In the 1970s the Coutts Bank building in central London was partly remodelled to a design by the architect Sir Frederick Gibberd. A new glass entrance was designed to replace the columned central section of the facade on the Strand. As work progressed Gibberd salvaged some of the redundant masonry to reuse at his Essex home. There he indulged in what the Architects’ Journal called ‘that virtuous activity’ of building follies.

Sir Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984) was the Master Planner of the new town created at Harlow, in Essex, from 1946. Needing to be close to the works, he bought a small cottage on Marsh Lane. He remodelled the house and developed the extensive garden, which had plenty of space for the sculpture and architectural salvage Gibberd collected with his second wife, Patricia (they married in 1972).

Gibberd decided to use some of the redundant masonry  from Coutts to create a ‘Roman’ Temple in the garden. His colleagues on site were apparently disgruntled by this decision, as removing the columns Gibberd had chosen was time consuming work – they would have preferred to smash the whole lot to bits.

The masonry was delivered the following year, and as Gibberd wrote ‘a huge lorry equipped with a crane drove down my lane, demolished three trees and dumped a pile of huge fragments in a ditch opposite my entrance gates’. The stone was dragged to the prepared site on a sledge with steel runners.

Three men with a crane and a digger were recruited to construct the folly. Two Portland stone columns and a section of frieze were to be erected in the form of a temple inspired by ancient Roman models. Steel rods were inserted in the columns to give support and one of the men sat in the bucket of the digger to guide the stones into place. The crane driver was asked to drop a third column, so that it would appear to have fallen and broken. The bewildered man exclaimed ‘They’ve come all the way from London and I’m to drop one of them?’, and apparently demanded the instruction in writing so that he couldn’t be held responsible for the damage.

It was, Gibberd concluded, a ‘very expensive folly’, but it brought him great pleasure. When passers-by paused at the gate and asked what the structure was, Gibberd enjoyed telling them it was a fragment from an ancient Roman temple discovered during the development of a nearby industrial estate.

Four urns from the Trafalgar Square facade of the bank, which Gibberd believed to be made of Coade Stone, were mounted on a plinth and placed at an angle to the temple to create a pleasing ensemble.

Although Gibberd claimed to have no masterplan for his garden, he did draw an exquisite plan and elevation of the temple and its garden setting. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1981 as ‘Roman’ Temple (Gibberd was elected RA in 1969).

The Architects’ Journal thought the whole of the bank’s facade should have been retained, or at least reused at another building, but as their reporter concluded, at least Gibberd had ‘tried to atone and Freddie’s folly promises to become a well-loved landmark in Freddie’s own New Town’.

Gibberd died in 1984 and left his house and garden to Harlow for the benefit of the people of the town, although initially it remained home to his widow and there were only occasional open days. Complications over his will left the garden vulnerable (a long story), but there was strong local support and in 1995 the Gibberd Garden Trust was formed to maintain the site and welcome visitors. Lady Gibberd remained closely involved until her death in 2006.

Gibberd said that the half a mile approached road gave his garden ‘a quality of remoteness’. Modern housing now stands close to the track, but is still an adventure to drive down the long lane, wondering if you have perhaps taken a wrong turn, only to suddenly spot the eagle-topped gateposts.

Gibberd’s comments on making the garden are from his lecture notes On Making Gardens and Landscapes which are in the Gibberd archive at the Garden Museum.  Sir Frederick and Lady Gibberd were early supporters of the museum where you can see a small display celebrating Gibberd’s work. The account of the bemused lorry driver is from oral histories collected by Annalise Taylor and published to mark 25 years of the Gibberd Garden Trust.

The Gibberd Garden reopens for the 2026 season on Wednesday 1 April. There’s more here.

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Surrounded by a twentieth century housing estate in south London, this classical building comes as something of a surprise. The Orangery, as it is known today, was once a feature of the pleasure grounds of Robert Thornton’s house on the edge of Clapham Common.

Thornton (1759-1826), an MP and businessman, had inherited a substantial fortune from his merchant father, John Thornton (1720-1790). Robert’s house stood in a small landscaped park with lakes, and in around 1792 he added this elegant building. Over the door is an inscription from Virgil which gives a clue as to the purpose of the fine structure: HIC VER ASSIDUUM ATQUE ALIENIS MENSIBUS AESTAS, which translates as ‘Here is eternal spring and summer in months not her own’, or ‘Tis here eternal spring and summer all the year’: the building was a greenhouse, where tender plants could be kept alive in the colder months of the year.

The artist Joseph Farington visited in 1806, with his friend William Wilberforce, and noted in his diary that the Orangery was built to a design by Dr Burgh of York. William Burgh (1741-1808) was Irish-born, but lived in York for many years. He doesn’t seem to have a history as an amateur architect, but he was a friend of the poet and garden designer William Mason, and wrote a commentary to accompany the 1783 edition of Mason’s poem The English Garden. In this text Burgh wrote that Mason’s lines about a greenhouse ‘where rare and alien plants/might safely flourish’ was inspired by the French writer and landscape designer René Louis Girardin. Girardin published De La Composition des Paysages in 1777, in which he suggested that a greenhouse with a background of trees would form a ‘jolie tableau‘. Girardin’s concept and Mason’s lines were brought to life in Clapham.

