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.

Obelisks might not seem as exciting as some of the quirkier landscape ornaments, but this one began a particularly interesting life in around 1732. Two hundred years later it was one of a group of monuments from Wrest Park in Bedfordshire that was sold to the wealthy socialite and politician Sir Philip Sassoon, and taken to his seat at Trent Park in Middlesex. There each was carefully placed in the park, and the largest, this substantial obelisk, was re-erected to terminate a new vista cut through the trees.

To begin at the beginning, the obelisk was first erected at Wrest in the 1730s. According to the notes in an album of Views of Wrest dated 1831, the inscription on the obelisk read ‘To the Memory of the birth of George Earl of Harold, son of the Duke of Kent by his second wife Sophia’. George was born in 1732 but died in infancy, leaving the Duke of Kent without an heir.

A family letter written in 1745 gives the height of the obelisk as 80 feet. It stood on higher ground close to the Bedford Road (now the A6) which borders the estate, and could be ‘seen at a distance of several miles round’. In 1797 the obelisk’s lofty position was exploited by the team working on the major trigonometrical survey of England and Wales, and in March 1830 the monument found temporary fame as the finishing post of a horse race. Riders galloped between Harlington Church and the Obelisk with the winner covering the 4 miles in around 17 minutes: the event was hailed in the press as ‘the greatest Steeple Chase ever known’ (and then promptly forgotten).

After this excitement the obelisk then stood quietly in its solitary situation until a chance to travel came its way in the 1930s. Wrest’s then owner, John G. Murray (1864-1954), spent little time at Wrest, and clearly attached no sentimental or cultural value to the memorials. When his attempts to market the estate from 1932 met with little interest, he began to sell the contents, timber and selected monuments to raise cash (even the very wealthy Henry ‘Chips’ Channon concluded Wrest was ‘too expensive to keep up’, although he wrote in 1939 that ‘never have I wanted a house as much as Wrest’).

Sir Philip Sassoon (1888-1939) bought three monuments and removed them to Trent Park: a pyramidal monument dedicated to Henry Duke of Kent, a pineapple-topped column in memory of Jemima Duchess of Kent, and the obelisk. The first two monuments were placed in prominent positions at either end of the great Lime Avenue and the obelisk was re-erected on high ground, at the end of a newly-cut vista, to be seen from the garden front of the house.

The setting of Trent Park was sketched in sales particulars in 1787 as ‘happily placed on rising Ground, and commanding rich and elegant views’ and the estate was considered ‘an enviable Possession for a Man of Fortune and refined Taste’. This was an apt description of Sir Phillip Sasson who took on Trent Park after his father’s death in 1912 (the estate was originally leased but Sir Philip purchased it in 1922).

Sassoon’s expenditure was remembered as ‘lavish and unchecked’, and he completely remodelled the house using mellow red bricks salvaged from the demolition of Devonshire House in London. With these materials, and a rumoured £150,000, he turned an early Victorian pile into a ‘genuine William and Mary house’ and he filled it with the finest furniture, paintings and decorative arts. Sassoon also acquired statues and ornaments from other country houses to decorate his garden.

Trent quickly became famed for the house parties where Sassoon entertained everyone who was anyone in the worlds of high society, politics and entertainment.

In October 1934 George, son of King George V and Queen Mary, was created Duke of Kent in anticipation of his marriage to Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark a month later. As was then common, the new Duke and Duchess were offered the use of country houses in which to spend their honeymoon. Their first stop was Himley Hall in Staffordshire, and on December 12 they moved on to Trent Park. The difference between the two seats did not go unnoticed, with the press describing Himley Hall as ‘a homely house in the old country tradition’ whereas Trent Park was a ‘show place, breathing magnificence, and with practically every item of furnishing a museum piece’.

The story is widely told that Sassoon bought the monuments from Wrest Park and re-erected them at Trent Park to make the Duke and Duchess of Kent feel welcome: the monuments to the 18th century Duke and Duchess are placed to be seen on the approach to the house. This might be true of the two smaller monuments, but the obelisk was not there when the Kents arrived in 1934. Work to take it down did not start until August 1935, and first came the laborious process of erecting scaffolding and carefully numbering each stone so that ‘the monument may be reconstructed exactly in its present form’. It was not until October 1935 that the Times noted that the Obelisk had been ‘recently removed’.

