In 1922 the writer and illustrator Charles George Harper penned a series of three articles about follies for The Architect magazine. Harper was a prolific author and had noted many follies as he toured the nation, often including them in his books on the topography of Britain. The articles were illustrated with his own vignettes of some of the buildings he admired (or censured). As for the foibles, which some may find a rather weak description of the eccentricities of Harper’s character, read on…

As ever in a feature on follies, the author had to deal with the question of a definition. Harper (1863-1943) concluded that a folly was a ‘pleasant fancy’ in the shape of a garden-house, a gazebo or perhaps even a ‘skyline freak’. As he continued, ‘now we have settled the nature of follies, the next thing will be to find some’. This, he thought, would be far from difficult, as the ‘land abounds with them’. Harper was sure that once a folly had been found, ‘the traveller who happens to be of a speculative turn of mind will find his curiosity greatly piqued to learn the story’.

Harper began with the building which he thought was ‘architecturally the most interesting’: the Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire. This was, he wrote, a building in which ‘Sir Thomas Tresham gave full outlet to his peculiar bent of mind’ by building a structure in which all measurements and decorations were governed by the ‘mystic three’.

In Cornwall Harper visited a ‘prime curiosity of the gruesome kind’ in the form of the mausoleum of Sir James Tillie. The monument was then derelict, but peering through a small gap the statue of Tillie could be seen – a ‘ferociously ugly man, with scowling countenance and great protruding paunch.’

Jack Fuller of Sussex (best known as Mad Jack Fuller) was described as ‘one of those squires who could not leave a hill-top alone in its natural beauty, but must needs place on it something in the way of a building, generally something ugly’. This was illustrated with a view of the Sugarloaf, supposedly erected to help Fuller win a bet that he could see Dallington church spire from his home. In fact he couldn’t, and the story goes that the cone was erected in a great hurry to ensure he won the wager.

William Beckford was noted as a man who frittered a fortune building towers, and an elegant sketch of his surviving tower in Bath was included in the article.

Harper was known for his strong opinions, and wasn’t afraid to air them in print. An anonymous review of his The Marches of Wales in The Athenaeum in 1895 noted how he went into ‘rhapsodies on discovering a Conservative cobbler’ but ‘shrieks against Dissenters, teetotallers and Radical politicians’. He was also accused of passing a ‘somewhat unjust judgment on the character of the Welsh people’.

To this list of pet hates might be added the women who were (to his mind) threatening the established order. In particular, Harper was no fan of the increasing numbers of female journalists who had ‘invaded newspaper offices’ and who were all more interested in the ‘cut of a dress’ than the ‘fall of a statesman from office’. He makes this sweeping statement in 1894, in a book that was a curious departure from his usual travelogues: Revolted Women: Past, Present and to Come. After what Harper called Eve’s ‘stupendous faux pas‘, he wondered why womanhood wasn’t content to ‘sit, for all time, humbly under correction, satisfied with her lot’ instead of aspiring to rule men while they had ‘no efficient control over [their] own hysterical being’.

But back to follies…

Harper also noted that not everything called a folly was actually a built structure with an interesting history. As an example, he gave the hilltop clump of trees in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) which had long been known as Faringdon Folly. One wonders what he made of the tower that Lord Berners erected on the summit only a decade or so later: no doubt it would have fallen into the ‘skyline freak’ category.

All of the follies mentioned are publicly accessible. Most have been covered in these pages – the search function will take you to the relevant posts.

Assuming she can control her own emotions (Harper didn’t think this possible of any females, especially writers) the Flâneuse will be back with another folly story next week. Thank you for reading.

Halifax has been much in the news recently following the restoration of the wondrous Piece Hall, a Georgian cloth trading centre on a monumental scale. But the town is also home to another amazing structure, the Wainhouse Tower, one of the country’s finest follies. Factory chimney turned witness to wealth, it thrusts 253 feet into the sky above the town.

The story of the tower is initially quite straightforward. From the middle of the 19th century various acts of parliament gave local authorities power to prosecute any industrialist whose works caused ‘smoke nuisance’. John Edward Wainhouse owner of the Washer Lane Dye Works, began to build a tall chimney to carry the smoke far away from the factory. Local architect and surveyor Isaac Booth designed this structure, which was always going to be far more than a chimney. The plans were extant in 1912 and showed a ‘handsome plinth round the tower and an imposing entrance to the staircase’.

