In 1840 the foundation stone was laid for a column on the Brocklesby estate which can be found near Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. Eventually reaching a height of 130 feet, it could soon be seen from miles around. The plantations surrounding it have long since matured, and today you have to look a little harder to find what became known as Pelham’s Pillar.

Charles Anderson (1749-1823) succeeded to the Brocklesby estate of his great uncle, Charles Pelham, in 1763, and added the Pelham name to his own. Pelham, created Baron Yarborough in 1794 greatly improved the vast estate, ornamentally and productively, with advice from Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Building work on his monument was begun by his son, Charles Anderson Pelham (1781-1846), created 1st Earl of Yarborough in 1837, and the column commemorates the 12,532,700 trees planted by his father between 1787 and his death in 1823. Construction was completed by his son, Charles (1809-1862), 2nd Earl of Yarborough, after he succeeded in 1846.

The architect was Edward James Willson (1787-1854) of Lincoln and the builder was Mr Tomlin of Grantham (probably John Tomlin, stonemason). Work was well underway by 1844 when ‘many workmen’ were reported to be on site. By 1845 it was rising above the trees and visible from boats on the Humber. The urn was fixed on the top in autumn 1847, and by 1848 it was said to be ‘now completed’. The lions that guard the entrance were carved by William Day Keyworth (1817-1897) of Hull.

The inscription on the column gives 1849 as the official opening date and one of the first to see the new column was Prince Albert, who was staying at Brocklesby in April 1849 when on official business in Grimsby (noting Albert’s visit to Lincolnshire in her diary, Queen Victoria wrote ‘I always miss him terribly when he leaves me’).

The Prince was driven around the park, where large groups gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal visitor. Elizabeth Dixon, a local farmer’s wife, watched the procession from the Newsham Lodge and then followed the Prince to the pillar where she had ‘an excellent view of the whole party’.

Even before it was complete the pillar had become not just a landmark for travellers on the roads and river, but a prominent spot for the Earl of Yarborough’s hounds to assemble before the chase.

Brocklesby was already home to other ornaments, including a garden temple, a hermitage and an exquisite mausoleum of 1787. In 1844 it was noted that visitors were welcomed into the park. There they could ‘wander in extensive and beautiful plantations’ and take refreshments in a woodland cottage ‘built in the Swiss style’ which stood near the rising column. In 1885 the Brocklesby estate was described in a tourist guide as a ‘place of holiday resort’, with the pillar and the Swiss Cottage amongst the highlights.

Unfortunately some of these tourists were not on their best behaviour, and in 1849 the estate office offered an ultimatum: if the carving of names in trees and the disfiguring of seats did not stop, then access to the park would be limited. The announcement continued that in future access to Pelham’s Pillar and the mausoleum would be by ticket only, obtainable on application to the estate office. Once access to the column had been gained, the message was reiterated on a plaque requesting that persons visiting the pillar refrain from writing or cutting their names or ‘otherwise disfigure the walls’.

For generations the men of the Jackson family, who lived at Pelham Pillar Lodge, were both woodsmen for the adjacent plantations and custodians of the monument. Their address was often abbreviated, making it appear that the family inhabited the column itself:

Happily the behaviour of the visitors must have improved, and the estate continued to allow access. In 1889 the Primitive Methodists met at the pillar for a bank holiday gathering, perhaps tempted along by the ‘meat tea’ that was provided. In that same year, a local cycling club visited Pelham’s Pillar and the Swiss Cottage with their ‘wives, sisters, and lady friends’. Fear not any frail female readers alarmed at this exertion: the ladies were ‘conveyed in wagonettes’.

But sadly history repeats itself: in the late twentieth century the Brocklesby estate created a popular permissive path which took in a number of the monuments, many of which had been restored. In 2021 it was announced that the route was to be permanently closed after several incidents of ‘anti-social behaviour’. Pelham’s Pillar too is out of bounds, but it can be glimpsed through trees (in winter)  from the adjoining road.

The Flâneuse climbed the tower many years ago when public access was allowed, but has no decent photographs, so thanks to the Garden Historian for the photo of the lions, and to Mike Booth of M.A.B. Media for the title image and the view above. His excellent film showing the detail of the architecture and the landscape setting of the column is well worth a look and can be found by clicking here.

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are very welcome and you can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page. If you would like a complimentary folly story in your inbox each Saturday morning please click the ‘subscribe’ tab. 

The Flâneuse recently attended the Garden Museum Literary Festival, the annual celebration of gardens and books organised by London’s Garden Museum. It blossoms at a different venue each year, and in 2025 it was held at Iford Manor, near Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, where stands this exceedingly pretty summerhouse.

It was built in the eighteenth century, but renovated and moved to a new location after Iford Manor was bought by the architect and garden designer Harold Peto in 1899. The simple interior needs nothing more than a good book and a pot of coffee to make it quite perfect.

Speaking of which, the lovely village of Corsham was only a few miles from the festival, and it has excellent coffee shops as well as a great independent bookshop. The Flâneuse picked up the new book by an author she greatly admires – Jenny Uglow. Her latest work is A Year with Gilbert White: the First Great Nature Writer, and White’s charming hermitage, as temporarily inhabited by his brother, is featured.