As seen today the inscription differs slightly from that recorded in Views of Wrest in 1831, suggesting that the letters were recut when the obelisk was moved, which would also account for the incorrect date of 1702 instead of 1732.

Trent Park was requisitioned by the Government at the outbreak of the Second World War and became home to the ‘Secret Listeners’, a British intelligence operation (see the link below for the whole fascinating history). After the war the grounds became a public park and the house was used as a teacher training centre and then as a university. The house stood empty for some years before being bought by property developers Berkeley Homes. After some vigorous campaigning the company agreed that the lower floors of the house could be turned into a museum telling the story of Sassoon and the important role of the house in wartime. Work continues to make that plan a reality.

In 1973, with work ongoing to restore the gardens at Wrest, the owners of Trent Park were approached to see if they would ‘relinquish the Duke’s Pyramid and the Duchess’s column’. The obelisk was excluded as ‘too large and difficult to move’ and not as important to the layout of Wrest Gardens. There were complications of ownership between the Greater London Council and the London Borough of Enfield, and locally a campaign  was started to formally object to the removal. The negotiations carried on for a decade before appearing to fizzle out, and the monuments stayed put.

In 1976 the Enfield planning office wrote to the parks department of the G.L.C. to report ‘defacement’ of the obelisk – there had been an attempt to alter the date in the inscription. Was this mindless vandalism or a pedantic folly fanatic attempting to update the incorrect date? The planning officer suggested erecting a fence around the column, but the park manager felt hooligans would just climb any such obstacle and, as he sensibly concluded, ‘wouldn’t it look terrible’.

Today replicas of the two smaller monuments can be seen in the gardens at Wrest, and the obelisk is remembered in a street name in the adjoining village of Silsoe.

Read more about the history and future of Trent Park here https://www.trentparkhouse.org.uk

And for Wrest Park see https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/wrest-park/

Thank you for reading, and if you have any thoughts or further information please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch (only your name will appear online, your email address remains private). If you would like a folly story in your inbox each weekend please click on ‘subscribe’. 

In the 1720s Sir Robert and Lady Furnese erected a vast garden building at Waldershare Park, their seat in Kent, which became known as the Belvedere. 300 years later a diminutive structure, the Monumenta Romana, has appeared in its shadow

The Belvedere was abandoned long ago, and by the 1980s the grade I listed structure was in poor condition and a target for vandals. In 1995 it seemed that a solution had been found, when the Vivat Trust, a charity that rescued historic buildings and converted them into holiday lets (sadly no longer in operation), became involved. The trust agreed a lease with the owner of Waldershare Park, Lord Guilford, and English Heritage agreed to part-fund the project. Vernon Gibberd and Andrew Plumridge, specialists in the field, were appointed as architects, and the Vivat Trust launched an appeal. Gibberd’s plan for the Belvedere included adding a cupola on the roof, allowing guests a view across the English Channel to France.

Writing in Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship in 1997, Vernon Gibberd described progress as slow, but there appeared no real cause for alarm. However soon after that article appeared English Heritage pulled their funding, and suggested they would take the monument into their own care. Two-and-a-bit decades later nothing has been resolved: the Belvedere still stands empty, and has been included in the Historic England ‘Heritage at Risk Register’ since 1998. There is no public access.

Happily the Belvedere can at least be viewed from the field below, through which passes the North Downs Way. This stretch of the national trail follows the ancient pilgrimage route the Via Francigena, which runs from Canterbury to Rome, and to mark this historic route Dover Arts Development has created the Via Francigena Art Trail. At Waldershare architect Charles Holland was commissioned to design a new artwork, which he called the Monumenta Romana. The artwork, constructed of salvaged timber, incorporates seating where the walker can rest and contemplate.

Holland took inspiration from the classical monuments that Sir Robert Furnese appreciated on his Grand Tour in the early 18th century (Furnese was painted with his hand resting on a volume entitled Monumenta Romana) and from the Belvedere itself. The artwork takes the form of a cupola that might once have topped the Belvedere, just as Gibberd had proposed some years earlier, and in Holland’s words ‘the two structures can be seen to complete each other’.

If the walk from Canterbury to Rome is not for you, simply follow the North Downs Way a short distance from the bottom of Singledge Lane, near the village of Coldred.

Update April 2024. Thanks to the Flâneuse’s airborne accomplice, Nic Orchard, for this recent aerial view of the tower.