Long since lost is a marble tablet which was inside the building. It was inscribed with an extract from William Cowper’s poem The Task, including these lines which echo the quotation from Virgil on the frieze:

Unconscious of a less propitious clime,
There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,
While the winds whistle, and the snows descend.

The pediment is decorated with what are believed to be Coade stone ornaments. In the engraving (above) the central plaque appears to feature a profile, but if that was the case it has disappeared, and it is not known who or what it represented (by the mid-20th century the oval space was a window which lit the attic behind the pediment). The Greenhouse, as it was originally known, had a view of a serpentine canal and lawns and then over a haha to the meadows and another serpentine lake beyond. The Greenhouse was originally furnished with huge sash windows, with curious glazing between the columns – rather like stretcher bond in brickwork (see the photo’ below).

In 1808 Queen Charlotte, the Princesses and the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge visited the Thorntons at their ‘Clapham Villa’, and were shown the Greenhouse, but soon after Thornton got into financial difficulties. The Thornton Estate was offered for sale in 1810 when it was described as a ‘most superb villa’ with gardens full of native and exotic species ‘now in the highest state of cultivation’. The map in the sales particulars shows the ‘Greenhouse’ overlooking one of the serpentine lakes.

The estate was on the market again in 1851 when the ‘beautiful conservatory of Portland stone’ was described as ‘commanding views over the pleasure grounds and rich meadow land, which presents the appearance of a small park’.

The estate was bought by a Belgian order of nuns who established the Notre Dame convent and school on the site. New buildings were added, playing fields and tennis courts were laid out, and the girls could row on the serpentine lake and ride ponies in the grounds.

The convent closed in 1939 but its name lives on in the Notre Dame Estate, which was developed on the site of the convent and former Thornton gardens soon after the Second World War.

All that remains today of the pleasure grounds is the Orangery, which serves as an elegant backdrop to a recreation ground in the middle of the Notre Dame Estate. In the early 1950s the writer E.M. Forster, whose great-aunt Marianne was a Thornton, visited Clapham and found ‘no Thornton memorial except a dilapidated Orangery’. He was saddened that the site had been cleared ‘at a time when development was unusually ruthless’.

Unsurprisingly, the windows were the first casualty when the building stood empty, and today the rather forlorn building stands behind security fencing.

The Orangery has been largely without a purpose since the estate was constructed. Drawings by the Borough of Wandsworth Engineer, Surveyor and Architect show that the building was consolidated in 1955 when it was listed at Grade II, and it has had occasional remedial works ever since. The Orangery is on Historic England’s Buildings at Risk Register and, despite much debate and local support, a viable future for the structure remains to be found.

Update October 2025: Private Eye’s architecture correpsondent, ‘Piloti’, wrote about the orangery in the edition dated 17-30 October 2025. More than half of the roof has collapsed and Lambeth Council are seeking external funding to pay for repairs estimated to cost £100,000.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and observations are very welcome – scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to get in touch.

On the banks of the river Orwell in Suffolk there once stood a lofty obelisk. It proclaimed to all the filial piety of Charles Berners, who erected it in 1793 in memory of his father, William. At 96 feet tall, and topped with a golden sun, it was a prominent landmark but sadly it came to a sorry end when it was damaged by fire and then demolished in the middle of the 20th century. But as the image above shows, fragments were salvaged and survive today.

William Berners (1709-1783) acquired the Woolverstone (or Wolverstone, Woolverston) estate in 1773 when it was described as being ‘capable of great and immediate improvement’. Berners commissioned a new mansion which was built to the designs of the architect John Johnson. The house was described in 1784 as ‘fine enough’, but it was the hilltop location with views of the river Orwell that gave it ‘all its merit’: the numerous small boats which sailed up and down the river brought to life this ‘superb view’.

After his death his son and heir Charles (c.1734-1815) commissioned the architect Robert Mylne (1733-1811) to design an obelisk in memory of his father. The plan was drawn up early in 1791, and the situation decided in September of the same year, with an Ipswich mason called Edward Tovell given the job of erecting the monument.

The obelisk was square in plan and surmounted with a golden metal ball surrounded by sun-rays (possibly inspired by the obelisk to the Duke of Cumberland in the park at Windsor of 1765 or the one at Stourhead in Wiltshire which was topped with a gilded bronze sun in 1748). But unusually it had a hollow centre which contained a wooden staircase, and presumably the circles near the top of the shaft were peepholes through which to admire the view, although as the engraving above shows the view was pretty impressive even from ground level.

