The Flâneuse recently puzzled over this black and white photograph of a tall archway that is annotated ‘Breedon-on-the-Hill’. Internet searches using every combination of the village name with ‘arch’, ‘gate’ and ‘folly’, and as many other ideas as the Flâneuse could come up with, drew a complete blank. But driving into the village there it was, just to our right, and unchanged since the older photograph was taken.

A little way further along the wall from the gateway three letters are created from a patchwork of stone blocks near the entrance to a busy quarry. They abbreviate the former name of the works, the Breedon and Cloud Hill Lime Works Company: Breedon has been the site of quarrying and lime extraction since the eighteenth-century.

Aerial photographs of the quarry, taken in the middle of the twentieth century, show the gateway standing in what appears to be a bare plot, but it is still not immediately clear what purpose the arch serves.

Happily the excellent Breedon-on-the-Hill parish website has links to two volumes of pictorial history which explain that the ‘gateway’ was the centrepiece of a rockery, one of a number built by the owner of the quarry to beautify the village. By the late 1950s the village had become known for these rockery gardens of ‘artistic stonework’ which were planted with flowers and full of ‘vital colour’. According to the history, much of the rockwork was created freehand by Lawrence Wakefield, although the archway is not specifically attributed to him.

For much of the twentieth century the quarry was owned and/or managed by the Shields family. In 1959 Captain C.F. Shields, Managing Director of the works, told a reporter from the Leicester Evening Mail that providing good houses for workers, and ornamenting the village, was ‘making a return’ for ‘despoiling the rock that gives the village its name and character’. And of course the stonework was a great advertisement for the company’s products which included ‘rockery and grotto stone’.

Through the archway, which stands on the village’s Main Street, are steps leading up to the quarry offices, although sadly they now terminate in a ‘keep out’ sign.

If visiting Breedon-on-the-Hill don’t miss the village’s other attractions which include an eighteenth century lockup and the very pleasing War Memorial to those lost in the First and Second World Wars.

Take time to explore the church of St Mary and St Hardulph, which stands high above the village close to the quarry face (it is just out of shot in the aerial photo’ – it stands on the plateau above the quarry face on the right). As well as important Anglo-Saxon sculpture there are also fine tombs, including a vast monument to Sir George Shirley and his family, dated 1598, which features this intricate life-size memento mori.

Thank you for reading and do please get in touch if you know more about the arch, or would like to share any thoughts. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

P.S. A well-known landscape ornament has been in the news this week and deserves a mention. Beckford’s Tower, near Bath, won the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in a Landscape at the Georgian Group Architectural Awards 2025. Congratulations to all the team at the Bath Preservation Trust

In 1807 the 9th earl of Winchelsea built a rustic retreat deep in woodland in his park at Burley-on-the-Hill. The building was known as ‘The Hermitage’, and soon became the subject of tales which were somewhat fanciful, even in the fantastical world of follies.

George Finch (1752-1826) succeeded his uncle as the 9th Earl of Winchelsea in 1769. The Burley-on-the-Hill estate that he inherited included the elegant mansion on its hilltop site, a building which will be familiar to anyone who has driven near Oakham in Rutland.

The parkland was home to a vast wood, cut through with straight rides in a star shape by a previous generation. In one of the segments of the woodland Finch built a summerhouse in the form of a hermit’s abode. The floor was a mosaic of pebbles and the knucklebones of sheep, and featured a ‘W’ for Winchelsea and the date 1807, which is assumed to be the date of construction.

In 1858 a local newspaper described the Hermitage as ‘an object of interest and amusement’ and encouraged readers to walk the ‘narrow and meandering’ path through the woods to find the rustic cottage, which was built almost entirely of wood except for a huge chimney built of rough stones. There were two rooms – a bedroom with wooden bed and straw mattress covered with sacking, and a front parlour. The centrepiece of this room was a ‘huge block of wood’ which served as a table. The table was by that date already covered in graffiti, as the many visitors had carved their names or initials into the surface. Despite this vandalism, the Hermitage remained ‘constantly open for inspection’.