Comments are very welcome, please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

One of the few upsides to the current situation is that there is time to rootle around in the attic and find all sorts of forgotten files full of treasure. Opening one box revealed this invitation to the private view of The Sitooteries, 20 years ago this month. What’s a sitooterie you may ask? Well it’s as simple as it sounds – a building to sit out in (the term is supposed to originate in Scotland, so try saying it in your best Caledonian accent).

The Sitooteries show was conceived by Judith King, who at that date must have had a huge business card to accommodate her job title of ‘English Heritage North East Regional Visual Arts Consultant’. She worked with Mark Daniels of Northern Arts to curate the showcase of ‘contemporary takes on the traditional summerhouse and pavilion’. 12 Artists, designers, and architects were invited to design a structure within a footprint of 12 feet by 12 feet (no metric in far off 2000) and with a maximum budget of £10,000.

The structures were placed within the grounds of Belsay in Northumberland, an English Heritage property. The estate houses an ancient castle and a stunning neoclassical mansion, both in partial ruin, as well as formal lawns and a famed woodland garden set within a former quarry. Grandest of the names on the list of designers (at that date) was Sir Norman Foster, then very much in the news in the north-east and beyond for his design for what the press release called the ‘Regional Music Centre’ in Gateshead – the building on the south bank of the Tyne better known to us today as ‘The Sage’ (or The Slug to its detractors) which was opened in 2004.

The Folly Flâneuse has completely failed to find any decent photographs in her albums, but did find photos of three of the models created by the artists during the design process.

Thomas Heatherwick’s ‘Hairy Sitooterie’, which would be perched on the edge of the haha at Belsay, was a cube pierced with 5600 spikes. Heatherwick said at the time that he really enjoyed the challenge of designing a ‘small building’, and his Sitooterie was a prototype that he went on to further develop during his career, most prominently with the UK Pavilion for the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. Heatherwick went on to found Heatherwick Studio, whose design projects include the abandoned Garden Bridge in central London.

Welfare State International designed the ‘Wishbone House’. The space was available for private contemplation or for public celebration, with visitors encouraged to use the shelter for marriage proposals or naming ceremonies.

The Romanesque church created by FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) was covered with thousands of discs which shimmered in the dappled woodland light. In 2002 the sitooterie was installed in a new home at the Grizedale Sculpture Park in Cumbria, where the two seats inside gave views of the surrounding forest. Sadly, visitors to the park were unable to resist prizing off the shiny discs, and its residence was short-lived. More recently Charles Holland of FAT Architecture worked with Grayson Perry and Living Architecture to create the holiday rental ‘A House for Essex’, which also seems to shimmer, but is clad with more durable tiles. Living Architecture describes the house, which opened to guests in 2015, as belonging  ‘to a history of follies, whilst also being deeply of its own time’. It’s well worth following the link below to learn about the whole ‘history’ Perry created for the house.

The Sitooteries show attracted almost 100,000 visitors in the 7 months it was on show at Belsay, and was widely featured in the media, including the New York Times which ran a feature headlined ‘The Summer House, Reinvented’. Further excellent art exhibitions and installations have followed at Belsay over the last 2 decades. For obvious reasons all current plans are on hold, but watch this space https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/

The full list of artists was: Inflate, Claudio Silvestrin, Simon Watkinson, Michael Anastassiades, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Welfare State International, Tania Kovats, Mosedale Gillatt/Octo Design, FAT, Julian Opie, Ashley McCormick.

For Heatherwick’s Shanghai big brother to the Belsay sitooterie see http://www.heatherwick.com/project/uk-pavilion/

For Grayson Perry and FAT’s House for Essex click here https://www.living-architecture.co.uk/the-houses/a-house-for-essex/overview/

On recent sedate tours of Britain The Folly Flâneuse was intrigued to find two pairs of pavilions which had sadly lost their principal part. Near Towcester in Northamptonshire are the Palladian pavilions that once flanked a fine house. Meanwhile at Mistley in Essex the twin towers of a Robert Adam church have long since lost their linking nave. The surviving pairs are, however, far from forlorn and seem to be throughly enjoying their independence.

The mansion at Stoke Park  was built for Francis Crane in c.1630 and is attributed, with some authority, to Inigo Jones. It is claimed as the first house in Britain to use the Palladian model of a central villa with two flanking pavilions linked by colonnades. This is of course ironic, as the main block was destroyed by fire in 1886 leaving only the pavilions. Curiously, when a new house was built a few years after the fire, it was constructed on a virgin site behind the eastern pavilion rather than on the footprint of the lost house. Stoke Park was requisitioned by the military during World War Two, and allowed to fall into decline when the war ended.