Of course the main attraction in the village was Corsham Court, where the many beauties include this Bath House. The perfect little building was originally built by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1760s, with further gothic ornament added by John Nash around the turn of the eighteenth century.

Back at the festival, the excellent speakers included Cath Kidston, who sold her chain of shops and is now producing a range of perfumed goods inspired by her collection of scented geraniums. Coincidentally, as the Flâneuse travelled to the festival she received the newsletter of the Faringdon Folly Tower Trust containing a pelargonium pronouncement. The trust cares for the tower built by Lord Faringdon in Berkshire (although it is now in Oxfordshire) in 1935. The newsletter announced that the acclaimed nursery Fibrex has created Faringdon Folly, a pelargonium in the same vibrant pink that Lord Berners dyed some of his doves. It will be available in 2026.

The Flâneuse is taking a break and will be back with a folly story in two weeks. The plan is to relax – which brings us nicely back to Iford Manor, and this verdant spot where one can sit back with a cuppa after a busy day.

Thank you for reading.

Sir Richard Worsley inherited his father’s baronetcy, and the Appuldurcombe estate on the Isle of Wight, in 1768. The following year set off on the Grand Tour, and on his return in 1770 he turned his attention to remodelling the house and park. In the next few years he erected two eye-catchers to be seen from the mansion: an obelisk and a dramatic hilltop sham ruin called Cook’s Castle.

The origin of the name Cook’s Castle is uncertain, but it is named as such on a 1773 estate plan. In the eighteenth century there was no good road to the folly, and in 1793 Henry Penruddocke Wyndham was frustrated by the effort that was required to reach the ruins. He concluded that the sham castle did not ‘deserve such exertions’, as the building was too ‘regular’, that is it was too neat to be a genuine ruin. His mistake seems to have been to view the folly at close quarters: Sir Richard Worsley (1751-1805) himself described the sham in his History of the Isle of Wight, published in 1781, and makes it clear that the ‘ruin of an ancient castle’ was intended as ‘a point of view from the house’. Maps from the middle of the nineteenth century also show it as a series of three towers connected by a curtain wall, but as an engraving from the same period illustrates, the central tower had by then collapsed.

Visitors who looked to the folly from the mansion were impressed, and even the oft-critical commentator on landscape Revd William Gilpin found much to praise. He described Appuldurcombe House as ‘magnificent’, and thought the grounds equally impressive. Cook’s Castle was, he wrote, ‘well executed and […] well placed’. A traveller in 1798 noted the ‘modern ruin’, and thought it had a ‘better effect from the house than is usual for such buildings to have’.

A century later, with improved roads and the coming of the railway, Cook’s Castle and its ‘picturesque grounds’ had become a favourite picnic spot for excursionists and society outings. Few were fooled by the supposed ancient ruin, and John Gwilliam expressed his feelings in verse in 1845:

There was of course a downside to the popularity of the spot, which was featured in countless guidebooks, and by 1887 there were concerns that the folly was being damaged by vandals. The sham ruin quickly became a genuine one, and by the middle of the twentieth century there was nothing at all to be seen. Only a stone now marks the approximate spot where Cook’s Castle once stood.

Sir Richard also erected a ‘Cornish granite obelisk, near seventy feet high’ to the memory of Sir Robert Worsley 4th bart, who died in 1747 (the fourth baronet died without issue and the Appuldurcombe estate was left to a cousin who was Sir Richard’s grandfather). Built on a ‘bare down’, the obelisk was completed in 1774 and commemorated Sir Robert’s ‘long and exemplary life’, and Sir Richard’s gratitude that he had succeeded to the estate.

The monument was visible from miles around, but this exposed spot made it vulnerable to the elements. Having been repaired after a lightning strike in 1831, it was ‘blown down’ in a gale in December 1836.

The lower stages of the obelisk were restored in 1983, resulting in a stubby little monument, which is no longer a great landmark and eye-catcher…

The only major landscape ornament to survive at Appuldurcombe today is the elegant Freemantle Gate (grade II*), described in c.1779 as a ‘handsome Gateway of the Ionic Order’.

It is not clear who designed the obelisk and folly castle, but the antiquarian Sir Richard is likely to have played a part. A possible candidate is William Donn, who worked for Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown before setting up on his own: he was paid almost £4,000 for work at Appuldurcombe between 1774 and 1782. Donn was crossing to the Isle of Wight in 1777 and chatted to a fellow traveller. The tourist noted in his journal that Donn was working for Sir Richard, and described him as being ’employed in undertaking to build Houses and to lay out Gardens for Gentlemen’ (thanks to the Garden Historian for this brilliant reference).

Capability Brown himself did visit Appuldurcombe in October 1779, and sent a plan for improvements the following summer. Sadly Sir Richard’s accounts of work on the house and park are not known to survive, so many questions about who did what, and when, remain unanswered, but the sham castle and obelisk pre-date Brown’s plan.

Appuldurcombe House (grade I) is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited in the summer season. It was a roofless shell for many years but has been partially restored as a wedding venue. There’s more here.

There is a comments box at the foot of the page and your thoughts are always welcome. Thanks for reading.