The same account introduces the first ‘history’ of the building. In brief, a man wanted by debt-collectors went into hiding in Burley Woods (he is not named in the report but locally he is remembered as a Mr Booth or a Mr Bennett). Being ‘sufficiently versed in construction’, he built the ‘humble tabernacle’ and only ventured out occasionally for provisions. Eventually, the bailiff found his secret hideout and tried to take him into custody, but the fugitive locked the bailiff in the hermitage and ran for it. The bailiff, being a stout man, was allegedly stuck in the cottage for days until rescuers found him, much to the amusement of the locals.

An alternative version of the tale has the lurid twist that the fugitive was in fact a murderer. To atone for his crime he sequestered himself in the woods and lived as a hermit, bound by oath not to speak to his fellow men. A short distance from the Hermitage was a smaller rustic shelter called Soloman’s Hut, and according to the legend this is where food was left for the hermit to collect.

Still more diabolical is the history recounted in 1911, which has an ancestor of the Finch family selling his soul to the devil. When Satan tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to keep his word, a deal was struck that the bond would be broken when a Finch had spent 7 years in solitary confinement in the Hermitage. Until this was accomplished the devil would retain his hold over the family. The report concluded that ‘within living memory’ one member of the family had managed two years of isolation before he ‘lost his reason’. Clearly the writer didn’t believe a word of the nonsense he was feeding to his readers, and he concludes with the anti-climactic ‘At any rate, it is a fact that there is at Burley to this day a Hermit’s cell’.

Barbara Jones described the Hermitage in the first edition of Follies and Grottoes in 1953. She thought it a ‘magnificent example’ of the hermitage genre of landscape buildings, and was amazed to find the interior intact. The furnishings included ‘three triangular stools of remarkable rustic discomfort’, and the vast table was still in situ. Her wonderful sketch shows just how intricate the fan-vaulted ceiling was, with branches for the ribs and huge elm bosses.

The Hermitage was visited by architect Neville Hawkes (1910-1988) in 1955 and his photograph shows that by that date the building was looking a little shabby and protected by a barbed-wire fence. Hawkes was probably accompanied on that visit by his son, William (1939-2024), and a year later William and a schoolmate returned to explore the building. Their status as pupils at the local public school of Uppingham gained them permission to visit the Hermitage, and for future historians this would be one of the best decisions the estate office ever made. Young Will, later to train as an architect, recorded the floorpan of the building in a lovely sketch.

Only six years after Will Hawkes visited, the Hermitage was set alight. On Thursday 5 July 1962 the Oakham firemen fought to save the structure, but it was totally destroyed (N.B. Barbara Jones gives the date 1965 which she was given in error by the estate office). A police investigation was launched, but it is unclear if the perpetrators were ever found and the blame is generally pinned on ‘schoolchildren’. The demise of the Hermitage caused great sorrow to an anonymous correspondent with the local paper. The writer remembered picknicking there with ‘the late Squire Finch’ and wished everyone to know that the ‘story of the Burley hermit is a myth’.

Today only a handful of photographs and sketches of the Hermitage survive to record its history, although visitors to the Rutland County Museum might see a miniature model of the building. It was made by local resident William H. Sewell, aka Billy Bennett (1912-1985). The exact date of the model is not known, but it shows the building much as Neville Hawkes saw it in 1955, with the chimney partially collapsed.

The Burley-on-the-Hill estate descended to the Hanbury family, and by the middle of the twentieth century the woods had been closed to the public (there’s an interlude when the estate is owned by the later-disgraced entrepreneur Asil Nadir that needs only the briefest of mentions here). The house was converted into houses by Kit Martin in the 1990s, but the parkland remains with the Hanburys who are currently planning to create an ‘immersive visitor attraction’ called Wild Rutland. Perhaps the Hermitage could be recreated – what could be more wild than a solitary hermit’s cottage?

The Rutland County Museum has a fascinating collection, although please note that the model of the hermitage is not currently on display. Visit before 4 October 2025 to see an exhibition of the works of the artist Rev J.L. Petit (1801-1868) of which the highlight for the present writer was, of course, this view of the folly known as Old John in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome. Please scroll down to find the comments box.

