In 1738 Langley Park was purchased by the 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706-1758), and one of his first projects was the construction of an elegant casino with views to Windsor Castle. In the middle of the 19th century that temple was demolished, and replaced by an equally charming monumental column. That too survived for only a century, but happily a pictorial record helps tell the story.

With Blenheim Palace still home to the formidable Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, the Duke made Langley Park his home. A new house does not seem to have been a priority, but he began working on the landscape only a couple of years after he bought the estate. The pavilion is known from a sketch taken by the gentleman architect Sir Roger Newdigate, of Arley Hall in Warwickshire, on one of his peregrinations. Horace Walpole was not impressed by the parkland feature (‘it is by no means gracious’), but Lady Newdigate found it an ‘elegant temple’ and its elevated position allowed for ‘beautiful prospects’ from the first floor banqueting room. It was extant when the Ordnance Survey drawings were made in 1811, but must have been taken down before the 1860s when a monumental column was built in its place.

In 1788 Langley Park was sold to Sir Robert Bateson Harvey, recently created a baronet in Ireland. His grandson (via Harvey’s illegitimate son), another Robert Bateson Harvey (1825-1887), succeeded to the estate in 1863. This was a big year for Harvey: not only did he inherit Langley Park from his father, but he was also elected Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire. So this 30m high column, completed in 1865, may ostensibly have commemorated his late father, but on its elevated site it must also have been a symbol of his achievements and status. The latter was further enhanced when he was created a baronet in the English baronetage in 1868.

The monument was designed by Frederick Pepys Cockerell (1833-1878), and the original design, shown above, survives in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The builders were Fassnidge & Sons of Uxbridge, and their accounts survive showing that the tower cost £1646.12.3. The two side wings contained rooms, and the column contained a staircase up to a viewing platform, where a grand panorama included Windsor Castle. As this old view shows, Cockerell’s original design was modified and simplified in a number of ways – no doubt for reasons of economy.

The gardens at Langley were further developed in the early years of the 20th century. The Pulham practise created a rock garden from 1909, a Japanese garden was introduced, and in 1912 new planting was laid out around the monument. The death of the 2nd baronet without issue in 1931 was followed by the Second World War, and Langley Park was requisitioned. The estate became home to Polish troops who are reputed to have used the column for mortar practice. In 1944 the last baronet’s heirs sold the estate to Buckinghamshire County Council, with the house being put into institutional use and the grounds becoming a country park. By the late 1950s the column was thought to be a risk to public safety, and the County Planning Officer ordered that it be taken down.

Architectural Historian John Harris was among the crowds who gathered to watch the ‘spectacular demolition’ by explosives in January 1959. He chastised the local authority for sanctioning the destruction of the monument, but saw a glimmer of hope that one day it could be rebuilt, as the original plans survived. Sadly this hope remains unrealised, and only a plinth and haha survive in the park as a memorial to two exquisite garden features.

But as a consolation prize a similar column by Cockerell does survive, and in fine condition after restoration early this century. Soon after completing the Langley Park monument, Cockerell was one of four architects invited to submit a design for a monument to the 7th Earl of Carlisle (1802-1864) of Castle Howard in Yorkshire, and he won the commission. Erected on high ground a couple of miles from the mansion, it features garlands tumbling down the shaft, similar to that at Langley Park. Unlike at Langley, there is no internal staircase in the column of the Carlisle Monument, as its elevated position already enjoyed an extensive prospect.

For more on the temple see the paper by Gervase Jackson-Stops in the Georgian Group Journal. Top marks to the Georgian Group for making the newly digitised journals available to all https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_1994_03_Jackson-Stops_0001-2.pdf

For Langley Country Park see https://countryparks.buckscc.gov.uk/langley-park/

The Langley Park mansion is now a hotel https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/loniv-the-langley-a-luxury-collection-hotel-buckinghamshire/

Hail, Castle Howard! Hail, Vanbrugh’s noble dome
Where Yorkshire in her splendour rivals Rome!

Thus wrote John Betjeman in a poem composed for Bird’s-Eye View: The Englishman’s Home, a documentary scripted and mellifluously-narrated by Betjeman, which was first shown on BBC2 in April 1969. Many great houses are featured in the film, but a highlight for the Folly Flâneuse is Castle Howard, in North Yorkshire.