In 1949 Osbert Lancaster published a history of the town of Drayneflete, with illustrations showing its development from the Bronze age to the then present day. His detailed research took him to rare historical volumes, archaeological reports and contemporary prints and photographs. With help from the Earl of Littlehampton, and local historian Miss Dracula Parsley-ffigett, he set about recording the town’s past in print. As the admiring visitors above have spotted, an interesting architectural ornament could be found in the park of Drayneflete Castle, which stood on the edge of the settlement.

As Lancaster’s history tells us, the 1st Earl of Littlehampton (died 1742) rebuilt Drayneflete Castle to a Palladian design by Hawksmoor, and the park was laid out in the French style by the great landscape designer Le Nôtre.

Of particular interest to the Flâneuse was the development of Drayneflete Castle in the eighteenth century. The 3rd Earl of Littlehampton (1749-?), went on the Grand Tour as a young man, and was painted by Batoni whilst in Rome in 1769 (like his peers he sent home crates full of antiquities and paintings). Upon his return he called upon ‘Mr Wyatt’ to remodel Drayneflete Castle in the fashionable gothic style.

The earl also employed Capability Brown, who swept away the formal avenues and canals of Le Nôtre and in their place created picturesque lakes, clumps of trees and a landscape dotted with grottoes and temples. But the earl’s pièce de résistance was his folly.

This great building was an ‘architectural curiosity expressly designed to display correct examples of all the five great schools of architecture’. Completed in 1799, the basement was an Egyptian crypt, whilst the lower storey was a cube with porticos in the Ionic, Doric, Corinthian and Tuscan orders. This supported a Gothic octagon, which in turn carried a Chinese pagoda, and the finishing touch was a cupola ‘in the Hindoo taste’. The architect is not recorded, but it would seem likely that Littlehampton himself played a part – it is known that he designed a ‘magnificent mausoleum in the Saracenic style’ after the death of his wife in 1782. It is greatly to be regretted that no further views of the park are known to survive.

Sadly Lord Littlehampton’s Folly was not to stand for many years: at the very hour that the 3rd earl expired (the exact date seems to be hard to trace) the folly was struck by lightning, destroying the uppermost sections. The Gothic octagon was taken down as unsafe in 1923, and the classical base was used as an Anti Aircraft Battery in the Second World War, before it too collapsed. All that could be seen in 1949 was the Egyptian crypt, which had been used as an air-raid shelter during the Blitz.

Like so many other fine mansions Drayneflete Castle ceased to be a family home towards the end of the nineteenth century: its future was in institutional use. The grounds became a public park, although much of it was redeveloped to meet the housing needs of the area after the Second World War.

The earls of Littlehampton retained the family portraits until the middle of the twentieth century when they sold the collection to the National Portrait Gallery (it was quietly accepted that they needed to raise funds to pay death duties). For reasons of lack of space the works were consigned to the basement, but in 1973 the outgoing director of the gallery, Roy Strong, asked Osbert Lancaster to write an illustrated catalogue of the collection. In the foreword Strong described the collection as ‘the most significant addition to the gallery’s holdings since the last war’. The catalogue was published as The Littlehampton Bequest towards the end of 1973, and it was surely the book’s great success that persuaded the National Portrait Gallery to mount a small display of works from the bequest in the spring of the following year.

By now readers may have their suspicions that all is not what it seems. Drayneflete Revealed (1949) and The Littlehampton Bequest (1973) are magnificent parodies from the pen of Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986). Drayneflete Revealed is an ‘excursion into imaginary topography’ – a spoof of the dry antiquarian accounts of many a settlement. The reviews were excellent, with Elizabeth Bowen writing in Tatler that the book was ‘exquisitely, rumbustiously and satanically enjoyable’. The novelist John Fowles noted in his copy that Lancaster’s satire ‘deserves to be ranked with Thackeray and Waugh’. Many people will have found a copy in their stocking on Christmas Day 1949.

Roy Strong, ‘with tongue in his elegant cheek’ (as The Times put it), had suggested that Lancaster write the ‘catalogue’ of the Littlehampton Bequest shortly before Strong left the NPG to become director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. In his diaries Sir Roy (he was knighted in 1982) noted that he gave copies of The Littlehampton Bequest to the National Portrait Gallery’s trustees as parting gifts at his farewell dinner.

The Littlehampton Bequest was described by The Sunday Times as ‘by far the most civilised joke of the year’. The bequest was of course entirely fictional, but the exhibition of Lancaster’s illustrations of the Littlehampton collection at the National Portrait Gallery was real.

Guests were invited to a private view in March 1974, and the exhibition continued until 30 April. A poster advertising the show could be seen around London, and the Flâneuse sought out the copy in the NPG archives.

The books are a joy to read. Lancaster’s spoofs are works of genius, for to parody history and art one must first know the subject matter very well. Copies are available in libraries and from the usual second-hand book sources. The Flâneuse thanks her Decorative Friend for the wonderful gift of copies of the books.

N.B. Lancaster admitted in 1973 that Miss Parsley-ffigett’s family history, which he had relied upon in Drayneflete Revealed, had been flawed. Updated research was published in The Littlehampton Bequest, and that is the source used here.