The Thornton Hall estate came into the possession of Thomas Sheppard after his marriage to the heiress Elizabeth Cotton in 1774. Sheppard considered the church of St Michael and All Angels, close to the hall, to be outdated and cluttered. As part of a major restoration he dismantled an ancient tomb, with the ornate side panels becoming features of a grotto in a sequestered spot in the gardens.

The church had been home to the ancient tomb of the Ingylton family, described in the 1755 county history of Buckinghamshire by Browne Willis as a ‘very handsome Altar Tomb of Stone’, for centuries. The tomb featured reliefs of Ingylton himself (he died in 1472) accompanied by his three wives, six sons and ten daughters.

In 1783 Sheppard (1741-1821) asked permission to demolish parts of the church and rebuild it in a ‘more regular and commodious’ manner. This he did out of a ‘pious and charitable disposition’, and at his own expense, with the ‘unanimous consent’ of the Rector and parishioners. A faculty was granted to allow the work to proceed. Sadly there is no mention of the tomb in the legal papers, and the plan shown to the Archdeacon does not seem to survive, but it would seem likely that the tomb was moved around the same date.

In 1801 it was recorded in The Gentleman’s Magazine that the church had been ‘repaired and beautified’ and was now a ‘neat uniform building’. In 1806 Daniel Lysons wrote in Magna Britannia that the church had been ‘neatly and commodiously fitted up’, but he thought that ‘the antiquary will regret the removal of the ancient monuments’.  At that date all that was left of the Ingylton tomb were the brass figures of Ingylton and his family that had decorated the top of the tomb. These were now set into the floor of the church, and Lysons thought that the ‘remarkably fine’ effigies would soon suffer wear.

Neither of these early histories records that the ornate carved slabs, which formed the sides of the tomb, had by that date been carted to a corner of his grounds where they became features of a building known as the ‘Grotto’.

Thornton Hall was remodelled by Sheppard’s descendants in the first years of the 1850s, and remained with the family until towards the end of that century. It passed through further owners until in 1917 it was purchased for use as a convent school for girls. On occasions Benediction was given from an altar in a shrine in ‘one of the loveliest settings’, but it is impossible to be certain that this was the grotto.

It was not until the later years of the 1940s that antiquarians from the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society set out in search of the lost tomb. They had been alerted to its presence by Major Henry Owen Evans (1898-1966), an authority on monumental brasses. On Boxing Day 1945 he visited the church to see the brass from the Ingylton tomb and locate the ‘grotto’ where the rest of the tomb was reputed to be found.

Intrigued, the formidable Miss Cicely Baker (1900-1980), stalwart of the archaeological society, made her own arrangements to visit. Accompanied by one of the order, she and a friend waded though ‘yards of nettles’ to find the ‘summer-house’. Her bare-legged companion ‘suffered agonies in the name of archaeology’, whilst the nun simply strode through in her long habit.

The grotto was found to be ‘semi-ruinous’ and it was decided that the tomb must be returned to the church. Miss Baker was worried that ‘an army of Bishops’ would be required to gain permission, but things moved quickly and, with the Mother Superior at Thornton College amenable to the plan, the Bucks Archaeological Society launched an appeal for funds. Thanks to the Morris Fund of the Society of Antiquaries meeting the entire costs of around £70, the restoration was carried out under the superintendence of the archaeologist and writer E. Clive Rouse (1901-1997). By the end of 1948 the work was finished ‘with complete success and spectacular effect’.

With the ancient tomb the focus of their efforts, no-one seems to have been troubled by what might happen to the already deteriorating grotto, which was presumably further weakened by the removal of the carved slabs. The photograph at the top of the page accompanied an article in Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship, more than thirty years ago in 1991. At that date the author, Tom Sargant, recorded that the grotto was ‘unloved and falling slowly into the bushes’. The roof of the semi-circular room at the back of the grotto, which was originally topped with a pinnacle ‘like a witch’s hat’ had collapsed (when Miss Baker visited she thought that this curious design was a sure sign that this was a folly, or ‘somebody’s whim’).

It is heartening to report that the grotto, protected within the grounds of the school, has not suffered from further degradation, and remains much as it did in 1991 – although action is needed to secure it for the future.

There is no public access to the grounds of Thornton College, but the church of St Michael and All Angels is now vested in the Churches Conservation Trust and can be visited.

Thanks to the team at Thornton College for their help with this post. The Flâneuse also acknowledges the work of the Milton Keynes Heritage Association, whose website pointed her in the right direction.

Your comments are always welcome, and you can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page. Thank you for reading.

In 1848 a brief note in local newspapers announced that a ‘lofty tower’ had been erected on Farleigh Down. Commanding the ‘most extensive and magnificent prospects’, the tower was built by Wade Browne, who had recently settled at Monkton Farleigh. The tower stands in Wiltshire – although very close to the border with Somerset.

Wade Browne (1796-1851) was living at Monkton Farleigh by 1837 when his wife, Anne, died leaving him with a young family. Browne’s memorial in the village church notes his ‘active benevolence and conscientious discharge of Christian duty’ and he is remembered for improving the village roads and water supply, and for endowing a new school. It has been suggested that building the tower might have been another philanthropic gesture to provide local employment.

The tower was completed in 1848, adding ‘a decidedly picturesque feature to the scenery of the vicinity’. Inside, a narrow stone staircase climbed up to a single room at the top from which the view could be appreciated.

When first erected the tower stood on a bare hill, and could be seen from many miles around. Today the slope is heavily wooded, and only the top of the tower can be seen from below.

Browne was well-known in the area as he was active in local affairs and served as High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1845. His prospect tower quickly became known as Browne’s Folly, and is named as such on the Ordnance Survey map published in 1889. Over the next few decades many a tall tale was told of why the tower was erected in the first place, and in the 1930s the local newspapers were filled with anecdotes about the tower. One legend had it that Browne built it so that he could keep an eye on his flirtatious wife when she was out hunting. Another told that Browne built it to hide from the ‘fairer sex, who, he imagined, were after him for his money’. As the journalist concluded, this ‘is the best story of all, and is by far the least likely to be true’.

Luckily, we have the word of Browne’s second wife, Selina, to settle the matter: she didn’t sneak off to meet a lover when hunting, and he was not escaping from the local ladies. Browne built it as a belvedere, but as Selina wrote it didn’t quite go to plan: he ‘expected to see the Bristol Channel from the room above, but I fancy hills intervening prevented it’. Perhaps the Channel was missing from the panorama, but those who climbed the tower could see the Mendips, the Wiltshire downs, the Cotswolds and into Wales. There was also a view to an earlier eye-catcher – King Alfred’s Tower at Stourhead.

An article in the journal of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society in 1855 notes that a sculptured slab, excavated from the remains of the Cluniac priory at Monkton Farleigh in 1841, was displayed in ‘Mr Wade Browne’s Tower’. This suggests that Browne perhaps used the base of the tower as a museum of antiquities. Sadly it’s a fleeting reference, and no further records of how the tower was furnished or decorated seem to survive.

Browne died in 1851 and later that century the estate was purchased by Sir Charles Hobhouse. In 1907 he restored the tower and erected a new plaque commemorating both his work, and that of Browne as the original builder (now eroded). Hobhouse is said to have used the tower for shooting lunches, but as the cynical journalist quoted earlier wrote, it must have been ‘rather trying for a tired shooting party to have to climb to such dizzy heights for a bite of refreshment’.

Monkton Farleigh remains the seat of the Hobhouse family, but the tower and surrounding land was sold to the Avon Wildlife Trust in 1972. With vandalism a huge problem, the trust approached the Folly Fellowship, the charity which aims to protect, preserve and promote follies, grottoes and garden buildings, asking if they might be able to help. In 1998 the Trustees  of the Folly Fellowship agreed to take ownership of the folly, and an appeal was launched to raise funds to repair the roof and fit a secure door, with work completed the following summer.

