In 1857 an anonymous article appeared in The Builder magazine under the title Architectural “Follies”. The author used the word ‘architectural’ to distinguish from examples of folly in literature and art: he thought there were far too many books with an eccentric choice of subject, and that there were many follies ‘perpetuated on canvas’. Sadly, he failed to develop this theme, and the reader is left wondering what exactly he had in mind (the Flâneuse is making the assumption that at this date a journalist writing for a building trade magazine was almost certainly male). Happily, he was a little more forthcoming when he moved on to follies of the built variety.

The ‘Chinese bridges and temples of George III’ were confirmed as architectural follies in his mind, as was George IV’s Pavilion at Brighton.

His next two examples were recent additions to the streets of London. Today we would consider them monuments, but to the writer they were the very height of folly. The first was an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in London, which he described as ‘an undoubted architectural folly’. More than one statue of the military hero, atop his horse, Copenhagen, could be found in London, but the author is probably referring to the colossal bronze by Matthew Cotes Wyatt that was hoisted onto the Wellington Arch in 1846. Our writer was not alone in disliking the vast statue, which was thought out of proportion to the arch. When the gateway was moved in 1883 to enable road-widening, the statue was taken down and, after much debate in the House of Lords, moved to a new home in Aldershot.

The writer then makes a brief mention of the ‘never-to-be-forgotten monument once at King’s-cross’. The Flâneuse hadn’t forgotten it – she had never even heard of its fascinating history.

The building was erected in 1830 as a memorial to King George IV, and topped with a cheaply made and, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘very uncomplimentary effigy of majesty’. This shoddy statue (when seen at close range) survived only until 1842, and the whole structure was pulled down in 1845, having apparently served as both a pub and a police station, although presumably not at the same time.

Whilst conceding that many a folly is a picturesque object, the author disliked sham ruins, believing that they mislead the tourist who might sketch them ‘in the belief of their antiquity’ only to have ‘all feelings of romance or poetry’ dashed upon discovering they were follies.  He likened their disgust to that felt by Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter’s Scott’s The Antiquary of 1816. Oldbuck, a gentleman who sees a lost settlement in every bump in a field, fights hard to regain his dignity when the ‘prætorium’ he describes to his guest is announced to be the ruins of a shelter built only twenty years earlier.

Curiously, the writer doesn’t name any actual sham ruins in his tirade, so here are two of the Flâneuse’s favourites, the castles at Balcarres in Fife and Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

Our high-minded author thought money frittered on follies could be better spent on building schools or cottages, so that the ‘labourer would have felt that he was bestowing his handiwork on matters of utility’. One suspects that as long as he was being paid, the labourer wouldn’t really mind what he was constructing: it’s unlikely a workman ever downed tools in protest when offered several shillings to knock up a sham castle (and, of course, what the writer didn’t mention is that some sham ruins were erected to create jobs and an income for those in need).

The Flâneuse disagreed with many of the author’s assertions, but happily she was wholeheartedly in concordance with his conclusion that follies are ‘worthy of thought’. Indeed they are.

The mention of Oldbuck reminded the Flâneuse that The Antiquary must surely have influenced the builder of a folly tower at Horsmonden, in Kent, which was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. You can read about the folly tower here.

There’s more information on the King’s Cross monument here.

Thanks for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information.

Dromana House in County Waterford enjoys wonderful views over the mighty Blackwater river, but the approach to the house crosses a tributary, the Finnisk, and there’s a surprise for anyone visiting for the first time. The road curves, and suddenly there is the most perfect of scenes: a tranquil river crossed by a bridge leading to a lodge built in a magnificent melange of the gothic and the oriental.

The bridge was originally a wooden structure, with a central drawbridge allowing boats to pass in the days when the river was navigable. Old postcards show that the bridge originally had ogee-arched railings to match the lodge, but even by 1928 the bridge was becoming worn ‘under the strain of heavy traffic’, and strengthening and safety works in the later twentieth century saw the wooden bridge and railings replaced with concrete and steel.

In the early nineteenth century Dromana was the seat of Henry Villiers Stuart (1803-1874), created 1st Baron de Decies in 1839. The tale is told that a papier-mâché arch was erected, where the lodge stands today, to welcome Stuart when he returned to Dromana with his new bride in 1826. The arch was said to have been fashioned in an indo-gothic style to help the happy couple remember their honeymoon in Brighton, where they would have seen George IV’s Royal Pavilion. Stuart and his wife were apparently so taken with the design that they decided to recreate it in a more substantial fashion.

No records can be found to corroborate this story (although such ephemeral celebratory arches were certainly in vogue in this period). In fact, the whole story of Villiers Stuart’s marriage is rather mysterious. He is said to have married Theresia Pauline Ott (c.1802-1867), a Viennese-born widow, in a Catholic ceremony in London in 1826, and a son, Henry, was born in 1827. In 1839 the marriage was solemnised in Christ Church, Marylebone, when the curate noted in the register that the couple had been ‘heretofore married in the city of Dublin according to the Ritual Ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church’, but crucially no date is given. No records of an 1826 marriage could be found after Lord de Decie’s death in 1874, making his son illegitimate, and therefore unable to inherit the title. This was a ’cause celebre‘ of the day, and the ‘exceptionally interesting peerage case’, filled the courtroom and the newspapers for some weeks in 1876.

Surprisingly few accounts of the lovely lodge can be found, but we do know it was extant by 1835 when a Scottish tourist, Robert Graham, saw a ‘remarkable bridge’ with a building with a ‘pear-shaped cupola’ at the end of it.* The ‘costly fanciful structure’ was noted by another writer in 1844, and in 1848 John Bernard Burke (of ‘Peerage’ fame) described it as ‘singularly fanciful and striking’ and ‘looking like some romantic scene in the Arabian Nights’.

The architect is thought to be Martin Day (?1797-?1860), who is known to have worked at Dromana in the correct period. Surviving drawings of the lodge by Day are dated 1849, suggesting that it was perhaps remodelled or renovated at that date. The inspiration behind the lodge remains a mystery – is the Brighton honeymoon story true (probably not – the court case suggests they went straight to Scotland after the wedding)? Had Villiers Stuart or his architect seen Oriental Scenery, the volumes of views of India produced by the Daniell brothers in 1795-1807 (above)? Were they aware of Sezincote, the Mughal palace in the Cotswolds built by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, with the assistance of Thomas Daniell, for his brother Charles in the first years of the nineteenth century? Wherever the idea came from, we should be grateful it did, and that this joyful structure survives today.

The Irish Georgian Society restored the decrepit lodge in 1968, and further repairs were made in the 1990s, but the lodge is once again in need of some care. In 2023 the IGS gave a grant to support the preparation of a building report to investigate how to ‘reinstate this structure to its former glory’.

The bridge and lodge are freely accessible. The house at Dromana was reduced to a more manageable size in the twentieth century and remains the home of the Villiers Stuart family. You can read more about the history and visiting here https://dromanahouse.com

That’s the last folly (for now, at least) from the Flâneuse’s recent Irish jaunt. If all goes to plan next week’s post will go off at a tasty tangent. Thank you for reading, and as ever you can share thoughts and comments at the foot of the page.

*This information is from J.A.K. Dean’s impressive gazetteer of the gate lodges of Ireland, and in particular the volume for the province of Munster.