In the village with the simple name of ‘Hill’, near Sutton Coldfield in what was then Warwickshire, lived retired pawnbroker Hugh Lewis. At the time of his death in 1908, Lewis was remembered as ‘a man of very eccentric habits’ and chief amongst these were the building of a high wall around his house and the erection of a ‘Look out Tower’ on Hill Village Road – inevitably it became known as Lewis’s Folly.