Patrick Todd, a trustee of the Folly Fellowship, has sent this update: The tower has recently been the subject of trespass, vandalism and damage which is a continuing problem. Signs have been put up to warn entry is not permitted and could be dangerous. Efforts are also being made to keep the tower secure, but these are likely to be temporary due to the determined efforts of the vandals. We are in touch with locals who have very kindly cleaned up graffiti, but a long term solution needs to be found which would probably involve the community, local groups, and conservation bodies. We are currently considering various options for the building, and would like to make it safe and accessible, preserving this much loved and visible monument for the future. If you would like to help in any way, please contact Patrick Todd at welbat66@gmail.com

The tower is almost impossible to photograph today (by an amateur with an iPhone) as it is surrounded by trees, so apologies for the wonky title image, and thanks to everyone who has helped with historic views.

Thank you for reading. The Flâneuse is always happy to hear from readers, please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts. 

]]> https://thefollyflaneuse.com/brownes-folly-monkton-farleigh-wiltshire/feed/ 5 14894 https://thefollyflaneuse.com/follyphilia/ https://thefollyflaneuse.com/follyphilia/#comments Fri, 16 May 2025 13:26:46 +0000 https://thefollyflaneuse.com/?p=14689 In November 1960, The Queen magazine published a special issue that asked the question ‘What’s so different about the British?’...]]>

In November 1960, The Queen magazine published a special issue that asked the question ‘What’s so different about the British?’ Amongst the contributors were Norman Parkinson on ‘British Clothes’, Ambrose Heath on the British and cooking and Laurie Lee on the village of Slad. And what could be more British than follies, the subject discussed by Nicholas Guppy, and illustrated in wildly extravagant fashion by cartoonist ffolkes.

Guppy (1925-2012), writer, environmentalist and explorer, thought that ‘follies suit the British temperament’. He elaborated that there is ‘something light-hearted, whimsical and above all disorderly about many of them’ and concluded that they are ‘manifestations of eccentricity, and of rebellion’. Guppy’s article was entitled Follyphilia, the word he coined to describe those with an affectionate regard for such structures.

Some follies, thought Guppy, were built as ripostes to the ‘smug world of columned Palladianism’, (and he pointedly excluded classical garden ornaments from his article). His examples of such ‘crudely-made though often costly buildings’ included St David’s Ruin in Yorkshire, Dunstall Castle in Worcestershire and Arnos Castle near Bristol (pictured top in 1972).

‘…a crumbling edifice on the horizon’, he wrote, ‘inspired awesome thoughts about the vanity of earthly ambition, etc., or at least a fashionably genteel melancholy’.

Follies could provide an imaginary link with ‘a more heroic past’ in the form of a false-fronted cottage, a sham castle or abbey, a tower, or even an entire faux-druidical temple, such as the one near Masham in Yorkshire.

Then there were the towers that just soared higher and higher, often in a bid to outbuild the competition or to announce great wealth and position. Or, in the case of the one at Sway, to test the future of reinforced concrete in building towers.

Dank caves and subterranean passages like Sir Francis Dashwood’s at West Wycombe were too ‘curiously horrid’ for Guppy’s liking, but he did appreciate ‘gay affairs of glittering crystal-spar, of pearly shells and patterned pebbles’ such as the Shell House at Goodwood. Reaffirming his distaste for the Greco-Roman garden ornament he found the grotto at Stourhead ‘too classical’.

But for Guppy the ‘ultimate folly was the hermitage’, combining as it did the ‘picturesque features of a ruin and a grotto, the utmost eccentricity of building materials’ with a human inhabitant. Guppy gives the rustic shelter known as the Sanctuary of Hermit Finch at Burley-on-the-Hill, in Rutland, as his example, but sadly this folly was destroyed by fire in 1962, only a few years after this article was published.

The main image accompanying the article is of a structure that is unlikely to have ever graced a landscape. The cartoonist Michael ffolkes (1925-1988), conjured up a wonderful tower featuring elements of just about every British folly ever built (and a bowler-hatted Brit enjoying the view).

The article is illustrated with small black and white photographs of the follies, and no photographer is credited, so the Flâneuse has chosen to illustrate this post with better quality images of the same follies. All are roughly contemporary with the article, and all are from the Neville and William Hawkes Collection. Neville and William, father and son, were both architects and follyphiliacs, and Neville (1910-1988) took the views shown here at much the same time as Guppy was writing this article.

The Hawkes family donated the photographic archive to the Folly Fellowship, the charity which aims to to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings, and the photographs are reproduced here by kind permission.

Dunstall Castle is in the park at Croome, a National Trust property; the Druid’s Temple on the Swinton estate is freely accessible as is Arnos Castle on the edge of Bristol. The tower at Sway is private, but can be seen from miles around.

If you find the folly illustrated by ffolkes please get in touch.

Thank you for reading. The Flâneuse is always delighted to learn more, or to hear your thoughts, so please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. 

John Bligh, 3rd Earl of Darnley of Cobham Hall, Kent, left instructions in his will that a ‘Chapel or Mausoleum’ be built on Williams Hill, an elevated site on his estate. The building was to receive his body, and those of other family members if they should ‘desire it’. It was to be constructed of the finest materials, and the Earl suggested it ‘might be of a kind with four fronts supporting a pyramid in the middle high enough to be conspicuous’.

The earl died in 1781 and was interred in Cobham church. The contents of his will were soon being discussed in polite society, and newspapers across the country reported that the late earl had himself chosen the spot for his resting place, and that the Bishop was to consecrate the ground. The commission to design the structure was given to James Wyatt and his drawings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1783, but the project was managed, and possibly tweaked, by George Dance the younger. Work took some time, and the Kentish Gazette noted in April 1787 that the ‘Mausoleum at Cobham-hall is at length near finished’ .

Darnley’s heir, his son John, was still a teenager at the time of his father’s death, and came of age in 1788. In 1790 he asked the landscape gardener Humphry Repton to give advice on modernising the grounds at Cobham.

Repton produced one of his famous Red Books, and the section on the mausoleum and its surroundings makes it clear that at that date the building was still intended as a burial place. Repton recommended planting trees of the ‘funereal kind’ to help ‘inspire the solemn ideas which such a magnificent Record of Mortality is intended to awaken’.

In 1793 Samuel Ireland published Picturesque Views on the River Medway, in which he suggests that the 4th earl was unhappy with the building built for his father. Ireland wrote that the ‘pyramid finish is both ponderous and unmeaning’ and added that he was ‘informed that this angular top is to be removed’. Allowing his readers to judge for themselves on the merits of the structure, he included an engraving. Ireland calls the building the ‘mausoleum’, suggesting it was still intended for this purpose. The plans must have changed, for that ‘ponderous’ pyramid roof remains.

Curiously, the completed building was never consecrated, and so could never function as a mausoleum. This was even explained in verse by H.G. Adams in 1836:

Emerging from the grove, now do they stand
Before a pile of architecture, plann’d
To be the Darnley’s last sad resting place,
The Mausoleum! of that ancient race;
But never had the consecrated rite
Been here performed, nor must their bodies rest
On ground, save that by the holy Prelate bless’d.

The stories differ: one says that the Bishop of Rochester refused to consecrate the building as the earl had treated a parish priest badly. Another account states that the earl’s descendants refused to pay the exorbitant fee demanded by the Bishop, and so the building remained empty, and a further story states that the earl and the bishop argued over the payment of tithes. John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester at the time the mausoleum was constructed, is remembered as a moderate man with a love of the fine arts and architecture, and contemporary evidence for a feud is hard to find, so the true history remains a mystery.

But whatever the reason, the 3rd earl remains in his ‘temporary’ grave in Cobham church. His wife died in 1803, and in her will, written three years earlier, she had stipulated that she was to be buried in the churchyard at Bidborough, near Tunbridge Wells, where she had lived since soon after her son reached his majority. The 4th earl and his countess died only months apart in 1831, and they too were interred in the vault in Cobham church, leaving the mausoleum empty.

