architecture, eyecatcher, Folly, garden history, landscape garden, North Yorkshire, sham castle

Mowbray Castle, Hackfall, North Yorkshire

In the middle of the eighteenth century William Aislabie began to create a landscape garden on the banks of the River Ure, near the village of Grewelthorpe. In contrast to his grand estate at Studley, a few miles away, there were few manicured lawns or geometric pools, and instead Hackfall was a ‘sequestered and most romantic place’. Dotted around the grounds were summerhouses and shelters, including a dramatic hilltop tower called Mowbray Castle.

Anthony Devis (1729-1816) The Weeping Rock: a waterfall at Hackfall near Ripon. Courtesy of Harris Art Gallery, Preston.

Word soon spread that Hackfall was a place worth seeing, and early visitors recorded their admiration for the place: ‘never was there seen a finer assemblage of wild and variegated nature’ wrote a tourist in 1785. Although visitors frequently refer to the ‘imitations of ruins’ in the pleasure grounds (there’s also a sham-ruin banqueting house), the earliest specific reference by a visitor to ‘Mowbray Castle’ found to date is from the 1780s, which tallies with an account in the archive suggesting work was ongoing in 1778.

By 1801 the gardener, who gave tours of the grounds, estimated that around two hundred parties visited each season. The Yorkshire weather was not always kind, but it didn’t spoil the experience. In 1792 Lord Torrington found ‘so much to admire, so much to celebrate’, despite the rain falling ‘in buckets’. And in 1799 another tourist wrote that he knew of no other place that gave so much pleasure’ even though it ‘rained the whole time’.

Francis Nicholson (1753-1844), Hackfall near Ripon, undated. Mowbray Castle can be seen centre right. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/264558001

When first built Mowbray Castle could be seen from almost every spot within the pleasure grounds, and its ‘isolated situation’ was described as having an ‘extremely happy effect’. William Gilpin, whose comments on landscape were widely-read, criticised the buildings at Hackfall, but few were in agreement. In 1796, the Duke of Rutland wrote that ‘We did not find any room for censure’.

Undated early 20th century postcard. Courtesy of a Private Collection.

A poem written in 1859 suggested that the castle was an ancient fortification:

Now turn thy steps towards the right,
And view that grand imposing sight –
Tis Mowbray Castle, in decay,
The relics of a bygone day.

But Georgian visitors recognised it as a sham, a ‘very excellent imitation of an ancient ruin’, and praised its natural appearance.

Undated early 20th century postcard. Courtesy of a Private Collection.

Aislabie’s descendants sold Hackfall to a timber merchant in 1933, and much of the woodland was felled. Happily, the folly survived this period of neglect (although the short section of wall with an arch seen in the early images is lost), and was consolidated as part of a masterplan to restore the pleasure grounds and buildings after Hackfall was purchased by the Woodland Trust in 1989 (with strong support from the Hackfall Trust and other local groups). Sadly the vistas to and from the castle are now largely lost because of tree growth.

The sham castle is a curious irregular quadrilateral in form. Note the four columns tucked into the corners.

Around the time the folly was under construction a boy was born who would grow to great fame as an artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner was born on 23 April 1775, 250 years ago this week. He visited Hackfall in 1816, and later worked up one of his sketches into a watercolour now in the Wallace Collection, London.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775- 1851) Hackfall, near Ripon, c.1816. The Wallace Collection, London. Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. Mowbray Castle can be seen on the skyline.

Hackfall is in the care of the Woodland Trust and is freely accessible to walkers.

J.M.W. Turner clearly admired follies – he painted/sketched the tower at Tabley in Cheshire, Cook’s Folly near Bristol and the Gibraltar Tower in Sussex amongst many others. Click the link in red for events planned to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth in 1775.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to share any thoughts.

Folly

April Folly

Although these pages usually explore ‘folly’ in the sense of an ornamental, quirky, or extravagant building, the word has of course another definition: what the Oxford English Dictionary describes as ‘foolishness or deficiency in understanding; lack of good sense’. Such was the ethos of the short-lived Bank Of Folly, established and closed down within a day.

architecture, Folly, garden, landscape, public park, South Yorkshire, Tower

Locke Park Tower, Barnsley, South Yorkshire

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.’