In the last years of the eighteenth century, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury, commissioned James Wyatt to carry out repairs to Salisbury Cathedral. In an act that would be described as ‘outrageous’ by later generations, Wyatt removed an ancient porch. The Dean and Chapter, recognising that prominent citizen Henry Penruddocke Wyndham knew how to ‘appreciate such curious monuments of antiquity’, presented him with the ‘elegant remnant’ which he re-erected as a feature in his garden.

The porch is said to have started life as part of a cross in Old Sarum, and was reused as the north porch when the present cathedral was constructed in New Sarum, or Salisbury, in around 1250. According to local histories, the ‘miserably truncated’ cross was covered with a flat roof of lead and functioned as a porch for five centuries until Shute Barrington’s renovations in the late eighteenth century.

As the title photograph shows, the garden ornament is looking a little battered in its old age, but happily an enchanting array of images record its appearance when first moved to its new home.

Wyndham’s family home was St Edmund’s College, a former ecclesiastical building later converted into a private residence. The garden had been laid out to an undated plan by the landscape designer Richard Woods (1715-1793). Woods had suggested that a summerhouse might be placed in a corner of the garden, with a view to the house and church, so Wyndham (1736-1819) knew the perfect spot for the summerhouse and eye-catcher he created by embellishing the ancient cross.

It was Wyatt himself who oversaw the taking down of the porch and its re-erecting in Wyndham’s garden. The porch was dismantled in May 1791 and carted to Wyndham’s grounds. During the summer Wyatt’s masons carved 2 pinnacles (the others were presumably salvaged from the cathedral works) and cut stone to make the spire, with work complete by September when Wyatt submitted his bill for £33.7.6.

A Latin inscription on a sheet of lead was placed over the east arch inside the building. It is long gone, but it is known to have recorded that the porch was rebuilt in Wyndham’s garden in 1791, having formerly stood in Old Sarum and then at Salisbury Cathedral.

Wyndham’s house and grounds were sold in the late nineteenth century, with much of the land being developed for housing. The house and ten acres of garden were purchased by the Reverend George Hugh Bourne, who lived there until his death in 1925.

In 1927, on the 700th anniversary of Salisbury receiving its charter, the house and grounds on Bourne Hill were purchased by the city to create new municipal offices. The park was opened to the public and the porch, by now shaded by trees, became known to some locally as the Devil’s Arch.

Earlier this year work was carried out to restore the porch (grade II). Rusting iron clamps were removed, and old cement repairs were replaced with lime mortar. Note that although local histories date the porch to the days of Old Sarum, the information boards in Bourne Hill Gardens call it the ’15th Century Porch’.

This remarkable survival deserves to be better known, so do visit if you are in the area. Bourne Hill Gardens (grade II) are always open. Bourne Hill continues to house offices of Wiltshire County Council. St Edmund’s Church is now an arts centre.

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In the middle of the eighteenth century William Aislabie began to create a landscape garden on the banks of the River Ure, near the village of Grewelthorpe. In contrast to his grand estate at Studley, a few miles away, there were few manicured lawns or geometric pools, and instead Hackfall was a ‘sequestered and most romantic place’. Dotted around the grounds were summerhouses and shelters, including a dramatic hilltop tower called Mowbray Castle.

Word soon spread that Hackfall was a place worth seeing, and early visitors recorded their admiration for the place: ‘never was there seen a finer assemblage of wild and variegated nature’ wrote a tourist in 1785. Although visitors frequently refer to the ‘imitations of ruins’ in the pleasure grounds (there’s also a sham-ruin banqueting house), the earliest specific reference by a visitor to ‘Mowbray Castle’ found to date is from the 1780s, which tallies with an account in the archive suggesting work was ongoing in 1778.

By 1801 the gardener, who gave tours of the grounds, estimated that around two hundred parties visited each season. The Yorkshire weather was not always kind, but it didn’t spoil the experience. In 1792 Lord Torrington found ‘so much to admire, so much to celebrate’, despite the rain falling ‘in buckets’. And in 1799 another tourist wrote that he knew of no other place that gave so much pleasure’ even though it ‘rained the whole time’.

When first built Mowbray Castle could be seen from almost every spot within the pleasure grounds, and its ‘isolated situation’ was described as having an ‘extremely happy effect’. William Gilpin, whose comments on landscape were widely-read, criticised the buildings at Hackfall, but few were in agreement. In 1796, the Duke of Rutland wrote that ‘We did not find any room for censure’.

A poem written in 1859 suggested that the castle was an ancient fortification:

Now turn thy steps towards the right,
And view that grand imposing sight –
Tis Mowbray Castle, in decay,
The relics of a bygone day.