Old postcards record how the obelisk looked, and show it to have been decorated with decorative roundels. These are very likely products of the Coade artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth, as that the company is known to have supplied the huge plaque featuring Diana the huntress which adorns the pediment of the mansion, as well as vases, urns, consoles and capitals. There were two inscriptions which were recorded on a pen and wash drawing by Issac Johnson of Woodbridge.

The first inscription translates as ‘In memory of William Berners Esq., best of fathers and well meriting the building of this obelisk by his son Charles Berners 1793’. The second plaque recorded that William was born on July 10 1709 and died on September 18 1783.

Sadly it was the internal void which brought an end to the obelisk. In July 1943 a fire was started at the foot of the wooden stairs which quickly spread (naval ratings returning from the pub were blamed). Considered beyond repair, the monument was demolished with explosives soon after.

But all was not lost: a few lucky villagers salvaged ornamental fragments which survive in private gardens, including what seem to be some of the Coade stone plaques from the obelisk.

The keen-eyed will have spotted two further landscape curiosities in the earlier illustrations to this post, both of which were once part of the Woolverstone estate. The map shows Freston Tower (top left), a ‘tall, imposing and picturesque bit of Tudor brickwork’ now a holiday home in the care of the Landmark Trust.

The engraving of Woolverstone Park shows a small ornamental building (bottom right): this ‘pretty little lodge’ became known as the Cat House, with the tale told locally that a stuffed cat was displayed in the window to warn local smugglers that the authorities were in the area. It has since been substantially extended and is now in the grounds of the MDL Woolverstone Marina.

Woolverstone Hall (grade I) was requisitioned during the Second World War and has been in use as a school since the 1950s. The views which the obelisk once enjoyed can be seen from a public footpath.

The Woolverstone obelisk is a sad loss, but the obelisk in Windsor Great Park, also topped by a golden sun, was recently restored by Cliveden Conservation, and looks rather handsome on a bright day.

The Folly Flâneuse wishes to thank Simon Pearce of Woolverstone for sharing his research and for being an excellent guide to the area. Thanks also to the owners of the surviving plaques for permission to view.

Woolverstone Hall is currently home to Ipswich High School. There are excellent views of the house on its website https://www.ipswichhighschool.co.uk

Thank you for reading and please scroll down to the foot of the page to share any thoughts or comments.

The 11th Earl of Buchan, seldom mentioned without the qualifier ‘eccentric’, bought the Dryburgh estate towards the end of the 18th century. He built a new house and improved the grounds, creating a landscape which featured as its centrepiece that ultimate in garden ornaments: a ruined abbey. Further embellishments included this pretty rotunda on a hillock overlooking the Tweed, and a ‘colossal statue’.

David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan (1742-1829), was fascinated by Scottish history and founded the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1780.  He was a man of great imagination, and a patriot who loved his country’s history and its heroes, and although his eccentricity was exaggerated after his death, there is no denying that he decorated the environs of Dryburgh Abbey ‘in his peculiar whimsical way’.

Although Buchan was an admirer of Scotland’s most revered poet, Robert Burns, he was particularly in awe of James Thomson, ‘the Bard of Ednam’ (Ednam being the nearby village where the poet was born). Thomson (1700-1748) was a poet and playwright, whose most famous work The Four Seasons, was published in 1730. There’s no explanation for what was practically an obsession on the part of Buchan, but he lobbied for monuments and memorials to Thomson in Scotland and London as well as building his own tribute – the Temple of the Muses.

In Greek mythology the muses lived with Apollo on Mount Parnassus and were patrons of poets, encouraging their creative calling. So in naming his rotunda the Temple of the Muses, and topping it with a statue of the poet, Buchan made himself clear – Thomson’s work was of the highest order, inspired by the goddesses. The story of Apollo and the Muses was a favourite of Buchan, and on one occasion he created a tableau in his Edinburgh drawing room. Nine ladies ‘of the first rank’ were dressed as the muses, and of course Buchan himself was Apollo. All that was needed to complete the scene was Cupid, so to the ‘astonishment’ of his assembled guests Buchan recruited a ‘blooming boy of ten or twelve’ who made a dramatic entrance, naked except for his bow and quiver.

No architect is mentioned in connection with the ‘fanciful erection’, and it seems likely the temple was the work of Buchan himself, working with his favoured mason, John Smith of Darnick, who also worked for Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.

A grand fete took place at Dryburgh in August 1812 at which the new temple took centre stage. Guests processed from Dryburgh Abbey in the wake of the members of the Masonic Lodge of Newstead – of which Smith the stonemason was Grand Master – and assembled at the temple. Reports of this event include a description of the temple, probably provided by Buchan. The ‘Temple of the Muses’ had nine columns, and on the capital of each was the name of one of the nine muses, inscribed in metallic characters: Clio, Euterpe, Thalie, Melpomene, Terpischore, Erato, Polyhymnie, Uranie and Caliope, the ‘elegant relievo letters’ being the work of John Ruthven of Edinburgh. On top of the dome a ‘beautiful imitation, in stone, of the lyre of Terpischore, found in the ruins of Herculaneum, is surmounted by a bust of Thomson, also cut in stone’.