When Wainhouse sold the works only a couple of years later, the new owner refused to take on the liability of the lofty chimney. Undettered, Wainhouse decided to adapt the structure as an observatory and, let’s be honest, as a statement of his wealth and status.  Booth resigned from the project, apparently because of a conflict of interest with another client: one Sir Harry Edwards, of whom more in a moment. The tower was completed in 1875, at a huge cost, to an updated design by Booth’s former assistant, Richard Swarbrick Dugdale.

What gives the tower its local name of The Tower of Spite is a dispute between Wainhouse and his neighbouring grandee, industrialist Sir Henry Edwards. The two men were forever squabbling on all sorts of matters in the local courts, and Edwards, a Justice of the Peace, had on occasion to stand down from the bench to fight his corner. Newspaper coverage of the time shows that those in the public gallery thoroughly enjoyed these spectacles, and their reaction is scattered throughout the reports in parentheses: (laughter), (groans), (hear hear), (applause).

One exchange centred on an accusation that Wainhouse had said that ‘if he had a knife, he would have plunged it into Edwards’. Wainhouse denied this and was asked to vouch for his honesty:

Mr Bond: will you swear on that? Mr Wainhouse: I will swear on that and he is a —.

Sadly, Mr Berry, acting for Wainhouse, ‘interrupted the last sentence by requesting his client merely answer the questions’, so we will never know what insult Wainhouse had lined up.

During one of these cases it was alleged that the prosecution was brought out of ‘envy, hatred, and malice’, and certainly the two men appear to have gone out of their way to rile each other. In perhaps the ultimate example Wainhouse literally allowed the masses to look down on his enemy. Edwards lived not far from the tower, at Pye Nest, and was said to be passionate about his privacy. Soon after completion Wainhouse opened the tower to the general public at 6d a go: the panorama from the viewing platform would have been extensive, but there in the foreground was the Pye Nest estate for all to see. Wainhouse apparently denied he acted out of malice, but whatever the truth there was enough history between the two men for the nickname of The Tower of Spite to be born, and remain today.

The tower changed hands on a number of occasions after Wainhouse died, until in 1919 it was bought by the Halifax Corporation, which continues to keep it in good repair and allow public access. Pevsner found it ‘flamboyant and fantastical’ and it is loved by the residents of Calderdale and beyond, often appearing in ‘top ten’ follies lists. You can see the exterior at any time or visit on one of the open days. But do limber up first – there are more than 400 steps to climb.

For 2020 tower open days and more on visiting the handsome town of Halifax https://www.visitcalderdale.com/attra-wainhouse-tower

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

In the 18th century the Shaw family of textile merchants operated out of the magnificent Piece Hall in Halifax (recently restored and very well worth a visit) https://www.thepiecehall.co.uk.  By the end of the century a new mill had been established at Holywell Green near Stainland, outside Halifax. It was greatly extended in the second half of the 19th century by Samuel Shaw, who also built a new family home nearby, which he called Brooklands. The house was almost ready for occupation in the autumn of 1868 and the grounds were being laid out at the same date. The landscaping included a pond with fountain and a series of 3 curious towers linked by a wall. The Halifax Courier described the scene in 1877, noting that the three towers gave ‘the impression that a castle of somewhat imposing dimensions’  overshadowed the grounds.

As well as masking some farm buildings the towers functioned as summerhouses, housing two ‘rustic apartments’ with ‘quaint chairs’. The openings in the exterior walls were designed as roosts for wild birds, but Shaw probably didn’t have in mind the raucous crows who call the towers home today:

Shaw was passionate about birds and had a museum room in the mansion with cases of stuffed specimens. Within the grounds there were also extensive pens and cages to house a collection of pigeons and pheasants of ‘great rarity’.

There was a also a grotto and a dripping well which was ‘deftly formed’ by the head gardener, a Mr Pybus. Water was fed to the well from a spring in the hillside, flowing over a perforated iron plate which created the dripping effect. Both the grotto and the well were clad with clinker, the incombustible matter left in the mill’s furnaces after burning.

Shaw did not allow smoking in the house but as a consummate host he constructed a Smoking House in the garden. Guests retiring here for pipes or cigars were asked to don velvet jackets and caps to absorb the smell, so that no trace could be detected when they returned to the drawing room. Sadly this building does not survive.

The mansion and many of the associated buildings at Brooklands were demolished in the 1930s and the Shaw family gave the grounds to the people of Elland for use as public park. The  wonderful castle facade survives, but for the usual reasons of vandalism and health and safety the buildings are now fenced-off.

The towers are listed grade II.