Legend has it that centuries ago local ploughboys built a tower on Greygarth Hill to mark the spot where the last wolf in the region was killed. It’s a great story (but probably a myth) and the tower that stands on the spot today commemorates Queen Victoria.

A ‘Greygarth Post’ is shown on the tithe map of 1838 so historically there may have been a standing stone, or cairn, on top of the hill. This mount was used by the surveyors working on the first edition ordnance survey map in the 1850s, and it seems likely that this post was used as the triangulation point by the surveyors, as the trig point is noted but no stone or monument is marked. It must have been a reasonably substantial structure until it ‘came to grief’ in a storm in February 1893. The following year there were plans to restore the ‘Grey Garth Pinnacle’, making it three feet taller, with a weathercock on the summit and ‘comfortable seats’ at the base. Local grandees subscribed the funds.

Its is not clear if this work was carried out as soon after there appears to have been a change of plan. Instead of raising the pinnacle, a tower was constructed to mark the 1897 diamond jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria. This ‘Greygarth Monument’ is shown on the Ordnance Survey map in 1910, and the photograph below shows it looking close to collapse, sometime in the middle of the last century.

In 1984 the derelict structure was rebuilt in a truncated form as a squat tower by Kirby Malzeard, Laverton and Dallowgill Parish Council and Harrogate Borough Council, and the short climb from the road is rewarded with a fabulous panorama. Just watch your step: the wolves may be gone but the hill is one giant rabbit warren. You could also climb the narrow ladder to the top of the tower, but as Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp pointed out in Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings, after the giddy ascent of all of ten feet the ‘view is similar’.

Dallowgill Moor was a favoured spot of the Marquess of Ripon of Studley Royal, and was much resorted to in the shooting season. Many distinguished guests, including George V (as Prince of Wales and as King) joined the shooting parties as the Marquess was famed for the quality of his sport and his hospitality. In 1923 he died on Dallowgill Moor after a day of shooting, and another monument on the moor marks the spot where he died. The stone remembers him as ‘the finest shot in England’.

Adding a much needed burst of colour to The Folly Flâneuse’s visit on a dank December day was the Crackpots Mosaic Trail. This series of plaques was introduced into the landscape in 1997 to celebrate the designation of Nidderdale as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Dallowgill is fairly remote with only a cluster of buildings nearby which includes a lovely Methodist chapel (rebuilt in 1885). The local congregation must have been small, but Methodists being hardy souls they cycled out from Ripon and the surrounding villages on high-days and holidays. In June 1894, after the annual service to celebrate the anniversary of the chapel’s completion, the party had ‘an enjoyable ramble after tea amongst the ferns and gnats’. Simple pleasures.

For the Crackpots Trail https://nidderdaleaonb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Crackpots-Mosaic-Trail_web2017.pdf

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The Folly Flâneuse is beginning to feel festive after a visit to Harlow Carr in Harrogate. The Royal Horticultural Society’s Yorkshire garden is bathed in colour on selected evenings until the end of the year, and of course a highlight for this particular visitor was the beautifully lit Folly.

Harrogate’s Royal Spa Concert Rooms, which had been ‘sinking into dereliction for many years’,  were demolished in 1939-40, just a little more than a century after they were built. Originally known as the Cheltenham Rooms, capitalising on that town’s reputation as a chic spa resort, the building was later renamed the Royal Spa Rooms. Harrogate Corporation did at least have the foresight to put the fine Doric columns and pediment that made up the building’s portico into storage, but it was some years before an alternative use was found. In 1961, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, keen to preserve the masonry, presented it to the Northern Horticultural Society for incorporation into the expanding gardens which had been opened at Harlow Carr on the edge of Harrogate a decade earlier.

The directors of the garden initially intended that the entire portico would be rebuilt as a ‘Grecian Temple’. ‘After all’, the society’s magazine reported, ‘no ornamental garden of any pretensions should be without one.’ Seats were to be placed under the pediment ‘to give rest to the weary and joy to the lover of the classic Attic line embowered in a woodland setting’. After delays caused by minor issues such as planning permission, the columns were eventually set in place as an eye catcher at the end of a long vista in 1964, ‘and a beastly inconvenience it was to the staff trying to create a garden’ wrote a former Honorary Director of the gardens, in slightly less poetic mode.

