The Folly Flâneuse is busy pottering around the country in search of temples and towers to fill these pages. Meanwhile, here is a brief look at two very different landscape features: one on a miniature scale and one monumental, one in a tranquil English garden, and one on a Bulgarian hilltop.

Alan and Claire Terrill found the restored Shell House at Staunton Country Park (above, featured here in January 2022) so delightful that Alan decided to build a miniature version for their tortoises. Finding one element of the design a little tricky, he contacted John Malaiperuman, the Conservation Architect responsible for the restoration, who was happy to give advice.

Unlike the original, which had a shell-decorated interior, Alan covered the exterior of the tortoise house with shells, including shell pinnacles as the perfect finishing touch. The tortoise house joins the other jolly follies and features in Alan and Claire’s Shropshire garden. And as you can see, the testudinal tenants are settling in nicely. To see the whole story visit the updated original post https://thefollyflaneuse.com/the-shell-house-leigh-park-havant-hampshire/

Writer and historian Rosemary Hill got in touch with news of a fascinating restoration project in Bulgaria. The Buzludzha Memorial House is a dramatic hilltop monument with a long and complicated history interrupted by unrest and political change.

Building a landmark on this spot was first discussed in the last years of the 19th century, but the rapidly changing political and economic climate meant that the curious structure shown here was not erected until the last quarter of the 20th century. Sadly, the building flourished for only a short period before it was abandoned and much of the usable materials looted. A major project to restore the monument is now underway.

As Rosemary wrote, it is impressive ‘that they have found the time and imagination to think constructively about the past when history is moving so fast and dangerously around them in the present.’

The Folly Flâneuse can’t do justice to this fascinating structure in just a couple of paragraphs, so do read more on the project’s excellent website:  http://www.buzludzhaproject.com/mc_cid=bc6d8ac050&mc_eid=UNIQID#welcome

Thank you for reading. The Folly Flâneuse will be back with another folly feature next week. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts. 

Sir George Staunton bought the Leigh Park estate in 1820, and set to work remodelling the house and ornamenting the park with an eclectic range of garden buildings. Many are sadly lost today, but a programme of restoration, in what is now Staunton Country Park, is bringing some of the survivors back to life. One of the loveliest of the garden ornaments is this exquisite little Shell-House.

Sir George (1781-1859) travelled to China as a child, and later became a great expert on the country during a career in the East India Service. In 1819 he bought the Leigh Park estate.

The house was then less than 20 years old, and had been extensively remodelled by local architect John Kent at the beginning of the century. The sales particulars described the surrounding park as a ‘perfect ferme ornée’, but its character would soon change as Sir George added ‘numerous objects of decoration and interest’.

The park became home to a Chinese Bridge, Chinese Summerhouse, Turkish Kiosk, and Obelisk, as well as classical temples, rustic shelters and bridges. An artificial lake had three islands – one housed the gardener, one was home to the swans, and the third had a sham fort (with the Chinese flag flown when Sir George was in residence). 

James King composed A Poem on Leigh Park in 1829 extolling the virtues of the spot. The Folly Flâneuse will give just a brief taste from the near 40 pages:

The glorious strife of Art and Nature see,
Within thy Paradise, most lovely Leigh,
An art that glows with every nameless grace,
And emulates the charms of Nature’s face,
An art, O Staunton, by thy genius fired,
By thee with sweet variety inspired…

In 1836 a detailed prose account of the house and park was published: Notices of the Leigh Park Estate tells us that the Shell House was built in 1828, and the design was based on a print of the ancient Chichester Market Cross. Sir George used the architect Lewis Vulliamy (1791-1871) for many of the parkland structures, and the Shell House is therefore attributed to him.

The building was covered in decorative panels of knapped and coursed flint, each filled with pebbles, and inside the walls were ‘encrusted with shells’. Despite Sir George’s connections with far-off lands, these were not exotic specimens shipped home to England, but the spoils of days on the beach at nearby Hayling Island. The Shell-House was used as a museum to house Sir George’s natural history collection. The Notices gave a complete list of the contents, but to summarise there was an extensive collection of minerals, ceramics including Roman pottery and ‘Wedgewood’s designs’, and a ‘small stuffed crocodile’.