Coincidentally, the Flâneuse recently came across this image, which was published in a pattern book in 1752. Did Lord Littlehampton have a copy in his library?

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always appreciated – scroll down to the foot of the page to find the comments box.

A short distance from Rothley Castle, on land which was once part of the Wallington Hall estate near Morpeth, is a sham fort known today as Codger Fort. It was built as an eye-catcher by Sir Walter Calverley Blackett in around 1770 as part of a programme of improvements at Rothley.

Rothley Castle (featured here last week, see link below if you missed it) was erected in 1746-47, and the landscape was further embellished with the creation of Rothley Lake in the 1760s. Sir Walter took delivery of a boat to sail on the lake in 1768, and at around the same date he was planning an adjoining piece of water to be known as Rothley Low Lake, with a sham fort on high ground above it.

This ornament was to be erected on the rocky outcrop called ‘Cadjah Crag’, high above the two lakes (to thwart researchers Cadjah is also recorded as Codjah, Codger, Codgy and Cadgey before Codger became the accepted name in the 19th century). The ‘intended fort’ was discussed in a letter in March 1770, when Sir Walter’s instructions were that no work should begin until Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s plan for the head of the new lake had been executed in the summer of that year. In 1772 five brass cannon were delivered to the folly which were to be fired in celebration when work on the lake was complete.

A drawing for the fort survives in the collection at Wallington Hall, dated September 1769. It is attributed to Thomas Wright of Durham (1711-1786) and shows that a tower was originally planned to complete the fort, but does not appear to have been executed.

The historian William Hutchinson described the ‘stupendous cliff’, which he called ‘Codgey Crag’, in his A View of Northumberland published in 1778, but having already failed to appreciate nearby Rothley Castle, he dismissed the fort as just ‘another uncouth ornament’.

In around 1860 the surveyors working on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map were noting significant landmarks for inclusion on the maps. Part of their work involved ascertaining the history of such structures, and they were told that ‘Codger Castle’ had been ‘erected at the period of the Scotch Rebellion of 1745 to scare the Enemy’. Whilst the Jacobite uprising had indeed caused concern at Wallington, the fort was built principally as an ornament some 25 years later (although with Northumberland’s history of border skirmishes a visible deterrent to any future invaders from the north may have been a secondary consideration).

In August 1893 a Sunday school party was ‘marched’ to the folly ‘where a repast of milk and buns was served’. Decades later the Flâneuse too picnicked on the spot during a Girl Guide hike, and went home desperate to learn more about it. That passion for follies endures.

The grade II listed folly is in the care of the National Trust, but it is not on a public right of way. It is best viewed when travelling south towards Rothley on the B6342.

You can find the post on Rothley Castle here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/rothley-castle-rothley-northumberland/

Wallington Hall’s website is here  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington

The Flâneuse is always delighted to receive your thoughts or comments. Scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

In the middle of the 18th century Wallington Hall, west of Morpeth in Northumberland, was the seat of Sir Walter Calverley Blackett. Like many men of his time, he remodelled his park and introduced fashionable landscape features. On Rothley Crags, a windswept outcrop of rock north of Wallington Hall, he erected a sham castle which served as a distant eye-catcher from the house.

‘Rothley Tower’ was built for Sir Walter (1707-1777) in 1746-47 as the centrepiece of the newly-walled Rothley deer park. A central tower was linked by curtain walls to two smaller turrets, all with battlements and gothic detailing. The stonemasons were John Codling and George Brown, whose famed brother Lancelot (aka Capability) gave advice to Sir Walter, although it is sadly little-documented. A plan in the collection at Wallington Hall suggests that a more ambitious scheme, with a spire on the central tower and further turrets, was initially planned but later abandoned. The Duchess of Northumberland, a careful recorder of the country houses she visited, noted in her diaries that the architect was Daniel Garrett (?-1753) , and in 1775 the Duchess had a sketch taken for her collection:

As well as being an eye-catcher from Wallington Hall and a picnic destination, the folly might also have had a defensive purpose. Built immediately after the Jacobite uprising had put the northern counties of England on high alert for invading armies of Scots, the tower was equipped with 6 brass guns in 1748, and was ready to deter the enemy if required.

With the coming of more peaceful times, the Castle (as it is named on a 1777 estate plan) became purely decorative in purpose. A traveller who saw the folly in 1766 was told it was intended to be an ‘object’ in the landscape, a sea-mark and a deer-shelter, the park at that date being ‘full of deer and game’. The natural historian John Wallis wrote in 1769 that the entrance was flanked by two ‘jaw-bones of a Whale’, over seventeen feet tall, and the creature’s vast shoulder blades were also on display.

In a county rich in medieval strongholds Blackett clearly wished people to believe they were looking at a genuine fortification, and the local poet Thomas Oliver suggested as much in ‘On a View of Roadley Castle…’, written before 1777:

Upon its airy summit high,
An antique tower appears,
Who to the stranger passing by,
Seems aged a thousand years.

