are so impressed that we rush back to the car for the things and living in the circle on gorgeous turf like a feather bed. Wake in the morning to watch the sun rise over the circle — all in the wrong place, bless them, and have breakfast on the sacrificial stone.

And that’s where this letter began. The other little bit was written later. I’m in Stamford now, hotel bedroom, C&N are living somewhere in the night. Today we do Exton, which we saw yesterday evening — bark architecture, full of black nails; the ultimate architecture of blood and pain, the most neurotic and awful folly yet. Its so terrifying we can’t bear to touch the bark. I saw it years ago & never forgot it; so did Harry Bentinck — which explains his letter! Wait till you SEE it. Coo. We shall be back in London on Sunday evening. Could pick up a card Wednesday at IPSWICH. Im so upset about 4 months plaster, Tom — will you read all the Folly literature for me?                                    Much love Barbara

…………………..

The letter is addressed to Tom Ingram (1924-2007) a writer friend who accompanied Jones, and Bill Howell (1922-1974), architect, on the first of her 1949 first folly-spotting forays after she was commissioned to write Follies & Grottoes by the publishers Constable. As the letter was found in Barbara Jones’s papers it is unlikely it ever reached him, and he must have made do with the postcards. After a couple of trips the trio had been involved in a car crash in the Midlands, leaving Ingram with a badly-damaged arm, so Jones and Howell made the northern excursion whilst he recuperated. Ingram was usually the photographer and his expertise was clearly missed – note the finger over the lens in the photo’ above.

As Jones wrote of the thrill of a night at the temple in the published book: ‘Does the Englishman exist who never to himself has sworn to see Stonehenge just once at dawn? It occurred to us that here was a nobler opportunity, to see the sun rise, not over that common circle in Wiltshire where charabanc parties stand bewildered under a sky of solid cloud, but over a private Stonehenge, in perfect weather, in peace.’

Notes: Sibyl is a camera made by Newman and Guardia, CTC is the Cyclist’s Touring Club. Some in-jokes remain unexplained.

The current owner promises a much warmer welcome at Skipton Castle, and the grotto is a delight https://www.skiptoncastle.co.uk

To visit the Druid’s Temple https://www.swintonestate.com/bivouac/

If you missed the previous post on the Druid’s Temple scroll down.