Sir George died in 1859, and his obituary recognised his career in China and his subsequent service as a politician. But the writer felt that above all the local community would remember Sir George for ‘the fact of his beautiful gardens and grounds being open to the inspection of all applicants’.

In 1861 William Henry Stone, MP for Portsmouth, purchased the estate and built a new house. In the process of remodelling he demolished one of the landscape buildings, a temple which Staunton had built to house busts and dedications honouring his friends and family. A number of the inscribed plaques were removed to the Shell-House, and hence it became known as the ‘Staunton Memorial’.

Leigh Park was requisitioned for use by the Admiralty during the Second World War. In 1946 it was purchased by Portsmouth City Council as land for new housing and a public open space, and in 1959 the house (by then a Victorian replacement) was demolished. Leigh Park was renamed Staunton Country Park in 1987, and as in Sir George’s day visitors are once more welcome to enjoy the grounds.

A 1944 photograph of the Shell-House shows it was largely intact at that date, but as the century progressed vandalism became a major issue, and by the millennium the grade II* listed folly was looking ‘the worse for wear’. All but one of the wall plaques had disappeared, the shellwork was lost, and the roof had collapsed.

Happily, a £3.8 million investment by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Big Lottery Fund and Hampshire County Council has seen the Shell-House and other structures restored by an expert team, including Conservation Architect John Malaiperuman, who first introduced the Folly Flâneuse to this fascinating park.

The Shell-House’s lost lantern was rebuilt in reconstituted Portland Stone, with natural Portland Stone pinnacles, and the missing flint and pebbles have been restored with materials that match the originals.

In July 2021 the restored park was formally opened. There is an excellent Follies Trail, highlighting both extant and lost structures, including the Chinese Bridge and the Belvedere, pictured here.  https://www.stauntoncp.co.uk/en/hub/765

UPDATE APRIL 2022: The Folly Flâneuse is always pleased to receive feedback from readers who visit follies as a result of seeing them featured here. But she was particularly delighted to learn that a recent post had inspired something much more exciting than a day trip: Alan and Claire Terrill were so charmed by the recently restored Shell House that Claire challenged Alan to build a miniature version as a house for the family’s tortoises Diogenes, Loosestrife and Ephebe. Whilst the Shell House had an interior embellished with shells, Alan decided to put the his shell decoration on the outside, and when temporarily stumped by the construction of the roof, he turned to Jon Malaiperuman, conservation architect for the restoration of the Shell House, who was happy to help. Alan also decided to incorporate silhouettes of noble tortoises standing on pedestals in the blank arches on the sides, in the manner of the Temple of British Worthies at Stowe. As you can see, the tortoises are already very much at home.

For all the latest news visit the Friends of Staunton Park website https://foscp.co.uk

Thanks to Matthew Beckett for permission to use the photo of the Victorian mansion before demolition. His ‘Lost Heritage’ website records the lost houses of England and is well worth exploring http://www.lostheritage.org.uk

Thank you for reading. Do get in touch with any thoughts – there is a comments box at the foot of the page.

The National Museum of Wales owns two fine oil paintings of Margam House, viewed from the north and the south, completed sometime around the turn of the 17th century. A closer look reveals a substantial garden pavilion, known as the Banqueting House, at a little distance from the house. Margam’s mansion has been remodelled a number of times, and the Banqueting House too has seen some changes: it was relocated in the 19th century and survives today as the facade of a very imposing  cottage.

