Hubert Walter Wandesford Fenwick, architect turned architectural historian and writer, was a regular contributor to The Scots Magazine, a monthly publication that claims to be the oldest magazine in Britain still in publication, having been launched in 1739. In 1965 Fenwick wrote an article about ‘Features and Follies’, in Scotland, illustrated with his own very attractive colour sketches.

Fenwick (1916-2003) starts, as so many writers on architectural curiosities do, with the thorny question of how to define a folly. He quotes the Universal English Dictionary which states that a folly is a ‘useless, fantastic structure, built from foolish caprice’, but he does not think it is an accurate description. He then launches into an analogy which the Flâneuse rather likes: ‘… after all, most oil paintings are useless, unless they happen to cover a gap or a dirty mark on the wall. Most paintings are fantastic, some even foolish, but they, nevertheless, tend to make life more interesting and civilised, and they express an aspect of the human spirit.’ It is, he concludes, the same with a good folly. He is however strict about his classifications of what is a folly and what is a feature.

McCaig’s tower at Oban, for instance, is a feature, not a folly, as it was originally intended as an ’eminently practical’ museum. According to Fenwick’s rules, the Wallace Monument at Stirling is a commemorative tower, not a folly.

The buildings that do qualify as folly in Fenwick’s opinion are a particularly lovely bunch, and amongst his selection are The Whim at Blair which he describes as a ‘dummy fort’, the sham ruin on Balcarres Crag in Fife, the tower on Kinnoul Hill in Perth which was built to show that the Tay was the equal of the Rhine, Ossian’s Temple (aka the Hermitage) at Dunkeld, the Craigiehall Temple and Hume Castle which is a ‘magnificent fake’. The Pineapple at Dunmore is included for its ‘extremely clever and imaginative design’.

Fenwick wrote the piece in response to a book about follies which he had recently read. He felt cheated as it contained ‘less than a dozen Scottish examples’ (actually there are exactly twelve), and only two that ‘could legitimately be so designated’. He failed to name the book, but he does give the clue that it was produced by a ‘petrol firm’, so we can be sure it was Follies, written by Ella Hatt, beautifully illustrated by Paul Sharp, and published by National Benzole in 1963 (there’s more about that book here.) In case you are wondering, the two true follies that Fenwick approved of in the book were the sham on Balcarres Crag and the Hermitage at Dunkeld.

You can read more about the history of the Scots Magazine here.

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Hume Castle stands on a prominent site, visible for miles round. Initially, this gave it great defensive strengths, but by the later 18th century the ‘considerable eminence’ was thought the perfect site for an eye-catcher. The ruins of the ancient fortification were pulled down and the stone reused to create a curiously crenellated sham castle.

The original castle is said to have been destroyed after it fell to Cromwell’s troops in 1651. It remained a scant ruin until Hugh Hume-Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont (1708-1794), ‘restored and rebattlemented’ it in the later 18th century. An exact date seems elusive, but it was complete by 1789 when this sketch was executed.

The new and very dramatic tower stood bold on the skyline, and could be seen from Marchmont, the new Palladian house the earl began in 1750 a few miles away.

18th century accounts of the new Hume Castle seem hard to find, but later visitors could be quite scathing. In 1908 Alexander Curle, the secretary of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, wrote in his ‘private journal of a Wandering Antiquary’ that Hume Castle was a ‘ridiculous fantastic erection, a modern ruin raised on the site of the ancient fortress’.

A few years later A.G. Bradley described the castle in his The Gateway of Scotland. He thought the ‘terrible mock battlements’ were not even up to the standards of ‘the comic opera stage’.  Clearly the Earl of Marchmont rebuilt the castle with the view from Marchmont House in mind, and a journalist in 1927 best summed up the situation when he quoted the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell’s line that ‘distance lends enchantment to the view’. There is no denying that at close quarters the giant crenellations are distinctly odd.

In 1970 The Scotsman ran a story by William Chisholm headlined ‘Future of freak castle in the balance’. The Earl of Marchmont’s descendants had sold the castle (as part of the Humehall estate) to the tenant in 1914, and in 1929 it had passed into the ownership of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. By 1970 this body was keen to dispose of the castle but both the National Trust for Scotland and the Ministry of Public Buildings declined to take it on.

There was an impasse for more than twenty years, but we can follow the story via Chisholm’s regular updates in the newspaper. In 1981 there was still ‘extreme difficulty’ in disposing of the building, and in 1984 it was announced that the castle was crumbling and in urgent need of restorations.

The hero of the hour was the Berwickshire Civic Society, under the chairmanship of Major-General Sir John Swinton. The society took a lease on the castle and raised £150,000 to stabilise the walls, install a door and replace railings. The project was managed by architect David Mylne from 1985 until completion in 1992. Chisholm could then write in The Scotsman that the future of Hume Castle was at last secure. It is now in the care of the Hume Castle Preservation Trust and the public are welcome to visit.

Marchmont House passed out of Hume family ownership early in the 20th century and became separated from its lands. The estate was reunited by the Burge family in the later years of that century, and a hugely impressive restoration project has seen the house restored and filled with a collection spanning more than five centuries.

Hume Castle is no longer an eye-catcher from Marchmont as mature plantations block the view, but the Flâneuse was reliably informed that it can be seen from the roof.

Marchmont House can be visited on open days and you can read more here https://www.marchmonthouse.com

For more on the castle see https://humecastle.org/

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