The historian William Hutchinson was fooled when he visited in 1778. After missing the ‘proper road’ he was forced to climb a fence and clamber up the steep crag only to find that the ‘object of [his] anxious curiosity’ was ‘no other than an ornamental structure’. But he did at least concede that the situation was ‘romantick’. In the central tower were stone tables and chairs of rude form, and the battlements gave a view to the sea and Rothley Lake. Hutchinson also noted the statuary at the folly, which he described as ‘huge heads of griffins’ and ‘two preposterous effigies, representative of no known dress, personage or people’.

The origin of the two stone figures (called Caesar and Pompey in Oliver’s poem) is not known, but two degraded torsos that remain in the gardens today may be remnants of the ‘preposterous effigies’.

The griffins are easier to identify, and came from a London gate that was pulled down in 1761. Bishopsgate was once topped by the ‘city arms supported by dragons’, and these are the 4 ‘griffins’ that once adorned Rothley Castle, but can now be found close to Wallington Hall. The story goes that Sir Walter purchased a quantity of stone from the demolition of Bishopsgate and Aldersgate, and had it brought north by sea as ballast in his colliers that were empty on the return trip to Northumberland.

Eneas Mackenzie produced an updated history of the county in 1825. He acknowledged that Hutchinson had been in ‘peevish humour’ when he wrote so disparagingly of the sham castle, but repeated some of the earlier writer’s description to illustrate how things had by then changed at Rothley: soon after Sir Walter’s death in 1777 his heir removed the deer and put the parkland ‘under cultivation’. The Northumberland historian, Rev. John Hodgson, described the area in 1827 and by then Rothley Castle was ‘neglected’ and Hodgson accused travellers and local youths of vandalising the statues.

This accounts for the removal of the statuary to the grounds of Wallington Hall. The griffin heads were moved to woods on the estate in the nineteenth century, and then in around 1929 to the lawn in front of Wallington Hall, where they can be seen today (their moss-covered wings can be found in another part of the garden). Their sudden appearance as one rounds a corner remains, as Barbara Jones wrote in her research notes, ‘very startling’.

In the 19th century the family continued to visit Rothley Park and the Wallington collection has sketches taken, and botanical specimens collected, on visits to the castle. The park was used for fox hunting, with the two follies making useful landmarks. Rothley had also become a popular destination for walkers and for excursionists on the newly-arrived Wansbeck Railway (axed in the 1950s, but still walkable in parts and known affectionately as the ‘Wannie Line’). Individual picnic parties were politely requested to apply for permission to visit the crags ten days in advance, or tourists could join an organised trip with tea and music:

A little over a century after it was built the origins of the folly had been forgotten. The surveyors working on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey maps were told the romantic tale that it was ‘used to shelter cattle in troublous times’.

Happily the folly, described in 1902 as ‘the product of the questionable taste of the time of the Georges’, survived the vagaries of fashion and was consolidated as a romantic ruin in the first decade of this century. There are walks across fields to the castle, and a platform in the central tower gives wonderful views across the surrounding countryside. Having approached the folly under blue skies the weather changed rapidly, and the Flâneuse decided it was time to retreat before she was blown off the crags.

Wallington Hall and Rothley Castle (grade II*) are both in the care of the National Trust. Check an OS map for the footpaths to Rothley Castle https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington

The Flâneuse first visited Rothley Castle whilst at Girl Guide camp in the area, and an obsession was born. She has revisited many times, often in the august company of experts Harry Beamish and Nick Owen, who are thanked for sharing their knowledge of the Wallington estate.

Your comments and thoughts are always most welcome. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you’d like to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

Lady Amabel Yorke was the elder daughter of Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, and his wife Jemima Campbell, 2nd Marchioness Grey, 4th Baroness Lucas. Their family seats were Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, and Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, both of which had parks that were remodelled by Capability Brown with Amabel being privy to the design decisions. She was, then, rather well-informed on matters of landscape gardening, and her 37 volumes of diaries contain countless accounts of visits to the seats of her friends and family, where she sometimes notes follies and garden ornaments.

Amabel (1751-1833) married Alexander Hume Campbell, Lord Polwarth, in 1772, much to the chagrin of the Dowager Duchess of Gower, who complained to her friend that too many of England’s eligible (for which read rich) brides were being ‘transplanted to Scotland’. After Polwarth’s early death in 1781 Amabel settled in England and, mourning period over, enjoyed a busy social life amongst the upper echelons of society (N.B. through marriage and inheritance she used a number of titles during her life, so for clarity she is simply referred to here as Amabel.)

Where Amabel’s journals are of most value to garden history is when she makes return visits to the same landscape, recording new developments and enabling precise dating, although she seldom gives elaborate descriptions. One such example is The Grove, near Watford in Hertfordshire, the seat of Thomas Villiers (1709-1786), created Lord Hyde in 1756, and his wife Charlotte (1721-1790), a daughter of the Earl of Essex. Lord Hyde bought The Grove in 1753, conveniently next-door to his father-in-law, whose Cassiobury seat was contiguous, and began remodelling the house and grounds. Amabel visited the Villiers family on a number of occasions: first with her family and then with her husband. Her earliest mention of The Grove in her diaries is in 1770, when she writes simply that the grounds were ‘very pleasant’.

In June 1776 Amabel went to The Grove to stay with Lord Hyde (although within days of her visit he would be raised to the peerage as the Earl of Clarendon). On this occasion her hosts took her to see the Temple of Pan, which Amabel records in her diary as a ‘pretty new building’. The Temple has long ago disappeared, but happily a drawing by Thomas Baskerfield survives, and from various accounts we can piece together that it was a brick building with rustic decoration: the drawing suggests that the columns are tree trunks, rather than stone pillars. It was ‘used occasionally by the family of the Earl of Clarendon for tea-drinking’. We know little of the interior other than it contained lead statues of ‘pagan deities’.

This was the most famous of the buildings at the Grove, particularly in the first decade of the 19th century when the 2nd Earl of Clarendon hosted a series of Fête Champêtres in and around the Temple of Pan. Clarendon and his friend the Hon. Mr Capel, son of the Earl of Essex, hosted parties for hundreds of guests. Dinner was served, a band played and guests could dance in the temple or in the glade. There were fireworks, and the earl graciously allowed the ‘peasantry’ to pay a small fee to watch the proceedings ‘from the recesses of the wood’. A contemporary satire of the fête champêtres at The Grove ridicules this largesse, and has the gamekeepers under orders to ‘shoot all Plebeians passing through the park’.

Amabel returned to the The Grove a year later in 1777, and saw two recently completed landscape ornaments: the ‘new building called the Arcadian Mausoleum’, and the ‘Scotch Seat’. Amabel doesn’t elaborate on the former, but other contemporary sources tell that the ‘shady Tomb’ purported to be the burial place of Pan, and was intended to be seen in conjunction with Pan’s temple, which was not far away. Drawings by Baskerfield suggest it was a sham classical ruin, circular in form, with niches in the interior walls for funerary caskets. Above the door was a plaque declaring it to be an ‘Arcadian Mausoleum repair’d’.

The Scotch Seat was a decidedly quirky structure, painted with ‘Highland Arms and Plaids’.  We know more about this building because only a few years later, in 1799, a satirical poem was published called The Scotch Hut. Dedicated to ‘The Earl of the Grove’, the anonymous verses mention a number of the garden buildings. The annotations describe the Scotch Hut as a ‘low, wooden Building, covered in Thatch’, with an interior painted with ‘the Insignia of Scotland: Dirk and Broadsword, Pistol and Target, Bonnet and Bagpipes’. It was hung with curtains in tartan fabric, and the exterior was also ‘plaid’, which must have been quite a challenge for the estate’s painters. A later visitor confidently declared it had ‘a good resemblance to the residence of a highlander’, but sadly, no views are known to survive.

At The Grove again in 1782, Amabel revisited the ‘Temple of Pan and the ruin’d Mausoleum’. She also walked to see the ‘new Ionic Building’, a classical temple she had not seen before. This elegant building topped with a dome was called the Ionic Temple, but became known colloquially as the Eggshell.

As well as keeping a diary Amabel also recorded many of the scenes she saw on her travels in sketches and watercolours. She was a talented amateur artist, some of whose works were used on Catherine the Great’s ‘Frog Service’, produced by Wedgwood, but sadly no views of The Grove in her hand have been found.

The Temple of Pan was still in use in the middle of the 19th century, when the children of the family held tea-parties there and had the novelty of cooking their own food. The Eggshell stood until the 1960s, but sadly none of the fanciful structures (there were many others which Amabel didn’t mention) survive today. The Grove became a school in the 1920s, and was then in institutional use for many decades. It is now a rather smart hotel with all the bells and whistles, including a golf course, of which more in a moment.

In 1801, writing in her 20th notebook, Amabel wrote that ‘Volumes follow Volumes & crowd my Drawers with little Use to myself and still less to other People’. She might be surprised to find how important her diaries have proved to be: over 200 years later, social and garden historians can find much fascinating detail in the diaries, which are now available to all thanks to an excellent ongoing project by the West Yorkshire Archives Service.

The pleasure grounds at The Grove are now home to a golf course. The Folly Flâneuse is not a golfer, but were she ever tempted her first stop would be The Grove, for each of the 18 holes is named after a landscape feature that once adorned the grounds: what fun to tee-off at the Scotch Hut, Temple of Pan, Eggshell or Mausoleum. 

You can find out more about the hotel here https://www.thegrove.co.uk

Amabel’s diaries have all been digitised and are now online. A number have been transcribed so that they are fully searchable by keyword, and this work will continue when funding allows. Thanks to Vicky Grindrod and Harriet Harmer of the West Yorkshire Archive Service (Leeds) for their help with this post. This link will take you to the catalogue to start exploring https://www.catalogue.wyjs.org.uk/CalmView/TreeBrowse.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&field=RefNo&key=LC00997%2f7%2f6%2f9%2f90

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments section at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts.

In the early 1940s the artist Rex Whistler completed the illustrations for a book in his breaks from training with the Welsh Guards, working on the drawings in the army huts where he was stationed. The book was The Last of Uptake by Simon Harcourt-Smith, and the reviews agreed that here was ‘the perfect blend of artist and writer’.

Harcourt-Smith (1906-1982) was a former diplomat who wrote on a wide range of subjects, but The Last of Uptake is not typical of his work, as it started life as a lighthearted tale to entertain his wife who was in plaster after a car accident. Rosamund Harcourt-Smith (née Miller) was a society beauty, photographed by Beaton when her engagement was announced. She was known for her stylish outfits, so when Whistler (1905-1944) arrived to stay during this period he was offended by the standard crutches she was using to get about, and immediately set to work to design her a ‘princely pair, in a somewhat rococo taste’.

Simon Harcourt-Smith’s book tells the story of Uptake, a decaying stately home where the Ladies Tryphena and Deborah muddle by with a handful of ancient retainers. Their Palladian mansion is surrounded by a pleasure ground designed by perhaps William Kent, or Capability Brown, and dotted with follies and curiosities. These include a stepped pyramidal ice-house, a Chinese pavilion, a shell grotto, a hermit’s cave, sham Roman ruins, and automata such as a woodman who swings his axe at the turn of a key. When the sisters discover that their favoured heir has died, they decide upon drastic action and burn down the mansion.

The book jacket blurb makes clear that the story is a ‘fantastic confection’, dreamt up by Harcourt-Smith’, but he does write that parts are based on ‘legends’ told by his family and friends. One who might have sowed the seed of an idea is Edward Arthur Donald St George Hamilton Chichester, 6th Marquess of Donegall (1903-1975). Donegall sat in the House of Lords as Baron Fisherwick, a title taken from Fisherwick Hall, a former family seat in Staffordshire. Lord Donegall told his friend Harcourt-Smith the tale of how Fisherwick Hall was ‘inhabited by two maiden sisters who fell out and burned the house down’. It is true that the Marquess’s ancestors were forced to sell the Capability Brown designed Fisherwick house and park in around 1800 to settle debts, and it was demolished soon after, but there were no sisters, and no fire – and in fact no-one other than Donegal (who admitted his tale was ‘probably fictitious’) seems ever to have heard this myth.

Rex Whistler was in his element drawing such fantasy buildings. He loved follies and garden ornament, and favourites such as the Boycott Pavilions at Stowe, and the Palladian Bridge at Wilton, made regular appearances in his work. Part of the fun of the book is trying to figure out the British houses and gardens which might have influenced the text and pictures (track down a copy and try it for yourself). One may even have been fictional: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca had been a huge success when published only a couple of years earlier, with its haunting description of Manderley in flames.

The Last of Uptake was published by Batsford, and as well as the standard copy there was a deluxe version in a limited edition of 100. This was printed on handmade paper, and signed by the author and illustrator. The book was well-received in the press, but the ‘delightful piece of literary embroidery’ was overshadowed by war. In 1967 Solstice Productions of London reissued the book with a foreword by Rebecca West. She wrote that The Last of Uptake ‘has long been a treasure of mine, and I have always thought it a great misfortune that it failed to be recognised as a classic because it was published during the war’.

Of course the greatest tragedy was that Whistler himself never knew how much pleasure his illustrations gave to readers. He was killed in action in Normandy in 1944, and as Harcourt-Smith wrote in July 1945, it was not easy to think of ‘resuming the round of peace without him’.

Rex Whistler’s original drawings for The Last of Uptake are in the collection of the National Trust at Plas Newydd on Anglesey, where the dining room features an enchanting Rex Whistler mural  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/plas-newydd-house-and-garden

Apologies to regular readers who were confused to receive last week’s post a day early. This was for reasons of logistics and normal service has been resumed! If you would like to share any thoughts on this post please do get in touch via the comments box below. Thank you for reading, and if you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox every Saturday morning, please visit the Subscribe page.

As the nation settles into staying at home, forgoing a social life and, more practically, visits to the hairdresser and beauty salon, the Folly Flâneuse got to thinking about those fashionable landscape ornaments called hermitages, in which men (presumably women had more sense than to apply for the vacancy) lived in isolation. With ragged clothing, long fingernails, and unkempt beards, the hermits animated the landscape, whilst creating a little drama for the visitors who caught a (staged) glimpse of the recluse.

Hermits in the landscape garden have been considered at length elsewhere, so only a brief summary is necessary here. In the 18th century hermitages sat alongside grottoes, temples, belvederes and sham ruins as essential components of a voguish pleasure ground. Hermitages were created from natural materials – tufa from nearby streams, tree trunks and branches, and moss and heather for the roof. The buildings had to look as if a hermit could have built them himself, using only what he could find locally. Most were designed as rustic retreats, the name ‘hermitage’ suggesting a place where the visitor could be at one with nature and pause for quiet reflection, the word hermit being ultimately derived from the Greek for ‘solitary.’

But some estate owners went a step further and recruited ‘real’ hermits – legend has it via the classified ads in the local newspaper. In return for their basic accommodation and meals, the applicants would eventually receive a pension. But the small print insisted that they made commitments such as remaining for 7 years, not cutting their hair or nails, and making a vow of silence. Needless to say, there are few records of anyone staying the course, but many a story of the hermit being caught having a good natter in the village pub only a few weeks into his contract. Much more reliable were the (albeit rare) waxwork hermits, who seldom strayed, or the automata under the control of a hidden estate retainer.