The celebrations continued at Dryburgh Abbey where a grand feast was served, and then in the early hours the party returned to the temple. Along the way they passed a group dressed in the character of the four seasons, and then marvelled at a large illuminated transparency which Buchan had erected on the opposite side of the river Tweed. After speeches and toasts, and a rousing chorus of ‘Thomson’s grand national song’ (ie Rule Britannia for which the poet had composed the words) there was a ‘brilliant’ display of fireworks.

The newspaper report described the interior as ‘unfinished’, and it would be another 7 years before the central focus was installed. This was a statue of the Apollo Belvedere standing on a ‘circular pedestal with the 9 muses modelled in the die, enriched with laurel leaves’. This impressive piece was supplied by Mrs Coade’s artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth in 1819, at a cost of £119 4s 0d. Sir David Erskine recorded the statue in his sketch book in 1821.

The newly-completed temple (actually an artist’s impression thereof, as it was incomplete) had appeared on the title-page of a volume of Buchan’s writings, published in 1812. The book suggests that at that date the temple was to be dedicated to Thomson and Robert Burns.  Buchan is known to have discussed a statue of Burns with his mason (is that the poet sitting in the temple in this image?) but none is recorded in situ and Apollo eventually took his place.

Opinion was divided as to whether Lord Buchan’s landscape was a triumph or a travesty. A visitor in 1823 praised the earl’s ‘refined and classic taste’ and described the grounds as a ‘little Elysium’. But a year  later a lady dismissed the ‘several odious enormities… and sundry other fooleries.’ Each to their own.

By the second half of the century the temple was dismissed as ‘a very commonplace building’ and one visitor thought it would soon be lost. At date unknown the statue and plinth were removed, and the metallic names of the muses have been spirited away too, and there is but faint trace of them today. The temple survived simply because it became so engulfed in foliage that it was largely forgotten. In 2002, following some remedial work (detail is hard to find), a new bronze statue, representing the Four Seasons, was commissioned from Siobhan O’Hehir (born 1966).

The mason Smith was also responsible for the ‘colossal statue’ (as Buchan himself called it) on the ridge above the temple. It represents Sir William Wallace, the Scottish knight and soldier, who was another of Buchan’s heroes. It was unveiled in 1814, and the striking monument is all the more remarkable as Smith was remembered as ‘a common Stone Mason who had never been taught sculpture’.

For Dryburgh Abbey see https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/dryburgh-abbey/history/

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A view of the house at Sledmere, painted in 1795, shows a classical orangery west of the kitchen garden. No trace of this building survives today but, mysteriously, another 18th century orangery can be found between the house and the stables.

Little is known about Sledmere’s first orangery. It must have been built in the late 18th century, and is believed to have been pulled down by Sir Tatton Sykes, 5th baronet (1826-1913) after he succeeded to the estate in 1863. Family legend has it that he was a great eccentric who thought flowers ‘nasty untidy things’ and wore countless layers of clothes. Local children would look out for his discarded coats and jackets, knowing that they would be rewarded with a coin when they returned them to the mansion. It is said that on a train journey, when swaddled in clothes, Sir Tatton became overheated. Rather than remove an outer garment he took off his shoes and socks and stuck his feet out of the window. Not a man to do things by halves, he also financed the building or restoration of  17 churches in the Yorkshire Wolds.

200 miles from Sledmere is Fairford Park, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. The fine mansion was remodelled by Sir John Soane in the late 18th century, and the park was laid out by William Eames, a designer who created landscapes in the natural fashion made famous by Capability Brown. In 1787 it was said that ‘many alterations and improvements’ were ongoing in the park and gardens, and the new Orangery, with a roundel of Flora in the pediment, and four Coade stone plaques showing putti representing the four seasons, probably dates from this period.

In 1945 Fairford was bought by Ernest Cook, a former partner in the pioneering travel company Thomas Cook & Son. He had used his wealth to acquire 17 country estates, and his original plan was to donate them to the National Trust. At Fairford there were complications as land on the estate was still occupied by a Polish Displaced Persons camp, and until that was legally de-requisitioned the gift could not be made. Later, Cook’s relationship with the National Trust soured (the trust’s James Lee-Milne found the park at Fairford ‘flat and dull’ and decided the property was ‘unacceptable’). Only a handful of the properties were donated, with the others, including Fairford, placed in the Ernest Cook Trust, founded in 1952 and continuing today.