The Darnley Mausoleum, as it has continued to be known, suffered appalling vandalism after much of the estate was sold in the 1950s (the house is now a school). Without a resident family, mindless damage soon became a chronic problem. There appeared to be a solution in the later 1980s, when a plan to restore the folly as a family home was announced. The very first newsletter of the fledgling Folly Fellowship contained an article with an illustration of the proposal by Sell, Wade and Postins (a second design by Paul Dyson was admired but not thought economically viable). It would have seen two low arcaded wings added to the existing mausoleum, each terminated with a pedimented pavilion. Planning permission was granted after a four day public enquiry, but the ambitious project never progressed.

In 2001 the Cobham Ashenbank Management Scheme was formed with representatives of the family, heritage bodies and local authorities joining forces to save the building. The Heritage Lottery Fund once more saved the day with a £5 million contribution towards the £8 million restoration costs, with the proviso that the property was placed in the care of the National Trust. The exemplary restoration won a number of awards.

The Folly Flâneuse walked to the mausoleum with a friend who was enjoying a stay in another beautifully restored ornamental building on the estate – the exceedingly cosy Cobham Dairy.

Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship, the charity founded to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings,  is available to consult online thanks to an excellent digitisation project. You can see that very first edition, and many others, http://follies.org.uk/

You can read more about the Cobham Dairy, a Landmark Trust property here https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/cobham-dairy-27098

The exterior of the Darnley Mausoleum can be visited at all reasonable times. For information on seeing the interior visit the National Trust website.

For another mausoleum that never served its purpose see this post on the lost Cranbrook Castle in Essex.

The Folly Flâneuse wishes all readers a jolly festive season. She is now taking a short break, but further folly ramblings will be forthcoming in 2025

The Flâneuse is travelling far and wide this month in search of follies, and the results of her research will appear here very soon. Until she gets home, and gathers her thoughts, here are the highlights of a very recent day in the Cotswolds with members of the Folly Fellowship.

The day began at a familiar landmark – the dramatic bulk of the Broadway Tower. From the top of the late 18th century tower it is said that 13 counties can be seen, but on a hazy morning we weren’t in a position to confirm this story.

Next stop brought us right up-to-date as we toured a private garden full of quirky structures designed and built by the rather talented present owner. His next project is to be a sham ruin so a return visit will soon be needed.

To finish this day of delights there was a walk around the landscape of Ditchley Park, now a conference centre, where a number of elegant 18th century pavilions can be seen. Most lovely of them all is the recently-restored rotunda.

As well as organising jolly jaunts (and thanks to the team behind this one) the Folly Fellowship also publishes a regular magazine, and you can now consult back issues online. Find out more here http://follies.org.uk/

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome, please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch.

As summer turned to autumn The Folly Flâneuse was reminded of a jolly jaunt to Jupiter Artland, a sculpture garden just outside Edinburgh, on a glorious day a year ago. A highlight was Pablo Bronstein’s Rose Walk, a pair of pavilions terminating a 25 metre long rose garden, their white-painted tracery magnificent against a clear blue sky. 

The Rose Walk was commissioned by Jupiter Artland in 2017. The pavilions, described as ‘imposing and elaborate follies’, lead the visitor into a small rose garden, which is enclosed by the trelliswork fences which link the two kiosks. Light streams in through the seemingly fragile, but actually incredibly solid, structure, and the standard roses are clearly very content.

Leaving the Chinese pavilion and heading towards the Gothic is like walking down the aisle of a church, and the Folly Flâneuse was soon humming the Bridal Chorus. The airy structure also reminded her of Sir James Hall’s Willow Cathedral. Hall’s theory, first published in 1797, was that early gothic architecture sought unconsciously to emulate the natural shapes of nature – the straights and curves of trunks, boughs and twigs becoming the columns, arches and tracery of the gothic. Bronstein’s site-specific Rose Walk likewise unites architecture and nature.

The gardens and parkland of Jupiter Artland surround the private home of founders Robert and Nicky Wilson, and are also home to sculptures and pavilions by artists including Antony Gormley, Anya Gallacio and Ian Hamilton Finlay, as well as a wonderful sweeping landform by the late Charles Jencks.