Robert Duff Chancellor became the saviour of Stoke Park when he bought the estate in 1954. He demolished the derelict Victorian house, leaving only a very pretty service wing, and put all of his efforts into restoring the pavilions, with one being converted into a private home. The setting, with ornamental pond and overflowing borders is fabulous.

Until 1928 the estate had stayed in the hands of the same family for around 300 years, but had never once passed from father to son.  Stoke Park then had a number of commercial owners until Robert Chancellor bought it in 1954. He bequeathed it to his nephew, Alexander Chancellor, and as he and his wife Susanna have only daughters the pattern looks set to continue for another couple of generations at least.

At Mistley in Essex two elegant towers look out across the estuary of the River Stour, close to the border with Suffolk. These towers are also the work of a major architect, in this case Robert Adam who designed only one other church: Gunton in Norfolk.

Robert Rigby of Mistley Hall had grandiose plans to turn Mistley into a spa and attract prosperous visitors to the area. The mediaeval church was not considered an attraction so Rigby asked Adam to come up with something a little more modern and elegant. Sadly, Rigby’s plans came to nothing, and by the mid 19th century Adam’s design was in turn considered dated.  Another new church was built nearby, but the towers of the Adam church were remodelled to make them symmetrical and left standing as seamarks for ships on the river.

The towers were sold to local families who planned to use them as mausolea but this plan also failed*. The pavilions were restored in the 1950s and are now in the care of English Heritage.

The Stoke Park Pavilions are used as a stunning wedding and events venue, but are open to the public from 24 July to 20 August 2019 between 3pm and 6pm. Don’t miss this chance to visit. http://www.stokeparkpavilions.co.uk

The exteriors of Mistley Towers can be visited at any time, and the key to one of the towers is available locally, for more information see https://www.englishheritage.org.uk/visit/places/mistley-towers/

* There is however a very curious black granite mausoleum in the churchyard, the resting place of the Norman family.

Bishopthorpe, a few miles outside York, has been home to the Archbishops of York for centuries. In the 1760s Archbishop Drummond added a new facade to the palace, constructed a gatehouse, and rebuilt the village church. His architect of choice was Thomas Atkinson, a respected designer but a curious choice as he was a Roman Catholic*. All three structures were built in a whimsical gothick style, much of the stone coming from the ancient former episcopal palace at Cawood, a few miles south. When first built the three buildings formed an ensemble around a small ornamental lake, sadly long since drained. 

By the late 19th century the situation of the church on the waterlogged and eroding bank of the river Ouse was causing concern. A flood in 1892 washed bodies out of graves and the ‘inadequate and damp’ church was abandoned a few years later. In 1899 a new church was consecrated and such fittings as could be reused were transferred from the old to new church. The Consistory Court in York then issued a decree that the old church could be taken down.

With its useful life as a place of worship ended the church was adapted as a delightful landscape ornament. It is not clear who decided to leave the facade of the old church to stand as an eye-catcher, but they are to be congratulated for it is a lovely feature in a tranquil spot by the river. One contender must be Archbishop Maclagan, whose palace overlooked the old church. Or perhaps his good friend the vicar of Bishopthorpe, Canon J.R. Keble, who was the key mover in getting the new church built, may have wanted to save a piece of village history?

The former churchyard with its folly, tucked away from the main street overlooking the river, became a tranquil haven and was a particular favourite of the composer William Baines. The Folly Flâneuse is hugely grateful to Linda Haywood, manager of the Bishopthorpe Village Archive, for introducing her to this largely-forgotten musician. Baines died aged only 23, but not before he had composed a vast body of work. In his last years he lived in York and often walked to Bishopthorpe where the ‘enchanted lake’, a pond in the Palace grounds, inspired a composition, and where his favourite place was the old churchyard; ‘What a divine spot it is’, he wrote, with the church facade ‘covered partly with creeping roses and ivy’.

The roses and ivy have gone, as has the bell that Baines saw, but it remains a divine spot thanks to the work of the St Andrews Trust, a small charity formed to safeguard the folly. The trust masterminded an exemplary restoration in 2002, which included reinstating the window tracery. The crumbling stonework had been taken into storage in 1979, and craftsmen were able to copy it using matching magnesian limestone sourced locally in Tadcaster.

