John Wilkinson (1728-1808) made his fortune in the iron industry in the second half of the 18th century. Such was his ardour for developing and innovating in his field, that he became known as ‘Iron-mad Wilkinson’, and that passion even included a plan to spend eternity encased in iron.

Wilkinson was born in 1728, and started his career in his father’s iron furnaces in Lindale and Backbarrow in Lancashire (now Cumbria), but ambition to learn more about the industry soon took him to the West Midlands. He established foundries there, moved in the same circles as great engineers such as James Watt, Matthew Boulton and Abraham Darby, and accumulated great wealth. He was admired for his industrial prowess, but also considered ruthless in business, and there were accusations that he had claimed the innovations of others as his own. He was proud of his success and the status it gave him: when establishing a works in north Wales, he stayed at an inn in Wrexham where he did a deal with the landlady to ensure the best room was always at his disposal – much to the annoyance of the aristocracy who were sent to lesser rooms, and visiting ladies who expected gentleman to be gallant and allow them the finest accommodation.

Over time Wilkinson bought estates near his works in Staffordshire and North Wales, but Lancashire remained his greatest love and in the 1770s he built a house called Castle Head (sometimes Castlehead) overlooking Morecambe Bay, close to the village of Lindale. At Castle Head he created a pleasure ground, converting ‘barren waste into beautiful gardens and shrubberies’. The estate took its name from a lofty hill which he landscaped with picturesque winding walks and rocky steps leading to a walled garden on the summit, where he grew fruit. Ever the engineer, he built walls and sluices to control the sea, and he was highly praised for reclaiming land from the marshy coastline. By 1789 it was reported that what ‘was once an entire bog is now nearly covered with verdure and grain’.

In 1783, when only in his mid-fifties, Wilkinson finished work on an area of the garden that was very important to him – the ‘Place designed to receive [his] Remains’. A cavity cut into the rock of the hillside, facing the house, housed six cast iron cases which had been made at his foundry. Here Wilkinson would be buried alongside ‘select friends’ who might wish to spend eternity with him. The ends of the iron coffins had doors so that wooden coffins could be slid inside, and then the iron coffin would be sealed and an inscription added. Trees and shrubs were planted around the unconventional mausoleum ‘which in Time will form a Grove’.

The trees had plenty of time to mature, as the ’eminent and opulent’ ironmaster lived on for more than two decades, dying at his Bradley estate at the age of 80 in 1808. Originally he had stated in his will that he wished to be buried without any ‘Parade or Pomp’ at whichever of his three estates he was then resident at: if at Brymbo he was to be buried in the Chapel; if at Bradley in his garden; and if at Castle Head in the ‘place I have there prepared for that purpose’. In a codicil however he changed his mind, and stipulated that his body was to be taken to Castle Head and buried in the ‘Iron Case’.

Tales of Wilkinson’s burial abound, and it is very difficult to sort fact from fiction. According to local legend the coffin in the garden turned out to be too small, so Wilkinson’s body rested in the garden until another could be delivered from the midlands foundry. That coffin then supposedly became stuck in the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay as it made the crossing, and the men had to wait for the tide to turn before they could haul it out. What is certain is that Wilkinson was given a funeral service in Lindale parish church and then by ‘order of his executors deposited in the gardens of Castle Head’ where the ‘iron pyramid’ was then erected. The inscription, in gilded letters, had been composed by Wilkinson himself, and was intended to read:

‘Delivered from persecution, malice and envy here rests John Wilkinson, Ironmaster, in certain hope of a better state and heavenly mansion, as promulgated by Jesus Christ, in Whose Gospel he was a firm believer. His life was spent in actions for the benefit of man and he trusts, in some degree, to the glory of God.’

A most unusual epitaph, but curiously that is not the wording on the monument today. It seems that Wilkinson’s family and executors quietly decided on a less strident version:

Wilkinson rested in peace at Castle Head for two decades whilst his natural children and his nephew squabbled over his will. Eventually, the ‘beautiful mansion house called Castle-Head’ was offered for sale in 1828. Someone must have decided that a corpse, even one encased in iron, was not a great attraction to a buyer, and Wilkinson’s body was quietly removed to a vault in the parish church on 16 August 1828. There Wilkinson was reunited with his wife who had requested a more conventional burial, and specifically ‘desired that her remains might not be put in an iron coffin’.

The obelisk is described in situ in 1848, and is clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map published in 1850, but Castle Head remained unoccupied for some years and whilst the ‘tenantless hall’ sat empty it seems that the obelisk toppled over. When Edward Mucklow, owner of a Dye Works in Bury, bought the estate he proposed moving the monument to a more public spot on the edge of his estate, near the road into Lindale village. A plaque on the monument records his munificence:

REMOVED FROM
CASTLEHEAD GARDENS
JUNE 1863 & RE-ERECTED BY
EWD MUCKLOW ESQR

A letter to the local paper suggests that Mucklow then sold the remaining iron coffins as scrap metal.

Mucklow died in 1906, and the Castle Head estate was put on the market the following year. With the centenary of Wilkinson’s death approaching there were moves to buy and restore the obelisk. A Wilkinson Memorial Fund was initiated, but progress was slow, and probably not helped by newspaper descriptions of the obelisk as ‘inartistic’ and ‘ugly’. It wasn’t until 1915 that the Westmorland Gazette could announce that the site had been secured. A small park was created around the monument, originally with a picturesque arrangement of large rocks, although they had disappeared by the middle of the century. Within two decades the obelisk was recorded as being in poor condition, but the outbreak of war meant that repair was delayed until the 1950s, when the Manchester branch of the Institute of British Foundrymen raised the necessary funds.

The obelisk was listed at grade II* in 1970, and photos from around this date show that it was again in poor condition and held together with metal bands. At that date the obelisk was a natural oxidised red in colour, with the plaque and the circular portrait in black with the face and lettering in gold. In 1984 funds were raised to enable a full-scale restoration at Dorothea Restoration’s works in Buxton, and in May 1985 a ceremony was held to mark its return to Lindale. At this date the column was painted black with the relief portrait face and lettering gilded.

By 2007 the obelisk was again in need of attention, with paint peeling off. A fundraising campaign in 2008, marking the 200th anniversary of Wilkinson’s death, allowed further restoration, leaving the obelisk a uniform black, with no gilding. Congratulations to all in this little village who have, for more than a century, ensured that this most interesting of monuments receives the constant attention it needs, and saved it from the scrapyard.

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The grandly-named ‘Temple of Naval Heroes’ stands at the end of a narrow causeway that leads from the grounds of Storrs Hall out into the water, offering magnificent views up and down the lake. The temple was constructed by Sir John Legard of Storrs Hall as an ornament to the new house he had built in the last years of the eighteenth century, and as an expression of his patriotism, Sir John being ‘passionately attached to his country’. The octagonal building carries plaques celebrating four great naval victors in the ongoing war against the French– Admirals Howe, St Vincent, Duncan and Nelson.

Legard had travelled extensively in Europe in his younger years but suffered ill-health later in life, including a weakness in his legs which left him unable to walk. Determined to enjoy an outdoor life, he retired to the shores of Windermere where he could indulge his love of sailing. Sir John was instrumental in establishing an annual regatta on Windermere in 1801, carrying on the tradition established on Derwentwater in the previous century. In his appositely named yacht, The Victory, Sir John triumphed over other local landowners, and it is likely that when he dedicated his summerhouse to the admirals he was playfully reminding his neighbours that his prowess on the lake matched that of the Royal Navy at sea. 

Sir John’s health continued to deteriorate and he left Storrs only a couple of years later but subsequent owners continued to appreciate the diminutive temple. It must have been something of a squeeze when on 2 May 1805 Jessy Harden of Brathay Hall and ten friends ‘breakfasted in the Temple of the Heroes’. Harden also joined another excursion to the temple later that month; a party that was immortalised in print after one of the revellers wrote a 14-page mock-heroic poem describing the day:

A Pic Nic I sing, of the very first rate,
A moderniz’d party, a new-fangl’d fete.

By the middle of the twentieth century the grade II* listed ‘little gazebo’ had succumbed to the ‘wear and tear of wind and water (and perhaps hooligans)’ and was looking rather sad. An appeal in 1962 raised £1,253, enough to cover the costs of restoration with a small surplus for maintenance. The owners of Storrs Hall, by now a hotel, handed the building to the National Trust in 1965 and visitors can walk through the hotel grounds and out to the temple.

There’s more Storrs Hall info here https://www.storrshall.com

The Fox Tower, just outside Brough in the tiny settlement of Helbeck, is one of those follies built to be both eye-catcher and belvedere. It is a prominent landmark from the long-established road between Scotch Corner and Penrith, now the A66. From the tower there are dramatic views across the Pennines and the Eden Valley. 

The Fox Tower is not shown on Jeffrey’s map of 1770 or mentioned by Hutchinson in his 1773 An Excursion to the Lakes when he dismissed the area as ‘wild and forlorn’. John Metcalfe rebuilt the house at Helbeck (aka Hillbeck) in 1775-77, to a design attributed to the local architect Henry Bellas (or Bellhouse) of Appleby. The Fox Tower was probably built at around the same time and the designer is not known. Perhaps it too was the work of Bellas, but it does not echo the gothic features of the lovely mansion.

The first mention of the tower in print appeared in guidebooks in the first decade of the 19th century, by which time Metcalfe had taken the name of Carleton by Royal licence. Carleton had improved the Helbeck estate, and in the age of the picturesque the extensive prospect from his ‘beautiful seat’ was admired. The tower was described as ‘a romantic circular building on a rock, which projects from other rocks, in a hanging wood’. The building was said to take its name from the number of foxes that made their home in the vicinity.

Inside the tower were two rooms; the lower was fitted out as a kitchen and the upper room, with windows looking to ‘the four points of the compass’, was used for picnics and parties. The roof of the upper room was flat and served as a viewing platform. On the terrace that surrounded the tower Carleton installed seven cannons which he fired off ‘on birth and rejoicing days’. The cannons are long gone but The Folly Flâneuse was sure she could hear their ghostly echoes. Sadly not: it was the heavy artillery on exercises on the adjacent, and vast, Warcop military training area.

Metcalfe also developed a ‘delightfully situated’ cotton mill near Helbeck which opened in 1787. He took great satisfaction in knowing that the enterprise employed ‘almost all the poor people in and about the place’. But the business was not a success and Carleton, something of a colourful character, had left Helbeck by 1802 when the estate was offered for auction.

Fox Tower caught the attention of J.M.W. Turner on a sketching tour in 1831 and his rough drawings, possibly executed in transit, are in the Tate collection https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-fox-tower-near-brough-cumbria-d25589

Each spring the current owners of the Helbeck estate open up a delightful circular walk featuring the grade II listed tower, and primroses and bluebells provide cheer on the steep climb. The Folly Flâneuse scrambled up on the last day of the 2019 season, but watch out for dates in 2020. UPDATE February 2022: the Brough parish newsletter for February 2022 has a note to say that a permissive footpath to the Fox Tower is now open.

Big thanks to Fiona Green for piquing my interest in the Fox Tower.

Duddon Grove was once in Cumberland, separated from the Furness peninsula and Lancashire by the river Duddon. A few miles from Broughton-in-Furness, it is tucked away in a quiet corner of the county that is largely free from the tourist hordes. Since the county boundary changes of 1974 it has been in Cumbria. The present house, originally called Duddon Grove, was built by Richard Towers in around 1805, soon after he came into possession of the estate. In the garden stands a very ornate temple with a pediment supported by pillars with Corinthian capitals, and a level of ornamentation not seen on the austere mansion. 

Towers died without issue in 1831 and the estate passed to Frances Esther Millers, the sole issue of his sister and her husband, the Rev. William Millers. Miss Millers did not marry and devoted herself to good works, for which she was much admired in the district. Her mother had died in 1828 and three years later her father joined her at Duddon Grove. He died in 1843, and Miss Millers probably erected the temple in his memory as it is surmounted by a prominent date stone marked 1843 topped with a dramatic statue of a stag. Work was underway in 1845 when it was described as ‘now building’. In that year ornate carved stones for the portico were stolen and the masons, Messrs Brocklebank of Ulverston, offered a reward for information. Two local boys came forward to confess and were pardoned by the benevolent Miss Millers after suitable chastisement.

In the sedate age of steam it was an object to be viewed by passengers on the Whitehaven and Furness railway who were advised to note the ‘elegant mansion […] at Duddon Grove, with its Grecian Temple and neat Gardens’. An 1869 guide to the Lakes described it as ‘a small temple of white freestone, the entablature supported by plain columns with Corinthian capitals’, and noted that the interior was decorated with stained glass. Another guide, published in 1864, singled out Duddon Grove, one of the only ‘modern’ gentleman’s seats in the quiet valley, as ‘displaying its luxury in the midst of simplicity like an exotic plant blowing among our English wild-flowers.’

A painting in the collection of Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal confirms that there was an earlier temple. This temple seems to have been later remodelled into a larger estate building. The work is catalogued as being by an artist called John Robinson and dated c.1790. Richard Towers inherited the estate of his uncle, John Robinson, an Ulverston lawyer, in 1803 so the annotation of ‘John Robinson’ may refer to him and the painting was probably executed in the early 19th century after the house was remodelled. [NB this paragraph was updated 01 April 2019.]

The Duddon Grove estate was put up for sale in 1902 and a detailed set of particulars was produced. The ‘Magnificently Carved Stone Temple’ was used as a ‘Handsome Summer-House’ and contained ‘four costly painted glass windows representing the four seasons’. The pediment was topped with a ‘carved stag and urn ornaments’. A catalogue for the sale of the contents in the same year suggests the summerhouse had become something of a junk room as it contained oak chairs, a rocking horse, a sewing machine and other ‘sundries’. The sales particulars also highlighted the ‘armorial bearings’ and motto of Non Sine Pulvere which decorate the temple. The coat of arms above the door is something of a mystery, as neither of Miss Millers’ parents were entitled to bear arms. The motto, which can be translated as ‘no reward without effort’, is not known to be associated with either family.

The house was unoccupied after the Second World War with the inevitable consequence of steady decay. In 1967 it was offered the protection of a grade II listing but little effort was made to end the deterioration of the hall and estate buildings. A convoluted period of ownership ended in 2000 when a local builder converted the house into apartments before turning his attention to the tiny single-room folly.

The builder, Richard Bowness, asked Stockport based architects Worthington, Ashworth, Jackson & Walker to produce a plan to carefully restore the temple’s stonework and stained glass, and to enlarge the folly with the addition of a contemporary extension. Despite objections from the Ancient Monuments Society, local residents, and councillors the scheme was approved by 8 votes to 6 at the end 2003. County Councillor Alan Clark was quoted in the local press as saying that the planners had been blackmailed into approving a dreadful building to save a magnificent building. Bowness called a the project a ‘labour of love’ and he and his architects were rewarded with an award for the ‘best one off house conversion’ in 2008. When subsequently put on the market the estate agents were, for once,  justified to call it a ‘unique and rare opportunity’.

The building is a private home and there is strictly no public access.