But Georgian visitors recognised it as a sham, a ‘very excellent imitation of an ancient ruin’, and praised its natural appearance.

Aislabie’s descendants sold Hackfall to a timber merchant in 1933, and much of the woodland was felled. Happily, the folly survived this period of neglect (although the short section of wall with an arch seen in the early images is lost), and was consolidated as part of a masterplan to restore the pleasure grounds and buildings after Hackfall was purchased by the Woodland Trust in 1989 (with strong support from the Hackfall Trust and other local groups). Sadly the vistas to and from the castle are now largely lost because of tree growth.

Around the time the folly was under construction a boy was born who would grow to great fame as an artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner was born on 23 April 1775, 250 years ago this week. He visited Hackfall in 1816, and later worked up one of his sketches into a watercolour now in the Wallace Collection, London.

Hackfall is in the care of the Woodland Trust and is freely accessible to walkers.

J.M.W. Turner clearly admired follies – he painted/sketched the tower at Tabley in Cheshire, Cook’s Folly near Bristol and the Gibraltar Tower in Sussex amongst many others. Click the link in red for events planned to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth in 1775.

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Sir Peter Byrne Leicester inherited the Tabley estate in 1742. At that date the mansion and adjacent chapel were picturesquely situated on an island in a lake, but Sir Peter had new ideas. In around 1760 he called in John Carr of York to build a new mansion, in the Palladian style, on higher ground about half a mile from the old. With the new hall complete Sir Peter did not demolish the old hall and chapel on the island, but instead left them standing to be admired as ‘ornamental features in the landscape’ (although he had little choice as the terms of his inheritance compelled him to keep the old mansion in repair). Sir Peter’s son would later add a tower as an eye-catcher and picnic pavilion.

Sir Peter died in 1770 when his son and heir was only 7 years old, and his widow managed the estate until Sir John Fleming Leicester 5th Bart (1762-1827) came of age. Sir John studied at Cambridge before setting off on the Grand Tour, returning in 1786 to his Cheshire estate.

Work to remodel the lake and build the tower was started soon after Sir John’s return and continued until around the end of the eighteenth century. In 1826 William Carey, Sir John’s biographer and art adviser, published some anecdotes of his patron’s life. He wrote that Sir John always had ‘some plans going forward for the embellishment of his domain’ and that he had erected the tower and remodelled the lake to create a ‘fine piece of water’. Sadly he is vague on dates, simply noting that this took place ‘some years ago’.

The lake and tower (it is always simply ‘the tower’) were used for ‘aquatic parties’, with Sir John having a small fleet of ‘ten or twelve pleasure vessels’, all built to his own specifications. He was described as a skilled sailor, making excursions on the lake ‘safe and agreeable’.

Sir John’s great passion was contemporary British art, and in the first decades of the nineteenth century he commissioned many artworks, including a number of views of his new lake and tower.

Perhaps most famous of the views of the tower at Tabley are two works of 1808 by J.M.W. Turner showing the lake and tower on a calm morning and in a ‘brisk gale’. They became separated in 1827 when works from the late Lord de Tabley’s London house (Sir John was created a Baron in 1826) were sold at auction to pay his debts. Lord Egremont purchased the ‘calm morning’ view, and it can be seen today at Petworth House in West Sussex.

Happily, its partner, showing the tower on a windy day, was sent to Tabley House where it remains today.

In 1874 the Old Hall was described as an ‘ivy-clad ruin’, although it was still furnished and could be visited by tourists, and some rooms housed estate staff. At the same date the chapel was recorded as being in ‘excellent preservation’ as it was still in regular use. Around fifty years later the situation changed dramatically when the island on which the buildings stood succumbed to brine subsidence (briefly – the pumping out of liquid brine causes the land above to become unstable). The mansion on the island was damaged and the contents and many of the internal fittings were salvaged before the inevitable total collapse – only a small section still stands today.

To save the chapel Cuthbert Leicester Warren (1877-1954) had it taken down and rebuilt close to the eighteenth century mansion in 1927. Material salvaged from the Old Hall was used to create the Old Hall Room which links the chapel to the mansion. Cuthbert’s son John, who died in 1975, was the last private owner of the Tabley estate (there’s more on him next week).

Tabley House and its collection are now owned by the University of Manchester. The house is leased to a care home, but the state rooms on the middle floor are home to the Tabley House Collection of paintings, furniture and decorative arts. The collection is open regularly between March and October.

The grade II listed tower, once an eye-catcher from the piano nobile, can today only just be made out in the distance as the overgrown trees on the tiny island hide the tower and cast shadows. The University sold the parkland to the Crown Estate in 2007 and sadly there is no public access. Happily we have Sir John’s pictorial record, and there’s the rather more modern medium of a YouTube film here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGU2dnGl_9M

For more on Tabley House http://www.tableyhouse.co.uk

Thank you to the Tabley House Collection and ArtUK for making these wonderful images freely available.

Watch out for part II next week which features a charming period in the tower’s existence. Thank you for reading and do get in touch via the comments section below if you’d like to share any thoughts.

Until the middle of the 19th century visitors to Harewood House, near Leeds, could open the doors of the Saloon (today known as the Main Library) on the piano nobile and ‘walk out upon the fine portico’. From there they could admire the lake and plantations created by the finest landscape designers of the 18th century, and on the horizon they would glimpse a fine domed temple.

Harewood was built by John Carr for Edwin Lascelles (1713-1795) who was created Baron Harewood in 1790. In 1780, soon after the house was complete, Lascelles commissioned Carr to design a temple for the elevated ground south of the house. Carr (1723-1807) annotated his elevation drawing with the title ‘Temple of Venus’ and it shows an octagonal central drum surrounded by an arcaded basement and a colonnade around the first floor.

This first suggestion was quickly abandoned and Carr drew a new design with the central tower flanked by two wings ‘to allow a covered way to the upper room’. He was paid for all three drawings in December 1780. The section shows a grand interior, with a domed ceiling with decorative plasterwork. The name ‘Temple of Venus’ probably references the pigeon house which Carr remodelled to create the temple, doves being an attribute of Venus. There is no record of a statue of the goddess being placed in the temple, and in fact, the name disappears completely after the one inscription on Carr’s elevation, and it becomes known simply as ‘the temple’.

After the drawings were presented there was then an unexplained gap of 14 years when nothing seems to have happened. Then in 1794 there was a flurry of work to execute Carr’s designs: the pigeon house was cleaned, stone, timber and lead taken to the ‘temple’, and in 1796 the interior was plastered and a marble chimney piece was fitted. In the midst of all this work Edwin Lascelles, Lord Harewood, died and was succeeded by his cousin Edward Lascelles (1740-1820, created 1st Earl of Harewood in 1812). Once complete the temple became a popular destination for walks from the house.

The temple, whilst still an eye-catcher from the mansion, was later put to a more practical use as a dwelling house. At the time of the 1841 census it was home to John Lister, an ‘agricultural labourer’ and his 2 sons and 2 daughters. By 1851 Lister had died and the temple was home to his daughter Elizabeth, who had formerly been in service at Harewood House, and her siblings.

By 1855 Lord Harewood was considering demolishing the temple and had the materials valued. In 1857 wood and lead were stripped from the building, and in 1859 full demolition began: the earl’s agent wrote that it was ‘exceedingly well built and difficult to pull down’ and it eventually took 145 man-days to dismantle the temple and sort the materials. Much of the stone was reused at John Sawer’s nearby farm at Lofthouse.

The temple was then largely forgotten, although the ground around it remained known as Temple Wood. In autumn 2001 Harewood was the focus of an episode of the BBC’s House Detectives at Large. The BBC filmed archaeologists from the University of Bradford investigating the site of the temple, and uncovering the foundations of the octagonal central block and the two side wings. The clay pipes and pottery found on site were utilitarian, and probably dated from the period when the Lister family were in residence. So thorough had the clearance been in 1859 that a single block of dressed stone was the only remnant above ground.

One fragment of the temple might survive. In the private northern pleasure grounds a substantial stone urn stands as a feature. Its dimensions correspond with the urn on John Carr’s reworked plan, so perhaps this ornamental fragment was salvaged from the demolition in 1859 and given a new home.

John Carr was born in 1723 so this year we celebrate the 300th anniversary of his birth. Whilst the temple is gone, as is the portico on the south front (swept away by Sir Charles Barry when he remodelled the house in the 1840s), Harewood House, its stables and many estate buildings are still very much a monument to Carr’s skill and imagination as an architect.

The site of the Temple of Venus is not publicly accessible, but the view across the lake to the house that it enjoyed can be appreciated from the footpath which enters the park at Lofthouse Lodge, south of the house on the A61.

Also born 300 years ago in 1723 was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Harewood House is marking the occasion with a new look at his many works there, including the chance to see the portrait of Edwin Lascelles at close range and out of its grand frame. Reframing Reynolds can be seen until 28 August 2023, but if you can’t make it by then the portraits are always on display https://harewood.org

Thanks to Susan Kellerman who was the Folly Flâneuse’s partner-in-crime when first researching the temple many years ago, and to Rebecca Burton, Curator and Archivist at Harewood House.