The Bishopthorpe facade is petite in comparison with another eye-catcher at Guisborough, in the Tees Valley, in the far north east of Yorkshire. The Augustinian Gisborough [sic] Priory was taken down during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, but the Chaloner family later restored the Gothic east end as the termination of a walk in the grounds of their nearby seat. The Folly Flâneuse visited with the Yorkshire Gardens Trust on the wettest day imaginable when the folly looked particularly dramatic.

A warming cup of tea was in order at Gisborough Hall, a 19th century seat of the Chaloner family now a hotel, where an extra treat was the discovery of this model of the folly facade made of alum. The Gisborough area was once a centre for alum production, essential for fixing dyes, and the Chaloner family developed a factory. As human urine was a necessary for the manufacturing process, it is surely no coincidence that this wee model can be found by the hotel loos.

For more on the St Andrews Trust see http://standrewstrust.co.uk

And click here for more on the Yorkshire Gardens Trust (which, rest assured, arranges visits on glorious days as well as wet) https://www.yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk

Thanks to The Decorative Friend for a lovely day in Bishopthorpe

* Atkinson is not named on the website of the current Archbishop of York where the gatehouse is said to be by John Carr.

Not far from Helmsley, in North Yorkshire, are the dramatic ruins of a Cistercian abbey. Named after the valley of the river Rye in which is sits, Rievaulx Abbey is backed by a huge wooded cliff which rises high above the stonework. Look up and you can just see a glimpse of a classical temple, one of two which ornament the curving grassed terrace which overlooks the abbey.

This terrace was constructed by Thomas Duncombe (1724-1779) of nearby Duncombe Park in the middle of the 18th century, and echoes the terrace by the house built by his father a generation earlier. The Rievaulx promenade was newly complete in 1759, and soon became an attraction for the genteel tourists exploring England.

Whilst the temples on the terrace by the house were open, those overlooking Rievaulx were covered in, and ‘convenient rooms in which to dine or drink tea.’ As Duncombe’s guests strolled along the terrace they would find vistas cut into the woods on the steep cliff, allowing carefully composed peeps down to the abbey and village

The round Tuscan temple has one small room, perfect for taking tea. At the other end of the terrace the Ionic Temple (top) is a country house dining room transplanted to the lawn. The grand upper room has a superb painted ceiling, a fine fireplace, and could sit a sizeable party. Underneath is a room which once housed the kitchen that catered for the picnics and parties.

It is here that The Folly Flâneuse found an intriguing new installation called A Tale of Two Sketchbooks. This is the work of artist and sculptor Fiona Bowley and is inspired by the meeting of two 18th century women artists. One is Ann Duncombe, daughter of Thomas who built the terrace, and the other is Effie Silver, a child of the Foundling Hospital who now works as an assistant to an artist.

In 1777 Ann and Effie meet on the terrace and find common ground in their love of art. Much of their history, and even their very existence, is fiction, although the historical background (researched by Rachel Ormerod) is real, and the two are skilfully entwined. The resulting story is beautifully told through words and objects.

Bowley is particularly known for her carved sheep; they are something of an obsession she happily admits. For Rievaulx her new work includes two sheep that sit by the entrance to the Ionic Temple in the manner of Coade stone sphinxes of the 18th century. Like Mrs Coade, Bowley came up with an ingenious alternative to natural stone. You will have to visit to find out what it is.

Sheep have of course featured at Rievaulx for centuries; the Cistercian monks were great farmers and kept sheep for their meat and their valuable fleeces.

A lamb features on the crest of the Foundling Hospital, where Effie Silver spent her early years and Bowley’s installation explores themes of motherhood and nurture: aristocratic Ann pregnant with her third child and Effie handed to the Foundling Hospital in the hope of a better life.

Well done the National Trust for inviting Fiona Bowley to create this detailed and intriguing experience. You’ve got until Sunday 29th September to explore it for yourself.

The Rievaulx Terrace has been in the care of the National Trust since the 1960s https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/rievaulx-terrace

Fiona Bowley is based in Thornton in Craven in North Yorkshire https://www.fionabowley.com and her studio will be open over two weekends in June as part of North Yorkshire Open Studios https://www.nyos.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/NYOS-2019-BROCHURE.pdf