Pablo Bronstein, an Argentinian artist now based in London, works in a number of genres, but almost always with architecture as an influence. In 2014 he created a ‘monument to architecture’ for the Folkestone Triennial. His Beach Hut in the Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor pays homage to the great baroque architect, whose style was echoed in the design of the now lost monumental lighthouses which once stood on the south coast.

The convivial visit to Jupiter Artland was organised by The Folly Fellowship, which exists to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes, and garden buildings  http://follies.org.uk

Right now, we all need something to look forward to, so put Jupiter Artland in your diary for 2021 https://www.jupiterartland.org

The 2020 Folkestone Triennial has been postponed until 2021, so something else to dream of  https://www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/folkestone-triennial/folkestone-triennial-2020-the-plot/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oswell Blakeston (1907-1985), was born Henry Joseph Hasslacher, and created his nom de plume by condensing ‘Osbert Sitwell’, whom he admired, into ‘Oswell’ and adding his mother’s maiden name. He was a British writer and artist with wide interests, and one of his passions was follies; his role in bringing the genre to a wider audience deserves to be better known.

In a letter of 1953 Barbara Jones thanked Blakeston for the loan of his ‘folly suitcase’, which she had used as a major resource when writing the first edition of Follies & Grottoes. Her book was published in that same year, with special thanks to Blakeston in the acknowledgements.

The pair had probably been introduced by John Betjeman, who had known of Blakeston’s interest in follies since the 1930s. Betjeman had been working as a copywriter for Jack Beddington, Shell’s Publicity Manager, at the time that Beddington was commissioning young artists to produce artwork for advertising.  This included the series of posters which promoted motoring (and therefore sales of petrol) and adorned the sides of lorries as they sedately travelled the roads of Britain.

It was Blakeston who suggested follies as a subject for a series of posters, shortly before his report on ‘Architectural Follies’ was broadcast on the wireless in October 1936. Blakeston’s idea came to fruition as the ‘To Visit Britain’s Landmarks You Can Be Sure of Shell’ campaign, which ran throughout 1936 and 1937 with 27 posters produced, each by a different artist.*

The contents of the mysterious ‘folly suitcase’ were assumed lost, but in fact they are in the collection of the RIBA and can be consulted in the Architecture Study Room at the V&A Museum. The valise is long gone, but Blakeston’s county-by-county files of notes and clippings on follies are there alongside transcripts of his radio broadcasts. His correspondence shows that other writers and photographers of the period also relied on his help. The ‘folly files’ were also borrowed by husband and wife team Edwin Smith and Olive Cook when they were researching the Gothic Revival.

Looking at Blakeston’s output as a writer it is easy to see why he didn’t find time to publish his folly research himself. He wrote on film theory, on photography (Cruising with a Camera) and on travel, and also wrote 15 novels, 10 volumes of poetry and the occasional one-act play. He authored three books on food, including the rather niche Cooking with Nuts. His long term partner, the artist Max Chapman, contributed illustrations to many of these works. Long before Morph or Aardman studios used the technique, Chapman modelled figures in clay and then photographed them to illustrate a book for older boys, Jim’s Gun; ‘unusual and attractive’ said a reviewer. Blakeston’s art didn’t achieve wide acclaim in his lifetime, and is largely forgotten today. His work was considered avant garde, or as one establishment critic preferred to call it ‘the childish fumblings of a youthful dilettante.’

As well as the folly files in the RIBA Architecture Study Room there is a large deposit of Blakeston’s papers at the University of Texas at Austin https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingaid.cfm?eadid=00014

Thanks to the Shell Heritage Art Collection for permission to reproduce the two posters. The collection is based at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire and items from the large collection are always on display. Watch out for an exciting new touring exhibition in 2020 https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/collections/shell-heritage-art-collection/news/

* For a fully illustrated account see ‘Visit Britain’s Landmarks: Follies on Shell Advertising Posters in the 1930s’ in The Follies Journal Vol 5 http://follies.org.uk/index.php/journal/