The ‘bird’s-eye view’ was from a helicopter, an Alouette 3, which the BBC had rented for three years for use by programme makers. The first flight didn’t get off to a good start: it was misty, and the intercom failed, leaving the team unable to communicate. Betjeman soon found he was not at all keen on being airborne. Ever resourceful, he passed producer Edward Mirzoeff a note which said ‘Please can we go home now?’ He remained largely desk-bound from then on.

Mirzoeff worked with editor Ted Roberts to create the films (there was a whole series of Bird’s Eye Views), which Betjeman then watched before writing the commentary, often in verse. When he needed peace and quiet to write he retreated to a glorified cupboard, used for making tea, which he called his ‘composition cell’. It was in this spartan space that the mock-heroic ode ‘Castle Howard’ was written.

In the film, the helicopter swoops over the rooftops of the mansion before lingering over the magnificent mausoleum, built to a design by Hawksmoor in the early 18th century, whilst Betjeman drawls in his inimitable sombre style:

But what are wealth and pomp of worldly state?
To yonder mausoleum soon or late,
Up those broad steps will go great Howard’s dust –
A journey no man makes before he must.

‘Castle Howard’ was first published in The Listener, 2 June 1977. It was recently republished in a Betjeman anthology, Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected Poems, edited by Kevin J. Gardner, Bloomsbury, 2019.

Thanks to the wonderful BBC iplayer you can watch Bird’s-Eye View, and hear the poem in full. Castle Howard is about 17 minutes in, but watch the whole film for glimpses of Stowe and Hadlow Castles, Stourhead, Blenheim, Portmeirion and much more https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p013ypx0/birds-eye-view-the-englishmans-home

The house and landscape at Castle Howard need little introduction, but you can read more on the website, which gives the latest information on visiting. There is also some more recent stunning aerial footage of the house and mausoleum https://www.castlehoward.co.uk

Mirzoeff’s recollections of working with Betjeman were published in Standpoint magazine. You can read the whole article here https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/january-february-2015/text-january-february-2015-travels-with-john-betjeman-edward-mirzoeff-metro-land/

Barnsley House, in the village of the same name, is one of those picture-perfect Cotswold manor houses of exquisite honey-coloured stone. Built in the last years of the 17th century it passed through various owners, and served as the Rectory, before being purchased by the Verey family in 1939. It came to fame a generation later when David Verey, an architectural historian, and his wife Rosemary inherited the house. Rosemary Verey went on to create one of the most famous gardens in Britain, and even those who have never visited (including, until this week, The Folly Flâneuse) would recognise the laburnum avenue underplanted with alliums that has graced many a calendar and greetings card.

As David Verey himself wrote in the Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds volume of the Buildings of England series (aka ‘Pevsner’) the garden contains a ‘fine gothic alcove of c.1770-80 with ogee entrance and panelled front’. Rosemary Verey went on to design gardens worldwide, but that surrounding her own home remains her most famous creation. The house became a hotel a couple of years after her death in 2001.

For many years The Folly Flâneuse has cherished a pair of bookends that keep in place a key selection of her much-consulted folly reference books. Purchased many years ago from Timothy Richardson Architectural Models, they were very much at the, how to put it, affordable end of the company’s offering. Much as The Folly Flâneuse coveted the model of the Temple of the Winds at Castle Howard, it wasn’t to be. But the bookends continue to be both beautiful and useful, and it was delight to see their inspiration at long last.

She wrote that a folly ‘is built for pleasure, and pleasure is personal, difficult to define.’

Whilst fascinated by follies from far and wide this site has a bias towards Yorkshire, where The Folly Flâneuse has lived for more than three decades. Jones recognised the abundance of follies in the area when she wrote that ‘Yorkshire has dozens of beauties’. The Yorkshire Post reviewed Follies and Grottoes soon after publication on 6 October 1953 and took pride in the dominance of ‘God’s Own County’:

‘Follies and Grottoes… includes a gazetteer of follies listed by counties. And which do you think has the longest list? The fact that Yorkshire is credited with most is not merely because it is the biggest county but also because it was rich in men with a poetic, fanciful turn of mind, and wealth enough to indulge it.’

The paper picked out the Castle Howard follies, St David’s Ruin at Bingley and the Druid’s Temple at Masham as examples of the county’s buildings that Jones featured. Yorkshiremen have often been caricatured for their reluctance to part with their ‘brass’, so it’s good to see them being celebrated for spending it on some of Britain’s best follies.