The Banqueting House at Margam was probably built by Sir Edward Mansell, 4th baronet (1637-1706), and was still new and fashionable enough to make a big impression when the Duke of Beaufort and his train stayed at Margam on the Duke’s Progress through Wales in 1684. Thomas Dineley accompanied the Duke and kept an illustrated journal: he records that on Saturday 16 August the party were conducted to the ‘Summer Banquetting-house’ which he described as symmetrical and ‘after ye Italian’ with ‘excellent sculpture’. Inside an ‘infinity of Dutch and other paintings [made] a lustre not to be imagined’. The floor was of marble from Mansell’s own quarries in Wales, and was richly designed in ‘black, red, mixt and white’ stone. The Banqueting House has long been attributed to Inigo Jones, but there seems little evidence, and Dineley makes no mention of an architect.

Bishop Pococke, the constant traveller and diarist, reached Margam in September 1756, and saw the ‘very fine summer house’. He described the interiors as having a fine walnut staircase with balusters carved as Corinthian pillars, an inlaid floor, and a ‘wainscot carved and gilt’. He also admired the floor of the entrance which was paved with ‘very beautiful’ marble from the ‘quarries of Gower’.

The Banqueting House was probably taken down in the late 18th century when Thomas Mansel Talbot (1747-1813) demolished the old mansion, although he continued to maintain and develop the park and gardens as a pleasure ground to visit from his new home at Penrice. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803-1890) built the Margam Castle that we see today a generation later, and it is he who is credited with re-erecting the facade in its current position at the entrance to the walled garden in around 1837 (neither cottage nor walled garden appear on an estate map of 1814). The rather smart cottage became home to the gardener, and over time the building became known as the Temple of the Four Seasons, after the statues that were installed later in the century (although there is an argument that the statues are not actually representations of the seasons).

A number of 19th century gardening magazines featured the gardens at Margam, but it is curious that the temple was seldom noted, although visitors did tend to be sidetracked by the ancient Chapter House and the late 18th century orangery, which measured over 100m in length. There is a rare mention of the structure when the ‘front of the gardener’s house’ was admired in 1861.

The ‘interesting fragment’, with the statues in situ, was noted in 1909, but by then it seems to have been allowed to decline: old postcards show it covered with climbing plants and slowly disappearing into the surrounding shrubbery. It is no surprise to learn that it became known locally as Ivy Cottage.

Margam was purchased by the local authority in the 1970s, and opened to the public as a country park. In 2011 experts began to look for a sustainable use for the grade I listed building as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded restoration of the park. It was decided to restore the cottage as a holiday let, and project architect John Malaiperuman drew up plans. The historic front was repaired and conserved, and the Victorian cottage behind it renovated using traditional materials.

Margam Country Park is fascinating and full of interest, especially the amazing orangery – which is a tale for another day. Meanwhile, you can learn more here http://www.margamcountrypark.co.uk/15996

For more on the holiday let see https://www.holidaycottages.co.uk/cottage/14865-ivy-cottage-at-margam-country-park

High in Hampshire stands this imposing monument. It marks the resting place of a heroic horse, which managed not only to survive a leap into a deep pit, rider intact, but went on to win a great race the following year. That rider was Paulet St John (1704-1780) of Farley Chamberlayne. Alongside his sporting exploits, he found time to be a Member of Parliament and Mayor of Winchester, and was rewarded in 1772 when he became Sir Paulet St John, baronet.

But to go back forty years to 1733: when out ‘a foxhunting’ St John misjudged the terrain and found himself leaping into a chalk pit which was 25 feet deep. Somehow, neither man nor mount was injured, and the horse went on to win the Hunters’ Plate at Winchester the following year. The tale, as told on the monument, is that St John celebrated his lucky escape by entering the horse in the race under the name of ‘Beware Chalk Pit’, although a diligent writer in the Sporting Magazine of 1840 searched back in the records and concluded that the horse was actually better known as a chestnut called (unimaginatively) Foxhunter.