Top image: View in the park at Harewood (detail). An intriguing view attributed to Harriet Lascelles with a design for a bridge (unexecuted) added in an unknown hand. Courtesy of the Harewood House Trust.

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts or further information – scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the comments box. Thank you for reading.

Cotehele stands just on the Cornwall side of the river Tamar that forms the boundary with Devon. The estate was the ancient seat of the Edgcumbes, but by the 18th century it was a secondary residence, with the family preferring nearby Mount Edgcumbe, overlooking Plymouth Sound. On high ground above the house at Cotehele stands this solitary three-sided tower, of which little seems to be known. No inscriptions give even a hint of its history.

To be precise, little seems to be factually known, for there are plenty of tales and taradiddles about the tower. All that Historic England has to say about the grade II* listed building is that it is ‘probably late 18th century’, which seems about right, but does rather destroy the first oft-told tale in which the ‘family watched the Armada sail up the channel’ from the top of the tower in 1588.

Rena Gardiner’s utterly charming guidebook to Cotehele, first published by the National Trust in 1973, describes the ‘Prospect Tower’ as looking like a church tower from a distance whereas, she continues, it is ‘nothing more than a folly’. Nothing more than a folly??? This casual comment can be forgiven when one sees her distinctive and delightful illustrations – she was clearly a fan of the landmark. Gardiner’s text describes another alleged function of the tower: that it was used to signal between Cotehele and Maker church on the Mount Edgcumbe estate (which is feasible – the two towers have sight of each other).

Elsewhere one will read that the tower was built to celebrate the visit of King George III in the summer of 1789, and Admiral Viscount George Edgcumbe’s (1720-1795) elevation to the earldom of Mount Edgcumbe only days earlier. This too seems perfectly possible, although it is curious that such occasions were not marked with a plaque. King George and Queen Charlotte dined at Mount Edgcumbe in August 1789, the dinner being ‘all that sumptuality and elegance united could produce’. The royal party were taken on a tour of the grounds and up to the Heights of Maker. Although a vast panorama of Plymouth dominates the view, the tower at Cotehele would also have been visible. The King and Queen did not just admire the view, they ‘beheld it in raptures‘, but there is no mention of the tower to confirm its presence. Queen Charlotte mentions their subsequent visit to ‘Cotehill’ in her diary, but sadly only describes the ancient house.

One of the earliest known views dates from 1814 when J.M.W. Turner included it in a sketch of Cotehele. Guidebooks throughout the 19th century refer to the tower (which doesn’t seem to have a name) and the ‘most extensive and finely varied view’ which could be obtained from the top. It is simply ‘tower’ on early Ordnance Survey maps, but is known today as the Prospect Tower.

Cotehele was the first property to be accepted in lieu of death duties by the newly-created National Land Fund in 1947, and was passed to the National Trust. The tower is just one of the many attractions of the Cotehele estate.

Another of Rena Gardiner’s exquisite books, Portrait of Dorset, has recently been republished by Design for Today. Only 30 copies were painstakingly handprinted by Gardiner in 1960, and Joe Pearson of Design for Today has now produced a collector’s edition. The book features two perfect portraits of follies: Clavell Tower and Creech Grange Arch (below). Read more here https://www.designfortoday.co.uk/shop/nvvw0vvaq6n1fqdmwrwarz7cq2yeoo

The tower’s internal steps were missing when the property passed to the National Trust, but a new wooden staircase was installed so you can climb up and enjoy the view for yourself. There’s more on Cothele here https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/cornwall/cotehele

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome, please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. If you would like a folly-related story like this in your inbox each weekend please click on ‘subscribe’.

In 1791 Francis Newbery, bought Bailey Park, an estate in East Sussex, which he renamed the Heathfield Park Estate. Almost immediately he set to work constructing this elegant tower on high ground in his park. The Folly Flâneuse has joined forces with The Garden Historian to elaborate on its history.

Newbery (1743-1818) was a London-based bookseller and druggist who moved in literary and musical circles. Having made a fortune in patent medicines (Effervescent Brain Salt sounds particularly appealing), he was in a position to expand and improve his country seat. One of his first projects was to create a memorial to the former owner of the estate, George Augustus Eliot, who had been Governor at Gibraltar during the lengthy ‘Great Siege’ by the Spanish and French of 1779-1783. In 1787 Eliot was created Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar in recognition of his service to his country, and his death in 1790 had been marked by long eulogies in the press.

It is a loss to Sussex that Newbery’s initial intriguing scheme to ‘erect a monument resembling the Rock of Gibraltar’ was abandoned. But work on the lovely, if less idiosyncratic, tower began in 1792, and was completed the following year at a reported cost of £3,000.

