architecture, Banqueting House, belvedere, Bristol, country house, eyecatcher, Folly, garden history, landscape garden, public park, sham castle, Tower

Blaise Castle, Bristol.

In the first half of the 1760s Thomas Farr, a Bristol merchant, bought land at Henbury near Bristol, which included the prominent eminence called ‘Blaize Hill’. In 1766 he commissioned designs from the architect Robert Mylne for a sham castle eye-catcher to top the hill.