The house at Fairford was demolished in the mid-1950s to make way for a new secondary school, and the orangery, by now in a poor condition, was dismantled soon after and the facade given to the National Trust for safekeeping. For reasons unknown, the trust decided not to re-erect it in one of its many parks as originally planned, but instead gave it to the Sykes family of Sledmere on the condition that once rebuilt there would be public access. The Bath stone front, including the Coade stone ornaments, remained in storage for some years before Sir Tatton Sykes, 8th bart, commissioned the highly-regarded architectural practice Francis Johnson and Partners of Bridlington to restore and reuse the stonework as the front of a new orangery built of local brick. A plaque on the rear (private) elevation, which overlooks a swimming pool, records that it was completed in 2005.

The original design of the orangery is attributed to Sir John Soane, and dated c.1790, although no firm evidence has been found. The new interior was therefore modelled on the Music Room at Earsham in Norfolk, a Soane garden building of a similar date. New plasterwork was commissioned from the master craftsmen at Stevensons of Norwich, including medallions with the Sykes heraldic triton, seen on many buildings on the estate. The building was awarded a commendation for a ‘New Building in a Georgian Context’ by the Georgian Group in 2012.

For Sledmere see https://www.sledmerehouse.com

For the Sykes churches see https://www.eychurches.org.uk/images/stories/leaflets/Sykes_Open_Churches_Leaflet.pdf

The Ernest Cook Trust continues today as the U.K.’s foremost providers and funders of outdoor learning, helping children and young people, particularly those who are disadvantaged, develop a love and understanding of the natural world. Their offices are in the grounds of Fairford Park https://ernestcooktrust.org.uk

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In 1987 Save Britain’s Heritage, the charity which campaigns to save historic buildings from needless destruction, published Pavilions in Peril, a report into the great number of garden buildings in Britain that faced an uncertain future. In drawing attention to historic buildings that are vacant and whose future is uncertain, the charity hoped to identify new owners able to repair and/or find a new use for the structures, thus securing their future. 33 years after that report was written The Folly Flâneuse is delighted to write that there have been some fabulous restorations (see link below to an earlier post), but read on for the not-so-good news…

The report’s author, Julia Abel Smith, researched 54 case studies, and sadly two of the featured structures have disappeared forever. The classical Temple to Pitt at Coleby Hall in Lincolnshire, was described in 1987 as being ‘a very sad sight’, and it was demolished in the 1990s. Although it looks fairly substantial in this postcard view, it was actually wood plastered to look like stone, and therefore less able to withstand the elements.

The Bark Temple at Exton in Leicestershire, a rustic wooden summerhouse which had been deteriorating for some years, finally collapsed in 1997. There will be more on this fascinating lost building in a forthcoming guest post.

Two years after the report was published SAVE introduced a Buildings at Risk Register, and two of the buildings featured in Pavilions in Peril remain on that list today.

Despite attempts to secure its future, the Umbrello, on the privately-owned Great Saxham estate in Suffolk, has spent 33 years in peril. It is of particular interest as not only is it an unusual design, but it is built of Coade Stone, the celebrated artificial stone developed by Mrs Coade at her factory in Lambeth. Originally constructed in the late 18th or early 19th century, its design is based on a Batty Langley pattern and a Historic England report of 2001 concluded that Great Saxham may not have been its first home. There’s a link to the full report below.

Near Chichester in Sussex, stands the derelict Racton Tower, which is also on SAVE’s Buildings at Risk Register. It was designed by Theodosius Keene for the 2nd Earl of Halifax and complete by around 1770. The hilltop folly (described by Horace Walpole as ‘a very ugly Tower’) was built to take advantage of extensive views across the downs to the Isle of Wight and beyond, and as an eye-catcher from Lord Halifax’s seat at Stansted House. In the year Pavilions in Peril was published it was bought by a private owner who planned to turn it into a private house. Planning permission was granted some years ago, but has since expired, and at the time of writing a new application, from the same very patient owner, is being considered by the South Downs National Park Planning Authority.

Other buildings featured in the report remain in need of rescue. In 1987 the Belvedere at Sketty, near Swansea, was unlisted and derelict. Probably designed by the architect William Jernegan in the early 19th century, the folly contains a lovely vaulted chamber with its roof supported by a single column (likely inspired by the nearby Chapter House at Margam).

The building has the inscription ESTO PERPETUO (May it stand forever), which is somewhat ironic given its current condition, although nicely relevant when one learns that when it was conveyed to Swansea City Council there was a covenant attached forbidding demolition. The house at Sketty was demolished in 1975 and the belvedere is now surrounded by the modern housing that was built in its park. In 2015 the cash-strapped Swansea Council sold the building at auction; the sum realised was reported to be £130,000. However plans to restore the (now grade II listed) folly as a dwelling have been scuppered by a colony of bats, and it remains boarded-up and neglected.

In Yorkshire the temple at Whitley Beaumont, near Huddersfield, was thought to have a bleak future as it had lost its roof, and the fine chamber beneath was filling with rubble. Happily it still stands, although it has continued to slowly deteriorate under the combined force of vandals, the elements, and total loss of raison d’être: the estate was requisitioned for mining during the Second World War and the mansion demolished in 1952 . Attributed to James Paine, the temple was probably constructed in the early 1750s when the Beaumont family’s mansion was being remodelled. A grand terrace walk, edged with flowering shrubs, terminated at the temple from which there were extensive views. In the 1770s the building was home to a telescope and visitors were invited to admire the distant views from the elevated site, which (as reputed of every prospect tower in Yorkshire) included a view to York Minster. When invited to admire the view one guest, clearly an old hand at dealing with the boasts of owners, announced that he could most certainly see the mighty church: experience had taught him that when he found his hosts ‘resolutely determined that I shall see a thing, I always see it immediately to save trouble.’ The temple now stands rather forlornly on the edge of a quarry, as a reminder of how great the estate once was.

If you are feeling a little despondent now, see last week’s post for the good news https://thefollyflaneuse.com/pavilions-in-peril-part-i-pavilions-preserved/

This is only a selection from the buildings featured in Pavilions in Peril, but it is still in print at the absolute bargain price of £5 and is well worth the investment. You can buy it and learn more about SAVE here https://www.savebritainsheritage.org/publications/publications-in-print/3 

For the full report on the Umbrella at Great Saxham follow this link https://research.historicengland.org.uk/Report.aspx?i=15025&ru=%2FResults.aspx%3Fp%3D549

Feedback is always welcome, please scroll down to find the comments section. Thank you for reading.

Brizlee Tower* stands high on Brizlee Hill, near Alnwick, and overlooks Hulne Park, a detached pleasure ground close to the Duke of Northumberland’s principal park at Alnwick Castle. It was built in the late 18th century as a prospect tower and eye-catcher, and also as an object to be visited on a drive from the castle through Hulne Park.

The park was designed by ‘the inimitable Brown’, aka Capability, working with local engineers and designers, and was also home to the ruins of mediaeval Hulne Abbey, embellished and repurposed by the Duke and Duchess as a banqueting house, pleasure garden and menagerie for exotic pheasants. This is one of The Folly Flâneuse’s favourite follies: the detail is just so joyful, or as historian Alistair Rowan so wonderfully put it: ‘at Brizlee there is fantasy and flamboyance’.

Brizlee Hill had been landscaped in the previous decades, and there were already plantations and a network of rides. A tower had been planned for the hill during the Duchess’s lifetime, but she died in 1776 before building had started, and it was left to her husband to erect it in her memory. Many early accounts of the 87 feet high tower are at pains to stress that the tower was ‘planned entirely’ by Hugh 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714-1786) . But whilst the location and the Gothick style were probably his choice, he did have just a little help with the detail from his friend Robert Adam. Adam’s drawings for the tower, prepared in 1777 and 1778, survive in the collections at Alnwick Castle and the Soane Museum, London.

Although the tower carries the date 1781, the ‘celebrated Tower at Brizlee’ wasn’t completely finished until 1783. The exterior is decorated with carved stones showing the Duke’s Order of the Garter, 12 coats of arms representing the couple’s lineage, and at first floor level two Coade Stone roundels showing the profiles of the Duke and Duchess. The finishing touch was ‘a curious grate on which a bonfire is kindled on extra-ordinary occasions’. This ironwork basket was made by industrialist James Sharp at his factory: Sharp grew up at the rectory in nearby Rothbury, where his brothers included the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp.

Visible from the first floor platform is a plaque inscribed:

Circumspice
Ego omnia ista sum Dimensus;
Mei sunt ordines,
mea Descriptio:
Multae etiam istarum arborum.
Mea manu sunt satae

(Look around. I have measured out all these things; they are my orders, it is my planting; many of these trees have even been planted by my hand).

The inscription begins circumspice which roughly translates as ‘look around’; the Latin word was most famously used in Sir Christopher Wren’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral. His epitaph reads si monumentum requiris, circumspice: (if you seek (his) monument, look around), which instruction guided the reader to look up at the beauties of the cathedral, Wren’s great achievement. The Duke was surely echoing this when asking visitors to gaze out upon the castle, pleasure ground, and productive farmland he had improved or implemented at Alnwick. The second part of the inscription is from the ancient Greek account of Lysander meeting Cyrus, the King of Persia. The words are Cyrus’s response to Lysander’s admiration of his gardens.

Most early visitors waxed lyrical about the Duke’s work, with one describing it as ‘well-imagined and in an excellent Taste of Gothick Solidity’ and another writing that the ‘elegant and lofty Belvidere […] will ever remain a noble specimen of his skill in Architecture’. One less generous tourist agreed the tower was elegant, but thought the inscription savoured ‘too much of vanity’.

From the top of the tower the view was bounded by the North Sea in one direction, and the Cheviot Hills in another. Looking south-east the mid-ground was dominated by a stunning view of Alnwick Castle and its park, with the River Aln running through. This is best illustrated in Girtin’s view from Brizlee of c.1800 and in a verse from one of the pastoral poems so beloved of the Victorians. Composed by John Lamb Luckley of Alnwick, and published in 1848, ‘Beautiful Brizlee’ extols the wonders of the spot:

Here Warkworth rears her ancient towers
Above the winding dale;
There Cheviot’s frowning summit lours
Far o’er the cultivated vale;
Hulner with her ruin’d altars lies
Beneath the mountain tree;
And varied views delight the eyes
From beautiful Brizlee.

By 1999 there were severe problems of water penetration and rusting ironwork which had left the slender stone balustrades unsafe and a range of other problems, which put the tower ‘at risk’. The Northumberland Estates commissioned specialist conservation architects Robin Kent Architecture & Conservation to carry out repairs with grant aid from English Heritage. After thorough investigations work started in January 2004 and the grade I listed tower was reopened by the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland on 21 November 2005.

The tower can be seen from walks in Hulne Park, and there are occasional charity open days, but there is no vehicular access. At the time of writing the park is closed due to the COVID19 pandemic, but in due course will reopen and you can find out more here http://www.northumberlandestates.co.uk/the-estate/walks-trails/

* aka Brislee, Brisley, Brislay, Briesley, Brislaw…

Note: The Folly Flâneuse is continuing to Stay Home. Special thanks to all those who have helped with images and expertise so these posts may continue to appear. This week particular thanks to Robin Kent.

In the middle of the 18th century the area around Dunston was unenclosed heath, and travel was a dirty and dangerous business, especially in the dark winter months. Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), 2nd baronet, of West Wycombe and Hell-fire Club fame, came into property in the area when he married Sarah Ellys of nearby Nocton in 1745. Dashwood erected the Dunston Pillar in 1751 as a beacon to guide ‘the peasant, the wayfaring stranger, and the horseman with his dame on pillion’.

Described a few years later as an ‘exceedingly lofty tower’, a staircase led to the top where a glass lantern was lit each evening. Around the tower was a ‘neat square court’ with small pavilions at each corner. Dashwood engraved the miles to London and to Lincoln respectively on two of column’s faces, with the inscription ‘Dunston Pillar’ on the third, and on the south face:

COLUMNAM HANC
UTILITATI PUBLICAE
D.D.D.
F. DASHWOOD
MDCCLI.*

Soon after the tower was constructed, the land around it was enclosed, new roads were constructed, and the Light House was slowly rendered redundant. As early as 1771 one passer-by worried it would soon become a ‘useless obelisk’.

With Dashwood’s reputation as something of a rake, it’s not a great surprise to learn that instead of becoming redundant, the tower and grounds entertained the Lincoln Club. This was a sort of northern outpost of the Hell-fire Club, the mock-religious society dedicated to the pleasures of the table and the bedroom, which met at Medmenham Abbey, on Dashwood’s Buckinghamshire estate.

By 1776 the tower and its enclosure were likened to a London pleasure garden and called the ‘VauxHall of this part of the world’. A ‘kind of Banquetting room’ was built against the north wall, and there was a fine bowling green. The whole was surrounded by plantations which promised to be the ‘Paradise of Lincolnshire’ within a few years. The pillar may also have provided a very grand stand from which to watch horseracing, as the final straight of Lincoln’s first racecourse was aligned with the tower. Further views of equine interest would have featured the hunt, and Armstrong’s 1778 map of Lincolnshire comprehending Lindsay, Kesteven and Holland (Holland being a historical subdivision of Linconlnshire) has a vignette of Dunston Pillar with the horses and hounds passing by (not illustrated).

In 1792 Sir John Dashwood King (1765-1849), who had inherited the baronetcy from his half-brother Sir Francis, tried to get a licence to serve alcohol. He was unsuccessful but presumably did not give up as the following year he had plans drawn up by Mr Lumby, a Lincoln architect, to further extend the banqueting room. An even more spectacular design proposal, undated, unexplained, and unexecuted, would have seen the whole tower encased in a two-storey house.

By the end of the century parts of the Lincolnshire estate had passed to Robert Hobart (1760-1816), 4th earl of Buckinghamshire. In 1810 he commemorated the fifty year reign of George III by replacing the pillar’s lantern, which had collapsed in a storm, with a huge statue of the monarch, and added an inscription of his own:

THE STATUE UPON THIS PILLAR
WAS ERECTED AD 1810
BY ROBERT EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
TO COMMEMORATE THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE REIGN OF HIS MAJESTY
KING GEORGE THE THIRD

Modelled by Joseph Panzetta, who worked at Mrs Coade’s artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth**, the statue was 14 feet high and showed the king in his coronation robes with crown and sceptre.