The tower, originally called Heathfield Tower, is best described in a piece which appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine in November 1793: 

‘Oct. 26. This day the last stone was laid of the Tower in Heathfield Park, and the scaffolding removed.
A little account of this structure, intended by the present owner as a memorial of respect to the character of his predecessor, the late Lord Heathfield, and which may be considered as an ornament to our country, may not be unacceptable to our readers.
It was begun on the 2d of March, 1792, is built of stone, and from the bottom is of octagonal shape to the height of about 15 feet; whence it rises, in a circular form, to the top of the battlement, which is 55 feet from the ground. It is 22 feet in diameter, and contains a circular staircase, and three apartments, which are to be fitted up in a Gothic style, and ornamented with views of Gibraltar, and the operations of the siege.
The building is simple; but so admirably constructed as to unite lightness with solidity; and every precaution has been used to preserve it from decay; the proportions, moreover, are so just, and the effect of the whole so agreeable to the eye, that it cannot fail to impress the beholder with the taste and ingenuity of the architect.
Over the door, on the outside of the Tower, is a tablet, with this inscription “Calpes defensori,” the letters of which are to be formed of the metal of the guns from the Spanish floating batteries, and let into the stone.
The view from the building situated on one of the most elevated spots, will be more readily conceived than described, by those who are acquainted with that beautiful part of the county of Sussex.’

These same lines (probably penned by Newbery himself) appeared in other publications, including the Reading Mercury. In November 1793 the paper ran the report and helpfully suggested the architect was John Crundon. Crundon, the paper reported, was best known for the ‘elegant design of the Great Room of Brighthelmston’: this was the assembly rooms in the Adam style which were added to the Castle Hotel in Brighton in 1776*. John Crunden (which seems the more common spelling) was an architect and surveyor, and author of a number of pattern books. He had built a London house at 45 St Paul’s Churchyard for his friend Newbery in 1778-9.

Newbery had further plans for Heathfield, and in 1794 he invited the landscape designer Humphry Repton to advise on laying out his grounds. Repton was a fan of a ‘lofty tower’ (one featured on his business card) and recorded the patriotic thrill he felt upon seeing the tower at Heathfield:

‘The pleasure which was excited in my mind on finding a lofty tower erected by the present possessor, and consecrated as a tribute of respect and gratitude to that gallant Commander, for his public services, who derived his title HEATHFIELD from this domain, and his military glory from the rock of Gibraltar.’

The tower was later sketched by Turner as part of his commission to provide illustrations for Cooke’s Views in Sussex

Newbery died in 1818, and the estate was offered for sale the following year, with the tower featuring prominently in the press announcement. Sadly, the views of Gibraltar which decorated the interior of the tower were removed and sold around this time. 

In the early years of the 20th century Heathfield was home to William Cleverley Alexander who created a miniature museum in the tower featuring ‘souvenirs of old English life’. When the 1914 Heathfield Flower Show was held in the park, Alexander invited visitors to ‘ascend the noted Gibraltar Tower.’ A fire in the middle of the 20th century severely damaged the top floor, and by the time Barbara Jones saw it in the early 1950s the interior was in a poor condition, although there were ‘remains of the most exquisite gothic plasterwork’.

Happily, a new owner of Heathfield had plans for the tower. In the 1960s Heathfield Park was bought by Gerald Moore (1926-2018) a child actor who grew up to be a Harley Street surgeon. Something of a polymath he was also an artist and poet. As if this was not enough, in the 1970s he somehow found time to open the Heathfield Wildlife Park, and restored the Gibraltar Tower, by now listed at grade II*, as its centrepiece.

The venture was however short-lived, and after Moore left Heathfield in the early 1990s the tower once more began to decline. The subsequent owner was not keen on visitors and security fences deterred all but the most intrepid. 

Early in the 21st century the 350 acre estate was bought by entrepreneur Dominic Wainford; the park remains strictly private and the tower in need of attention. Various plans for the estate have been mooted, with this design for the tower and its environs particularly striking, but apparently unrealised  https://www.dematosryan.co.uk/archive/gibraltar-tower-2/

* The Castle Hotel in Brighton is long gone, but the rooms survived as a chapel. They were later moved to become what is now St Stephen’s Chapel. Read more here https://regencysociety.org/our-heritage/breathing-new-life-into-st-stephens/

Thanks to the Garden Historian, aka Michael Cousins, for a fun and fruitful collaboration on this post, and thanks to you for reading. Please scroll down to the foot of the page to leave any thoughts or comments.