Whether there is much truth in the hermit tales is debatable, but there were certainly plenty of hermitages. There were examples across Britain and although many have been lost because of the organic nature of their construction, there’s a particularly lovely surviving example at Brocklesby, the seat of the Earl of Yarborough in Lincolnshire. Accounts show it was constructed as part of a scheme of improvements proposed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who last visited Brocklesby in 1780 shortly before work on the shelter started.

The approach to the hermitage is through a grotto tunnel which was once decorated with fossils and curious minerals. Venturing into the dark space created a frisson of trepidation, but on coming out into the light the visitor’s spirits would rise at the sight of the pretty little rustic temple in front of them. Created out of tree trunks, gnarled branches, and rough stone, around a brick core, the little octagon is entered by an arch beautifully formed of two curving branches. The interior was decorated with rustic latticework made of entwined branches, of which traces remain, and furnished with a table made out of a ‘lump of elm disease’ (as Barbara Jones unromantically described it in her notes), a rustic seat, and four chairs each hewn out of a single piece of wood.

So was it ever home to a hirsute and terrifyingly-taloned anchorite, dressed only in rags? Rumour has it that a hermit was occasionally to be found at home, but evidence seems hard to come by. Although there was certainly a very shabby and shifty individual in residence when the Folly Fellowship visited in 1999.

Hermits may have endured their spartan surroundings, but most people were just too keen on their creature comforts to linger in root houses, which by their nature were ‘not very dry’. James Plumptre toured Yorkshire in 1799 and was enamoured with William Aislabie’s landscape garden at Hackfall, near Ripon. Hoping to be able to return and spend more time there, he wished for a cell to be built where he might ‘hermitize’. But remembering the northern weather he added the caveat ‘at least for the summer half year.’

One man who wasn’t afraid of the colder seasons was William Wordsworth, born 250 years ago this week on 7 April 1770. In the early 19th century he built a rustic shelter in his garden at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, inspired by an example he and his sister Dorothy had seen in Scotland. The ‘Moss House’ was used all year round, including as a retreat ‘for quietness on warm days in winter’. The Folly Flâneuse had intended to feature the Wordsworth Trust’s plans to create a modern day successor to the lost structure, which were at an advanced stage when the current situation escalated. Obviously, that’s all on hold but there will be further news here in due course, and a visit to see it is on the flâneuse’s increasingly long list of ‘Things To Look Forward To’.

The hermitage at Brocklesby is grade I listed in recognition of its status as a rare survivor of the genre. ‘Damp and in disrepair’ when seen by Barbara Jones in the 1970s, it has since been restored. The pleasure grounds at Brocklesby are strictly private but have historically been open to the public at certain times of the year. Once the current restrictions are lifted a call to the estate office should elicit the necessary information https://www.brocklesby.co.uk

In the 1760s Sir Thomas Wentworth* (1726-1792) of Bretton Hall, near Wakefield, set about landscaping his park. Initially, he employed Richard Woods, a professional landscape designer, but soon decided he could manage just as well on his own. In the 1770s he added to his grand design without recourse to even the most eminent landscaper of the age: Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. A second lake would, he told friends, be completed without the help of ‘Capability or any such pretending Rogues’.

In 1769 the first lake was embellished with an island on which Sir Thomas built ‘a little Gothic Temple … where a dozen might be sociable’, shown here in a sketch by the itinerant artist and drawing master J.C. Nattes. The Temple was the centrepiece when Sir Thomas threw a grand party in 1771. A ‘genteel cold collation’ was served at the building, which was illuminated with lamps. As guests sailed up the lake in Sir Thomas’s boat, The Aurora, a band played, fireworks were set off and a huge bonfire blazed at the end of the lake.

Although Sir Thomas described the temple as gothic it had in fact two facades, one gothic and one with a pediment. This classical front is known only from another sketch by Nattes in the collection of the National Trust at Stourhead. The architect was probably John Carr of York.

Sir Thomas wrote that he intended to dedicate the temple to Bacchus, god of wine, and Venus, goddess of love, and planned to erect statues of the two deities on the island . The building housed a pantry and kitchen and a bedroom above; the former presumably the haunt of Bacchus and the latter the domain of Venus. The baronet was a rake, who vowed never to marry, but kept a mistress and, in the manner of the age, exercised his droit de seigneur. He fathered a number of children, four of whom lived in his household and were accepted by polite society.

If only Sir Thomas had crossed paths with the French architect Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757-1826) he might have been tempted to build a more daring structure in which to conduct his dalliances. The Folly Flâneuse was very sorry to miss a recent exhibition in Paris which featured Lequeu’s exotic output. Sir Thomas might have been tempted by this garden pavilion with its ‘Hammock of Love’, complete with ecstatic couple.

There’s more on all of Lequeu’s erections here https://gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/images/jean-jacques-lequeu

Already ruinous when it was photographed by Country Life in 1938, the temple at Bretton was demolished as unsafe after the mansion became a college in the later decades of the 19th century. The park at Bretton is now home to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park https://ysp.org.uk and the mansion is currently being restored as a hotel http://www.rushbond.co.uk/our-projects/bretton-hall-estate-wakefield/

*He took the name Blackett in 1777.