Tragedy struck when a stonemason fell to his death as the figure was being erected atop the pillar. John Willson was buried in nearby Harmston churchyard, and he is remembered with this wonderful headstone. Like the original pillar, the column is surmounted with a Coade Stone statue, presumably sent from the Lambeth factory and inserted into the stone. Willson is remembered with both a Latin inscription and the English translation:

He who erected the noble King,
Is here now laid dead by Death’s sharp sting

By 1931, His Majesty was also meeting an undignified end as a storm had cost him his right forearm. It could be found, alongside his sceptre, ‘in a hedge bottom near the foot of the pillar’. Ten years later, with World War II underway, the Royal Air Force considered the column a danger to aircraft coming in and out of Coleby Grange Airfield. Initially, the Ministry of Defence decreed that the whole tower must be demolished, but after discussions it was agreed to take it down to a height below the maximum tree line, a reduction of about one-third of the original extent.

Specific instructions were issued to the contractors to dismantle the statue with the greatest care, and to number both the pieces of the King, and the courses of masonry from the tower. However, taking down the statue was more difficult than planned, and pieces of the Coade Stone fractured and fell during the process. The statue was likened to ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and there were quips about ‘putting King George together again’. However with the nation at war, little attention was paid to the issue and the fragments were stacked in the base of the pillar and the door secured.

There they remained until 1953 when the owner of the pillar, Mr Parker, began to press for restoration. After initial misgivings by the MoD, who thought the tower had only a ‘limited and sentimental value’, it was accepted that under the terms of the Compensation (Defence) Act 1939 a contribution to the costs of restoration should be paid. Plans were drawn up to rebuild the tower, and erect a new lantern on the top, but ultimately Lincolnshire County Committee couldn’t commit their share of the costs at a time when the country was still focussed on economy. The owner then gave the fragments of the statue to the Lincolnshire Local History Society, and they were moved to a council depot where, like a Lincolnshire Ozymandias, the shattered visage and other fragments lay in a ‘nettle bed’ before being transferred to the stone mason’s yard at Lincoln Castle. Margaret Jones (known to her colleagues as ‘Boadicea’), was an archaeologist working with the Ministry of Works in Lincolnshire. Writing to Country Life in 1959, she reported that the mason, Mr Freestone (nominative determinism?), was at work on the king’s head, which was in about 12 pieces.

But yet again restoration plans ground to a halt. There was a revival of interest in the 1960s, when it was agreed that part of the statue would be erected on a plinth in the grounds of Lincoln Castle. Plans were drawn up showing two alternatives: the bust, ie head and shoulders, was the first option, and a second showed the statue rebuilt down to the knees (most peculiar in the opinion of this writer). The MoD offered funds but no further action was taken.

The hero of the hour was Brian Loughborough, the Curator of the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, in whose care the fragments of the statue had been placed by the local history society. In the early 1970s he resurrected the idea of erecting the bust at Lincoln Castle and recruited the local MP, the Hon. Joseph Godber, to the cause. Godber went straight to the top: Defence Secretary Peter Carrington, later Lord Carrington. In 1972 the MoD sent a cheque for £450 in full settlement, and with a further £100 from the Department of the Environment, the museum was able to go ahead and place the order for the restoration work to begin in June 1972. The statue was finally complete in 1974 when crowds gathered to see the crown lowered into place.

In 2010 the bust in the castle grounds was further restored by Coade Ltd, the company which has successfully redeveloped the Coade Stone process.

The tower still stands in its truncated form, it is on private land but can be seen from the A15. The inscriptions are badly deteriorated with only odd words still legible. The surviving portions of the tower and the statue are both listed at grade II.

With the remaining fragments safely in storage, and developments in artificial stone technology, it would be amazing to see the statue of King George restored to its full height. But there remains not only the tricky question of money (of course), but also where to put a massive statue that was designed to be viewed from several metres below?

Meanwhile, another version of the Dunston Pillar, with statue intact, can be found in Australia. A sterling silver model of the tower was created by the renowned 18th century silversmith, Paul Storr, in 1811. It was apparently created as a table centrepiece for Sir Joseph Banks, who had an estate nearby, and carries the botanist and voyagers crest on the base. It stands 79cm tall  but is not an exact replica of the pillar as King George is not wearing his crown, and some florid acanthus leaves have been added to the column. It was sold by auction at Christies by his descendants in 1992 and was purchased by The Australiana Fund, a not for profit organisation with the aim of collecting furniture and artworks to display in the country’s official residences.

It is appropriate to find a Sir Joseph Banks connection 200 years after his death in 1820. There are events around the country https://www.joseph-banks.org.uk/2020-2/but The Folly Flâneuse is particularly looking forward to a trip to the seaside https://www.cookmuseumwhitby.co.uk/whats-on/2020-exhibition.html

* The Folly Flâneuse is no Latin scholar but this can (hopefully) be translated as This column for the use of the public Francis Dashwood gave and dedicated as a gift (DDD – Dono Dedit Dedicavit) 1751

** He also modelled the statue of Rowland Hill on its column in Shrewsbury as well as the Nelson pediment at the Royal Naval College in London.