Exact dates for the death of the horse, and the erection of what became known locally as ‘the ‘Horse Monument’, seem to be lost. The mound on which it stands is thought to be Bronze Age, but with modern interventions, and it was once the site of a beacon. Most sources suggest the monument was built in 1795, but as this was 15 years after St John died it must be earlier, and almost certainly before 1772, as the inscription does not record St John’s baronetcy. On Taylor’s 1759 map of Hampshire the site is marked as ‘Beacon Hill’, but no building is indicated (although frustratingly this doesn’t mean it wasn’t there). However by 1791 when Milne’s map of the county was made, ‘Beacon Hill’ is shown complete with a building on the summit. By the time the 1st series Ordnance Survey map was published in the 1810s the building had become known as the ‘Farley Monument’.

In 1863 the monument was described as ‘somewhat dilapidated’ and it was covered with graffiti as a result of ‘vulgar Vandalism’ (presumably it had stood strong against the weather, because of course in Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen…). It was restored by the Rt Hon Sir William Heathcote, Bt, of Hursley in 1870, and it seems that it was actually more of a rebuild than a repair. In 1846 it was described as a ‘miniature pyramid’ and an engraving published in 1861 (above) shows a cube with a pyramid roof, much simpler and squatter in form than the current structure. A most unexpected source, of which more later, described it in 1848 as ’20 feet high’, whereas the present pyramid reaches over 32 feet (10m).

Post-restoration, the cube base had disappeared and an elegant elongated pyramid had appeared in its place. There are porches on each face: one contains an entrance and the other three are blank. Inside a room was constructed so ‘way-farers and picnic parties may rest and be thankful’. Heathcote replaced the original inscription with two plaques (one inside, one on the exterior), adding for posterity his own role in the building:

UNDERNEATH LIES BURIED
A HORSE
THE PROPERTY OF PAULET ST JOHN ESQ
THAT IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 1733 LEAPED
INTO A CHALK PIT TWENTYFIVE
FEET DEEP A FOXHUNTING
WITH HIS MASTER ON HIS BACK.
AND IN OCTOBER 1734 HE WON THE
HUNTERS PLATE ON WORTHY DOWNS
AND WAS RODE BY HIS OWNER
AND ENTERED IN THE NAME OF
“BEWARE CHALK PIT”
—–
THE ABOVE BEING THE WORDS OF
THE ORIGINAL INSCRIPTION
WERE RESTORED BY THE RT HON.
SIR WILLIAM HEATHCOTE BARONET
SEP.  A. D. 1870

The monument was nicely summarised by John Rayner in the 1937 Shell Guide to Hampshire as a ‘strange manifestation of the English spirit, combining hippo mania and the almost invariably successful grandeur of follies’.

The monument needs regular maintenance. It was restored in 1950, and again at the beginning of the current century, when the question of whether it was actually an equine mausoleum (which it had been called since at least 1798), was raised. A basic investigation found no trace of the horse, but it did confirm that the building had been constructed in ‘two phases’. This restoration involved stripping off the old render and removing and replacing the decayed outer skin of brickwork. Once rebuilt the pyramid was re-rendered with lime mortar and painted. In 2014 further renovation and repainting was required to keep the monument looking its best. Since the early 1970s the surrounding land has been a country park with the grade II listed monument dominating the landscape.

But to return to the unlikely source of the measurement of the tower: in 1848 a Geometry and Mechanics examination paper for the Winchester Diocesan Training School, asked the following question: ‘The “Horse Monument” on Farley Mount is a pyramid of brick-work 20 feet high, built upon a mound 30 feet high; supposing the materials to weigh 8 tons, how many units of work were expended in raising them from the foot of the mound to their present position?’

If that’s too taxing, have a listen to a brief 1937 clip about the folly on Pathé News. Having sneaked Professor Henry Higgins into the text earlier, he would surely have approved of the clipped pronunciation of “Hempshire” https://www.britishpathe.com/video/horse-monument/query/Farley

The fabulous colour photos used here are all courtesy of John Malaiperuman, the conservation architect who led the 2014 restoration. You can see more of his work here http://johnmal.com/farley-mount/

For Farley Mount Country Park  https://www.visit-hampshire.co.uk/things-to-do/farley-mount-country-park-p1414861