Unfortunately putting up the columns proved more expensive and arduous than expected and a combination of lack of funds, and worries about the safety of erecting the pediment, meant that it was never added. But whilst there is no shelter, the colonnade perfectly fulfils its role as a garden feature. The masonry from the pediment seems eventually to have been used to build the retaining wall behind the columns.

In the late 1990s plans were announced to build a new Exhibition Centre in Harrogate and, controversially, it was suggested that the Harlow Carr columns be returned to the central Harrogate site to support a modern glass pediment. Cutting a long story short, replica columns were used and Harlow Carr got to keep its folly.

Harlow Carr is not the only garden to make use of recycled columns. To pick just two of many potential examples – the feature known locally as ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’ in Barnsley’s Locke Park (above) began life as part of the Post Office and was moved to Locke Park in 1879.

And in Manchester’s Heaton Park a considerably more ambitious relocation of part of the redundant early 19th century Town Hall was erected in 1912. Sadly it is now in need of stabilisation and has been fenced off for a number of years.

Glow at Harlow Carr can be seen on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays until 28 December 2019. The Folly can be viewed across the gardens, but for health and safety reasons can not be visited during the illuminations. It is however freely accessible during normal opening hours. Full details here https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/harlow-carr/whats-on/glow-winter-illuminations

Locke Park and Heaton Park are public parks and can be visited during daylight hours.

Thanks to the Curious Confidante (and beautifully coiffed daughter) for alerting me to this event, and for their cheerful company. And to Bettys for the excellent, and very welcome on a chilly evening, coffee.

Coghill Hall has changed hands, appearances, and names over the centuries. Known today as Conyngham Hall, it is situated on the edge of the town of Knaresborough and the house originally enjoyed views to the ancient castle and church, as well as of the wooded banks of the river Nidd. Knaresborough’s historian, Eli Hargrove, described the situation in 1789:

‘The lawn falls gently towards the river, on the bank of which a fine gravel walk winds through a thick grove to a retired and pleasing spot called the hermitage, where a rustic cell built of stones and moss is placed near a natural cascade, which the river forms by falling over a ridge of rocks.’

When that account was written Coghill Hall was the seat of Sir John Coghill, although he too had changed his name; formerly Cramer, he took the name Coghill when he inherited the estate. It became known as Conyngham Hall after 1796 when it was purchased by the Countess of Conyngham. For a couple of decades in the first half of the 20th century the mansion was leased by Sir Harold Mackintosh ‘the toffee magnate’ and he was resident there when Quality Street was launched. The hall, since remodelled, is now used as offices but the park has been a recreational facility for the town of Knaresborough since 1946.

Sadly no trace of the hermitage has been found, and its form is known only from this 1769 sketch by the great folly builder Joseph Pocklington. However a memory of the building survives in verse form: the Knaresborough gardener and poet David Lewis published ‘Written in the grotto near Conyngham-House’ in The Landscape and Other Poems in 1815. This particular poem was written in standard English, although Lewis was more famous for his use of Yorkshire dialect in such sadly-forgotten works as ‘Elegy on the Death of a Frog’: ‘Poor luckless frog, why com thoo here?”…

In more recent times the park at Conyngham was home to another attraction. For around 20 years from 1965 Knaresborough Zoological Garden was based in a wooded glade by the hall. Bears, deer, llamas and exotic birds were kept in wire cages but the stars were a baby elephant, a lion and ‘the world’s largest snake in captivity’. Update 13 November 2018: there’s a 1968 film about Knaresborough that features the zoo here https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-knaresborough-1968-online

Some websites will tell you that graves of some of the zoo’s inhabitants can be found in the grounds, but this is erroneous and the headstones are actually of the dogs of the Woodd (sic) family who lived at Conyngham in the 19th century. However it is easy to see how one could be misled: