In 1934 a local paper published a ‘Cleveland Ramble’ featuring a walk around Kirkleatham village. The author looked across the park to the ‘elaborate castellated pigeon-cote’ which was described as a ‘startling example’ of the extravagant ‘pseudo Gothic craze’ of the later 18th century. Only a couple of decades after this account was published the castellations were gone, and the pigeon cote was cracked and crumbling, and soon to disappear.

In 1808 Kirkleatham was praised for both its ‘various natural beauties’ and the ‘many decorations art has furnished it with’. The pigeon cote was one of the most striking of these ornaments, with a circular central tower and linking walls radiating out to three smaller turrets. Sadly no images of the folly before it began its decline have been found, but the Ordnance Survey maps illustrate the unusual plan.

The building’s early history seems to be lost, and although a document in the family archive cross-references an account book for work on the estate, that ledger does not seem to survive. The pigeon cote was most likely commissioned by Charles Turner (1726-1783), who lived at Kirkleatham after his father inherited the estate in 1757. No architect is named, although John Carr of York, who remodelled the house at Kirkleatham in the 1760s, is a possible contender. We do have a terminus post quem for the pigeon cote of around 1775, as it is not shown on an estate map of 1774.

The Kirkleatham estate passed through various families until the middle of the 20th century. The contents were then dispersed and, after attempts to find a use failed, the fabric of Kirkleatham Hall was auctioned as building materials in 1954.

Although promises were made to protect the historic structures on the estate, the pigeon cote and temple, admired by the 1934 rambler as an ‘exquisite little pavilion’, survived for less than a decade before they too were pulled down. The arable field surrounding the pigeon cote now covers the site of the building, with not a trace remaining above ground.

Happily there are still many reasons to visit Kirkleatham. The Free School of 1709 houses the Kirkleatham Museum, and the almshouses called Turner’s Hospital and the church with its adjoining Turner Mausoleum are both fascinating structures (there’s limited public access to the interiors, but they can be admired from the footpath).

The walled garden has been restored and continues to develop, and a wander around the village reveals the elegant stables and a number of other fascinating structures – look out for information boards and maps around the village. Here’s a taster…

Thanks to David Winpenny for introducing me to the archive of Peter Burton’s photographs. Burton (1927-2014) took many of the images which illustrated the Shell Guides that were produced in the mid-20th century. Burton was commissioned to write the North Yorkshire volume by the editorial team of John Piper and John Betjeman, but the project was cancelled before he could complete his research. He eventually published his material as North Yorkshire: a Guide in 2006. Thanks also to Burton’s friend and fellow photographer Harland Walshaw for permission to use images from the collection.

For the Kirkleatham Walled Garden https://kirkleathamwalledgarden.co.uk

And for more on the Kirkleatham Museum https://redcarcleveland.co.uk/enjoy/kirkleatham-museum/

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In 1938 John Betjeman wrote a feature on ‘Gentlemen’s Follies’ for Country Life magazine. In it he noted a number of well-known follies, including the then very new tower built by Lord Berners at Faringdon, close to where Betjeman lived. He also mentioned another local folly, a tower in the village of Woolstone (then Berkshire, now Oxfordshire). So whilst the house above doesn’t look much like a folly, it does have a great folly story attached.

Betjeman described the folly as ‘a red-brick house, four storeys high, one room thick, and without a staircase’. The tale behind it is of the ‘tower of spite’ variety – according to Betjeman the builder intended to construct a house overlooking Woolstone Lodge, the squire’s garden, in the belief that ‘if his house was higher than the squires, he would be squire himself’. The builders (for there were two) soon ran out of cash and the project was abandoned.

A village history written by John Hadow in 1975 elaborates on the story. Woolstone Lodge was home to George Butler who owned the White Horse Inn (named for the chalk figure at nearby Uffington) where Alexander Noake was the tenant. Butler and Noake are said to have fallen out, and Noake began to build the tower so he and his brother William could look down on the lodge. The 1871 census records confirm that Alexander Noake was the innkeeper and also farmed 36 acres, whilst his brother William Noake was a builder.

It was presumably William Noake and his men who constructed what is now known as Tower House. There is no disputing the date it was erected for 1877 is picked out in coloured bricks, as are the brothers’ initials A.N. and W.N. Village tradition has it that the Butler family said this stood for ’A Nuisance’ and ‘Worse Nuisance’.

Butler had the last laugh as the Noakes were declared bankrupt before the tower was complete. Butler bought the ‘newly-erected three-storied dwelling house in an unfinished state’ at the liquidation sale in June 1879.

Betjeman mentioned the Tower House again in the 1949 Murray’s Guide to Berkshire which he co-edited with John Piper. Writing about Woolstone, the ‘most perfect of Berkshire villages’, Betjeman admitted that time had mellowed the brick tower, but concluded it was ‘ugly’. Nikolaus Pevsner didn’t think it worthy of a mention in his 1966 volume on Berkshire.

The tower still stands, but has lost its folly status having been extended to become a sizeable home. Much as the Folly Flâneuse admires Sir John Betjeman, she can’t agree that the building is unattractive, although it certainly stands out in a village of more conventional cottages of timber, chalk-brick and thatch. The White Horse, very much in the vernacular, is still going strong.

Tower House is a private residence, but can easily be seen from the road through the village.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the bottom of the screen if you would like to share any thoughts or comments.

On high ground above Creech Grange, near Wareham in Dorset, stands a battlemented and pinnacled arch which looks like the entrance to an estate. But no road passes through it, and the structure exists simply to catch the eye and ornament the landscape.

The arch was built by Denis Bond (1676-1747) to terminate a vista from his Creech Grange home. From the arch he could look back to his mansion, and in the other direction was a view out to sea. It was designed by Francis Cartwright, and his original design, dated 1740, is in the collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In the mid-20th century the arch was a popular subject for artists. Edwin Smith, best known as a photographer, made an engraving of the folly, and John Piper’s photographs of the folly are in the collection at Tate, as are a number of photo’s by Paul Nash.

Nash (1899-1946) had spent holidays in Dorset as a child and had lived in Swanage in the early 1930s, including the period when he researched and wrote the Dorset volume of the Shell Guides, published in 1936. In September 1937 his hosts were the Barnards of Furzebrook House, and they drove him to see Creech Arch. He was fascinated by the ‘utterly mad gateway’ and took lots of photographs with a camera his wife had bought him (his ‘new toy’ John Piper called it). He also painted a wonderful watercolour, Folly Landscape, which featured in his solo show at London’s Leicester Galleries in 1938. It was originally owned by Nash’s fellow artist (and briefly student of his brother John) Enid Marx, and is now in the collection of Bristol Art Gallery.

Writing about the watercolour in Country Life that year, Nash described the arch as a ‘true folly in that it emphasises, in every feature, its absolute uselessness’. Nash loved the lonely setting of the tower, and its ‘wild privacy’, and told his wife Margaret that he had ‘stalked’ the folly whilst trying to capture it on film and on paper.

At this time Nash was on the look out for a folly to paint. He had been commissioned by Shell to paint one for the Visit Britain’s Landmarks series of advertising posters which were displayed on the company’s trucks delivering petrol across the country. Nash admired the ingenuity of the Shell campaigns: ‘their customers being a motoring population, the […] display of posters is confined to lorries’. But despite his interest in the Creech Arch, he decided to depict nearby Clavell’s Tower at Kimmeridge, leaving the arch to ‘Advertising Artist’ John S. Anderson, about whom little is known.

The folly is now in the care of the National Trust and continues to catch the eye and enliven the landscape.

For Clavell’s Tower see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/steeple-folly-the-black-tower-clavell-tower-dorset-fiction-and-fact/

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome: please scroll down to the foot of the page to comment.

APOLOGIES to regular readers that your email alert failed to arrive last week, but you received a double post this week (you may need to click on both titles in your email). Hopefully the technical glitch is now resolved and normal service will be resumed next week.

Close to the little village of Dinton, near Aylesbury, stands an imposing 18th century folly called Dinton Castle. 250 years after it was first built it shot to fame on the TV show Grand Designs. But to mark the 200th post on these pages, the Folly Flâneuse intends to enjoy a Dinton Folly of a very different kind.

In 2013 Laurie Kimber was pondering what to do with a field that he owned. Retired, and with time on his hands, he decided to plant a vineyard. He named his first sparkling wine Dinton Folly, partly in homage to nearby Dinton Castle, and partly as a ‘nod to the idea of taking on such a project later in life’.

Before the celebrations begin, perhaps a quick look at Dinton Castle. It was built by Sir John Vanhattem* (1724-1787) of Dinton Hall as an eye-catcher, banqueting house, and repository for his mineral collection. The foundation stone was laid in 1769, and there was great excitement amongst antiquarians when human remains and ancient artefacts were unearthed during the building works.

The folly was designed to look like a ruined castle from the outside, although there were rooms inside for picnics and parties. Sir John died in 1787 and the next generation did not share his interest in the folly. By 1796 it was falling into disrepair, with a visitor in that year noting the building ‘representing the remains of a castle, in w[hi]ch has been a room to entertain company’. Sadly the tourist concluded that ‘it is now fast becoming a real ruin’.

This decay continued, but what had become a romantic ruin attracted the attention of artists in the 20th century:

Edward McKnight Kauffer painted Dinton Castle for one of the large posters displayed on Shell’s fleet of petrol delivery lorries in the 1930s;  and John Piper painted it at the request of Roger White, Secretary of the Georgian Group, in 1985, and the work was then auctioned to raise funds for the heritage charity. Piper also produced a lithograph based on the painting. But not everyone found the folly so enchanting, and a photo taken for the National Monument Record in 1944 is annotated rather dismissively with the caption ‘a sham castle built to improve the view from someone’s drawing room in the 18th century’.

Dinton Castle’s importance was recognised in 1951 when it was first listed as a building of special architectural and historic interest, but it continued to crumble. Some remedial work was carried out by the local authority in the first decade of the present century, but the folly remained an empty shell until Spanish architect Jaime Fernandez bought the property in 2016, and set about creating a family home from the ruin.

The project was featured on the popular Grand Designs TV show, generating a huge amount of press interest, as well as some argument between those who saw a dream home, and those who preferred the folly’s former ‘decrepit glory’ (to borrow a phrase from John Piper). The grade II* building changed hands in 2021.

The Folly Flâneuse will now enjoy a glass, and then get back to fossicking for follies.

For more on Dinton Castle, including the opportunity to stay in the folly, visit https://www.dintoncastle.com

You can buy Dinton Folly wine https://dintonwines.com from BeerGinVino (does what it says on the tin/bottle) in nearby Haddenham https://beerginvino.com. The Folly Flaneuse’s ramblings are fuelled by good coffee, and Norsk in Haddenham provided this along with an excellent celebratory cinnamon bun https://www.norsklifestyle.com

* sometimes van Hatten or Vanhatten.

Thank you to readers old and new, and to everyone who has helped in any way since the tentative beginnings of this website almost four years ago. Especial thanks to four people: my ‘Uncouth Companion’, who is seldom seen but is ever-present and ever-appreciated; Mike Cousins, aka the Garden Historian, whose contributions are invaluable; and Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp who have inspired me since I picked up their first book on follies many years ago. As ever, comments are most welcome – please scroll down the page to get in touch. Cheers!

John Piper’s paintings of follies and garden buildings are well-known, but less familiar are his ceramics decorated with architectural features, including a series of ‘curly dishes’ with his wonderful whimsical interpretations of 18th century designs for rustic follies.

In 1982 gallerist Dan Klein extended his space in London’s Belgravia and that October the opening exhibition featured ceramics by Quentin Bell. Bell worked with an assistant and materials provided by the Fulham Pottery, and the aim was to show the result when ‘contemporary artists are invited to turn from canvas to ceramics’. Next in line was John Piper, who had also been invited to exhibit works in this less familiar medium. In the summer of 1982 he created around 200 ceramic pieces at his home at Fawley Bottom, near Henley on Thames. 

Piper had some experience of creating pots, having previously collaborated with the potter Geoffrey Easton, who offered ‘advice and encouragement’ for this new project. But it was the young Jean-paul Landreau, recruited by the Fulham Pottery whilst on his summer break from studying at Harrow College of Art, who helped Piper realise his designs. Quentin Bell saw the work in the studio, and his first thought was ‘heavens how thoroughly John has enjoyed himself’. Piper, then 79 but described as ‘full of youthful vigour and enthusiasm’, enjoyed working in this medium, finding it ‘awfully exciting to put something that looks dull in the kiln & see it come out all shiny hot & beautiful’.

The exhibition ran for just over two weeks in November 1982. ‘Piper’s Pots’ (as the alliteratively inclined Marylebone Mercury titled their account of the show) included ceramic obelisks, candlesticks, platters and dishes in a variety of styles – some abstract, and some figurative. A selection were decorated with architectural views, including a collection of ‘curly dishes’ designed by Piper, and named for the raised lobes which gave the dishes their unusual profile.

Four of the curly dishes featured rustic follies taken from an 18th century pattern-book which went by the snappy title of Grotesque architecture, or rural amusement : consisting of plans, elevations, and sections, for huts, retreats, summer and winter hermitages, terminaries, Chinese, Gothic, and Natural Grottos, Cascades, Baths, Mosques, Moresque Pavillions, Grotesque and Rustic Seats, Green Houses, &c. Many of which may be executed With Flints, Irregular Stones, Rude Branches, and Roots of Trees. The whole containing twenty-eight entire new designs, beautifully engraved on Copper Plates, with Scales to each. to which is added, a full explanation, in letter press, and the true method of executing them. The author was ‘William Wrighte, architect’, a man about whom even the great architectural historian Sir Howard Colvin admitted ‘nothing whatsoever is known’ (although there are at present scholars doing their very best to prove him wrong).

Wrighte’s pattern book contained a series of plates which landowners could peruse before instructing capable builders to erect something similar. The four which inspired Piper were a Winter Hermitage, a Gothic Grotto, a Rustic Seat to Terminate a View and, featured here, a Hermit’s Cell. The accompanying text tells that it was to be built of large stones and trunks of trees, with a thatched roof and a floor of small pebble stones or cockle shells.

This dish, catalogue no. 56 in the 1982 exhibition, was bought at the show by the (clearly very discerning) curator of Barnsley’s fine art collections. It can be seen on display at Cannon Hall Museum, a former country house a few miles from the town.

It’s not known if the then curator of Cannon Hall was aware that the estate had its own summerhouse with rustic tree-trunk columns. Although Cannon Hall and its surrounding gardens and pleasure grounds were sold to Barnsley Council in 1951, the wider estate, including the Deffer Wood summerhouse remained with the family.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse may be the ‘root house’ to which Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall ‘retired’ in 1778 to write verses and bring solace to his ‘harassed mind’. It is certainly a very tranquil retreat today.

Sadly the centuries old Fulham Pottery did not survive for long after these excellent exhibitions were held, and all that remains today is a grade II listed bottle kiln just off the New Kings Road. The Dan Klein Gallery operated for only a few years, although Klein (1938-2009) went on to have a distinguished career as a specialist in contemporary ceramics and glass.

Cannon Hall has the double attractions of a great collection (the Piper dish is just one item in an important display of ceramics) and a lovely designed landscape. Until 30 October 2022 you can also see some wonderful family portraits which are being shown in public for the first time – including a depiction of dapper root house retiree Walter Spencer Stanhope.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse is accessible via permissive paths, thanks to Cannon Hall Estates. Its location is not widely publicised (to deter vandals) so it’s advisable to do some research before visiting.

For more on Cannon Hall and the exhibition https://www.cannon-hall.com/spencer_stanhope

Jean-paul Landreau, Piper’s assistant on the project, is still making pots (see the comments below to hear from Jean-paul himself) http://www.jeanpaullandreau.com/english.php

There’s a curly dish featuring a Welsh castle in the collection of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley on Thames. Does anyone know the location of the others?

UPDATE March 2026: at the time of writing the Abbott and Holder Gallery in London has Piper’s working drawing for the ceramics based on Wrighte.

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In the middle of the 20th century books featuring the adventures of the Lockett children captured the imaginations of young readers. One title in particular appealed to the Folly Flâneuse: what ghastly goings-on could have taken place at the ‘half completed and abandoned tower’ known as Steeple Folly? And which real clifftop folly might have been the inspiration for it?

The author of this tale was Mary Evelyn Atkinson (1889-1974), who published as M.E. Atkinson. She was born in London, the daughter of a schoolmaster at Highgate School, but when a small child the family removed to Swanage in Dorset, where her father founded the Durlston Court Preparatory School in 1903. This county would provide the setting for the books in which Bill, Jane and Oliver Lockett roam, free from adult supervision, encountering one adventure after another.

Steeple Folly was published in 1950, and like the others in the series received a warm welcome in the press, with the Western Times writing that the ‘adventures of the Locketts never fail to enthrall’. Beautifully illustrated by writer and illustrator Charlotte Hough (1924-2008) the story, full of nursery teas, housemaids, and gymkhanas, was aimed at a middle-class readership: to the modern reader Atkinson comes across as a complete snob, letting her protagonists patronise the servants and sneer at children who are schooled at ‘some rotten little local outfit’. And to make matters worse she doesn’t even approve of follies! With a rather limited vocabulary she calls the tower ‘that absurd erection’, ‘absurd Steeple Folly’, ‘that stone absurdity’ and, in case anyone has missed her point, adds that at close range the ‘the folly looked positively immense- but just as absurd as ever’.

The folly is largely incidental to the plot, which won’t be explored further in case anyone wishes to read the story, but the Folly Flâneuse wondered what genuine hilltop tower might have inspired Steeple Folly. The most obvious suggestion is the Clavell Tower, aka Kimmeridge Folly, on the Dorset coast which Atkinson would have known as it is only 10 miles or so from Swanage, near the hamlet of Steeple. It is close to landmarks that feature in the book, such as the famous Blue Pool, and like Steeple Folly it is perched on an eminence with extensive views. To be clear: this is pure supposition, but it does give the Folly Flâneuse an excuse to feature this marvellous building.

The tower was built as an observatory, or belvedere, by Revd John Clavell (c.1760-1833) of Smedmore House in 1830. It continued to be a seaside retreat for his heirs, the Mansel family, and in 1852 the cannon that surrounded the tower were fired and flags hoisted to mark a family wedding. Later it served for a period as a coastguard look-out shelter, but meanwhile the soft cliffs of the Dorset coast were slowly eroding and edging ever closer to the tower.

By 1926 the tower itself was deteriorating, and in that year vandals were prosecuted for ‘dislodging and throwing down stones of which the tower is built’. In 1948 the artist John Piper wrote an essay on ‘The Nautical Style’ in which he admired the ‘absolutely sound’ condition of the ancient chapel on St Alban’s Head, in Dorset. He compared this to the Clavell Tower: ‘ a pretty but pathetic attempt at folly building on the coast, six hundred years younger than the Romanesque chapel, but crumbling to bits’.

A 1959 article in Country Life reported that the ruined Clavell Tower was now dangerously close to the edge of the cliffs. It was the tower and the adjacent perilous precipice that the author P.D. James chose as one of the settings for her 1975 murder-mystery The Black Tower, in which her fictional folly has a rather gruesome history. The tower has subsequently appeared on the cover of various editions of the book, as well as playing itself in the 1985 TV adaptation.

The tower continued to moulder until the end of the 20th century, when the Mansels of Smedmore set up the Clavell Tower Trust and took advice from English Heritage. After much analysis and discussion it was agreed that the only option was to dismantle the folly and rebuild it further inland.

This was beyond the means of the Clavell Tower Trust, and a conversation was started with the Landmark Trust to see if they could take on the project and rebuild the tower as a holiday let. The charity’s trustees were understandably concerned about the complexity of the process, but in 2002 gave ‘cautious acceptance’ to the plans. With Heritage Lottery Funding in place to augment funds from a public appeal, and donations from a vast number of charitable trusts, work began in 2006, and the first of many eager guests arrived in August 2008.

Visit the Landmark Trust’s website for details of visiting the tower on open days in September, or to find out about staying in this fabulous folly https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/news-and-events/upcoming-events/clavell-open-day-22/

And for a full history of the tower, including the restoration, see the Landmark Trust’s excellent history album https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/about-us/history-albums/#C

John Piper’s essay was first published in 1938 but revised in 1948 for inclusion in the anthology Buildings and Prospects. His photo’ of the deteriorating tower is in the collection of Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-8728-1-10-44/piper-photograph-of-clavell-tower-kimmeridge-wareham-dorset

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Horton Tower, also known as Sturt’s Folly, is one of those enigmatic erections whose history is vague and usually explained in sentences that begin ‘said to have been…’. What is not in question is its magnificence: seven stories of red brick soaring skywards in the middle of a field. 

Many sources will tell you it was built in 1750, a few give a date of 1700, and Pevsner amongst others says 1726. All are agreed that it was built by Humphrey Sturt, but just to complicated matters there was a Humphrey Sturt senior (1687-1740), and his son Humphrey Sturt junior (1724-1786).

The tower was there by 1765 when ‘Horton Observatory’ was marked on Taylor’s Map of Dorset, published in that year, and a coloured vignette appeared on the 1795 edition of the map (above). Over the next couple of decades it is mentioned by the occasional tourist who passed by, but seldom with any further detail. The only account that gives any description is that of the historian Edward Gibbon: he saw the tower in 1762 and admired the ‘elegant turret 140 feet high’, but complained that the estate was in ‘no order’, and the tower used as a granary.

It seems unlikely that Humphrey Sturt junior would neglect such a wonderful tower only a decade or so after building it, so 1750 seems wrong, and it is equally unlikely that Humphrey Sturt senior built a tower when he was 13, so by deduction 1726 seems the most likely date, although the source for that date remains elusive. Thomas Archer has been suggested as the architect, but again evidence seems hard to find. What we do know is that the vast tower quickly became known as ‘Sturt’s Folly’.

One local story is that Sturt built the tower to overlook the Earl of Shaftesbury’s adjacent estate at Wimborne, the two men being said to be ‘at variance’. If there is any truth in this tale, then the Ashley-Cooper family must have secretly admired the lofty building, for they bought Sturt’s estate in the late 18th century and left the tower standing.

This is prime hunting country, and the tower would have been used to view the hunt and take refreshments, as well as being an ornament to Sturt’s deer park, which also featured a large piece of water (now lost). At the end of the 18th century the folly was put to a very different use by the Royal Ordnance: lofty towers across the country were used for the huge trigonometrical survey that allowed highly accurate maps to be produced. As the 19th century progressed the tower remained a focus for the hunt, with the East Dorset Hounds and other packs meeting at the building.

By the start of the 20th century the building was falling into disrepair, and falling out of fashion. In 1906 Sir Frederick Treves published a celebration of his birth county called Highways and Byways in Dorset. Treves was better known as a surgeon specialising in appendectomy, and is credited with saving the life of Edward VII in 1902. It seems fair to say that he would have liked to remove Sturt’s Folly, as he described it thus: ‘The only blot on the landscape is the nightmare tower of Horton, built for an observatory, and now happily falling into decay.’

In January 1947 the National Trust’s James Lees-Milne and Eardley Knollys went to look at the tower at the request of the Earl and Countess of Shaftesbury, who wished the charity to take on the care of the tower.  ‘Only a calcined beam or two’ was left of the interior, and concluding it was ‘rather ugly’, the pair concluded that it was ‘best not to accept it’.

The tower soon shrugged off this insult, and found a new role as a film star. In 1967 it featured in the film adaptation of Dorset boy Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Sergeant Troy (a rather dashing Terence Stamp) is filmed galloping away across the field with the tower as a dramatic backdrop. Hardy would have known the tower, as he lived in nearby Wimborne Minster for two years. In that period he wrote Two on a Tower, in which the protagonists fall in love as they watch the stars from the top of  ‘a tower in the form of a classical column’. Horton Tower has been suggested as a model, but scholars have found evidence in his papers that the ‘two real spots’, which inspired Hardy, were the tower at Charborough Park, and the monument to Admiral Hardy on Black Down, both in Dorset.

Hardy would have sympathised with the difficulty in establishing a correct history for Horton Tower, as he was aware that historians couldn’t always agree. In Two on a Tower he described the mount on which his fictional tower stands: ‘The fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an old Roman Camp, – if it were not (as others insisted) an old English Castle, or (as the rest swore) an old Saxon field…’

Despite a grade II* listing in 1955, the tower continued to decay, and when it was described in the 1975 Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, it was as an empty shell.

In 1990 the tower was offered for sale, with the story being picked up by newspapers across the country (thanks to its lasting fame from the film role). An unexpected saviour appeared in 1991, when Vodafone was granted permission to use the tower as a transmission mast for mobile phone signal. As part of the deal the company consolidated the tower, and the conservation project was recognised with a Royal Town Planning Institute award in January 1995. The tower remains home to the transmitters, and is regularly upgraded.

The tower can be seen from miles around, but for a close-up try the adjacent public footpath.

View more of Christopher Gee’s work here https://christophergeepaintings.com

You can see John Piper’s mixed media view of the tower here https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/piper/horton-tower-dorset-1942-mixed-media/nomedium/asset/34203

You can see John Piper’s photographs of the tower here https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-8728-1-10-40/piper-photograph-of-horton-tower-in-dorset

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J.L Carr’s novel A Month in the Country won the Guardian Prize for Fiction in 1980. It is a short novel which tells the gentle and very moving story of two men re-establishing their lives after the horrors of serving in the First World War. It is a firm favourite of The Folly Flâneuse, and she was fascinated to discover recently that Carr was also an amateur artist, and his subjects were usually the buildings of his adopted county of Northamptonshire. His volumes of sketches and paintings include a number of architectural curiosities, accompanied by captions that reveal his warm sense of humour.

Joseph Lloyd Carr (but known as James, or Jim) was born in Yorkshire in 1912. His story has been told in some style by Byron Rogers but, in summary, he became a teacher and in 1951 settled in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Here, on Mill Dale Road, he established the Quince Tree Press, which published the distinctive little Pocket Books familiar from the most discerning bookshops. The subjects of these 16 page books include anthologies of poetry, a dictionary of extraordinary cricketers, and volumes of woodcuts; the best summary of the range is the QTP’s own: ‘there is a degree of unconventionality about all the productions’. The success of the press allowed Carr to retire from teaching and devote himself to publishing, writing and art (in which it should be noted he had no formal training).

In 1960 he began work on what he called A Northamptonshire Record. This series of paintings and sketches of houses, bridges, monuments, follies, and above all churches and church fittings would eventually be bound in 7 large volumes. Three garden ornaments illustrated by Carr are the Orangery at Barton Hall in Barton Seagrave, the Triangular Lodge at Rushton, and Bunkers Hill Farm on the Boughton Hall estate.

The works vary in quality from what Carr himself called a ‘quick and crude’ sketch, to much more finished works that are very good, and very much in the style of artists of the day such as John Piper and Kenneth Rowntree. Carr was a great admirer of Piper and one of his works is captioned ‘drawn while still inebriated by a visit to the Piper exhibition’ – strong words from a man who had been brought up in a Methodist household, where temperance was strictly upheld.

Carr was also a self-taught sculptor, and many of his pieces were on display in his garden. The relatively small town plot was laid out with paths winding between trees and shrubs, so that the visitor could never see far ahead, and statues suddenly appeared around corners. Sometimes the carvings (usually made from salvaged stone) had only a limited stay in the garden, and once they had developed a suitable patina Carr would place them in long grass in local churchyards for future church-crawlers to discover, saying ‘that’ll give ’em something to think about’.

J.L Carr died in 1994, and according to his wishes the seven volumes of A Northamptonshire Record were deposited in the Northamptonshire Archives. All of the works have been digitised, including his fine views of churches, and can be seen on the Visual Arts Data Service website. Make a coffee and have a good look https://vads.ac.uk/digital/collection/JLC/search

The Quince Tree Press continues under the direction of Carr’s family. Thanks to Bob Carr for permission to use these images from his father’s volumes of drawings http://www.quincetreepress.co.uk

For the background to this post The Folly Flâneuse is indebted to the biography of Carr by Byron Rogers The Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr, Aurum Press (2003)

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome: please scroll down to the comments box below to get in touch.

In 1947, the British Government decided to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with a Festival of Britain, scheduled to open 100 years to the day since the launch of the Great Exhibition, on 3 May 1951. The focus was an exhibition in London, and the area we now know as South Bank was chosen as the venue for the celebration of British achievements past, present and future. A little upriver at Battersea were the complementary Festival Pleasure Gardens. Whilst the tone on the South Bank was ‘intellectual seriousness’, at Battersea all was colour and whimsy, and a highlight was the sparkling grotto, sponsored by Schhh, you know who…

A site at Battersea comprising of ‘thirty-eight acres of allotments […] and a cricket pitch’ was chosen as the venue for the Pleasure Gardens. The project was overseen by James Gardner, a noted exhibition designer, who beat Oliver Messel to the job. He recruited designers, including Osbert Lancaster and John Piper, to help create the gay scene in ‘the English tradition of elegant follies’.

Gardner gave the commission for the proposed grotto to Guy Sheppard (1912-1990), a set and costume designer, who also created the site’s Riverside Theatre where Leonard Sachs presented ‘old-time Song-Saloon shows’. The company set up to run the Pleasure Gardens approached major companies for their support, the best remembered deal produced the famously wacky Guinness Clock, by design partnership Lewitt Him. Drinks manufacturer Schweppes were approached to sponsor the Grotto, perhaps suggesting some rather creative thinking by the team, as the festival had promised to be ‘a tonic to the nation’.

The Grotto consisted of chambers, representing the four elements of Wind, Fire, Earth and Water. In the ‘Temple of the Winds’ Sheppard engineered breezes blowing in from the four points of the compass, accompanied by appropriate sounds. So the north wind carried the tinkling of sleigh bells and the howling of wolves, whilst that from the east brought the chiming of temple bells. The south wind brought the sounds of the jungle, and the west the boom of fog horns to conjure up vast oceans. Completing the sensory experience were aromas wafted in on the moving air – pine from the north, flowers from the south, rich spices from the east, and seaweed from the west. These olfactory delights were provided by ‘Atkinsons’, presumably the long established Mayfair perfume house.

A ramp led to the ‘cave of Fire’, where a bridge carried visitors over what seemed to be the crater of a volcano that bubbled and boiled with molten lava, and next was the chamber dedicated to Earth, where carefully designed lighting shone on stalactites and glittering minerals, whilst a musical fountain glowed ‘pale phosphorescent blue’. Finally there was the ‘magical luminous world’ of Water, built as a coral reef where fish and sea creatures glowed in pools. Passing beneath a waterfall the visitor exited the ‘wonderfully eerie grotto’ in another part of the gardens. Echoing the 18th century experience of the beautiful and the sublime, visitors remembered being enchanted one moment, and then fearful the next as they passed from a gaily lit chamber onto an apparently rickety bridge over a fiery pit.

A note about historic grottoes also appeared in the guidebook. It mentioned Pope’s Grotto at Twickenham, Goldney’s Grotto in Bristol, and the grottoes in the parks at Wimborne St Giles, Stourhead, Pain’s Hill [sic] and Oatlands. One must wonder if this information came from Gardner’s friend Barbara Jones, also busy on both festival sites with ‘various capers’. At that date she was accumulating the information that would appear in Follies and Grottoes only 2 years later in 1953*.

This potted history concluded with a prominent plug for the sponsor: ‘But, as we see in the Pleasure Gardens, the spirit that built and enjoyed these grottoes, the cave-dweller in each of us, still Schweppervesces’ (Schweppes was at this date running an ad campaign with the slogan ‘Schweppervescence lasts the whole drink through’).

The Pleasure Gardens were scheduled to open with the main Festival site on 3 May 1951, one hundred years to the day since the launch of the Great Exhibition, but bad weather delayed the installation, and the gardens did not open until later in the month. The project was a great success with Country Life writing: ‘here is the festive spirit realised with a mixture of landscape, fantasy, flowers and fun which really delights’.

The grotto was a huge draw and visitors were happy to pay the additional 6d to enter (at the end of the 1951 season the proceeds of £9,300 were donated to the National Playing Fields Association). Celebrity visitors included the actor Douglas Fairbanks, and the Yorkshire cricket team, who called in for a visit before playing Surrey at the Oval (it was a draw). But surely the greatest praise came from the British Speleological Association (in brief: people who like caves), whose journal recommended that ‘all cave explorers make an effort to see this […] masterpiece of ingenuity’.

The initial estimate of visitor numbers was 6,000,000, and this figure was comfortably passed with 7,750,000 people enjoying the gardens in 1951. The gardens were originally to be dismantled at the end of the festival, but the public enthusiasm was such that it was agreed to keep them open for another two years, and legislation had to be passed to allow this. In 1952, the soon-to-be architectural historian John Harris found employment manning the entrance to the grotto, and recorded in his memoirs that the then operators were somewhat lacking in scruples, and that perhaps not all the entrance sixpences found their way to the management. In 1953 private operators took a 21 year lease on the gardens, which operated for a number of years before becoming run down, and tarnished by tragedy when a ride collapsed with fatalities in 1972. Thereafter the gardens were gradually diminished until little remained.

An exact date for the demolition of the grotto has not been found, and sadly few photos survive. What a wonderful, vivid experience it must have been. Sadly this post has been rather monochrome, and fails to do justice to the gardens, so to cheer everything up here is the joyous cover of the Festival Guide.

UPDATE February 2023: The Folly Flâneuse was absolutely delighted to hear from Peter Maggs who remembers visiting the Festival Pleasure Gardens on more than one occasion as a child. Here he is in the grotto, and his memories can be found in the comments section at the foot of the page.

* Gardner would continue to talk follies with Barbara Jones, and the second edition  of Follies & Grottoes, published in 1974, featured his drawing of the root house at Spetchley.

For the Guinness Clock see https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/Content/pdf/archive-factsheets/advertising/festival_clock.pdf

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This weekend the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Thinking of the events of 1939-45, the Folly Flâneuse was reminded of a wartime project to document the changing rural and urban face of Britain. At a time when the future seemed uncertain,  ‘Recording Britain’ commissioned artists to portray the country as it then was, creating a visual history for future generations.

The ‘Scheme for Recording the Changing Face of Britain’ was initiated by Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, soon after the outbreak of the Second World War. Financial support from the Pilgrim Trust enabled him to recruit artists for the project, which soon became known by the snappier title of ‘Recording Britain’*. Although the threat of destruction, or devastation, as a result of war was one of the stimuli to collect images of a life that might be lost, Clark and his Committee were also responding to an age of rapid change, when industrial and residential development was encroaching on the countryside. There was also a philanthropic aspect, as artists were seen to be struggling to make a living in wartime.

Many artists were commissioned, and the list includes some who went on to become very well-known, John Piper perhaps foremost, but there are others who are barely known today. The scenes they were asked to portray included castles and canals, townscapes and topiary, inns and industry, and all aspects of the British landscape in the early 1940s. In a move to boost patriotism and morale during the war, selections from the collection were exhibited at the National Gallery, London, and the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts organised provincial tours in conjunction with local arts groups.

Of the 1549 topographical works that were collected, a number of follies and landscape ornaments were included, and three are featured here: Freston Tower in Suffolk, the Pagoda at Alton Towers in Staffordshire, and the Dashwood Mausoleum in Buckinghamshire.

Freston Tower, overlooking the River Orwell in Suffolk, was the chosen subject of Russell Reeve (1895-1970), an artist who painted many Suffolk scenes. The tower had been standing since the 1570s, making it one of the oldest follies in Britain. Such tall coastal structures were seen as vulnerable, both as hinderances to British aircraft in a time of war, and as prominent objects to guide the enemy. Happily, the tower survives today and is a Landmark Trust property, available for lofty holiday lets.

A decade before she would publish Follies and Grottoes in 1953, Barbara Jones (1912-1978) chose to paint a view of the pagoda at Alton Towers in Staffordshire, one of many works she contributed to the scheme. Jones preferred the pagoda at Alton Towers, built in the early 1830s, to the more famous example at Kew, which she thought ‘a little pedestrian’. At Alton Towers, she later wrote, the ‘pagoda supports its winged roofs and bells on open lattice work of the most airy elegance’. Her ‘vivid’ watercolour of the pagoda was admired by the Yorkshire Post’s art critic when it went on display in Menston Methodist School, Yorkshire, in April 1945. Country houses and their parks were a focus for the project as there was a fear, ultimately justified, that many would be abandoned after the war, or become institutions. Alton Towers was not typical, as it had passed out of the family’s hands in the 1920s, and was operated as a pleasure ground by a local consortium. It was however requisitioned during the war, and returned in poor condition in 1951. A gradual restoration and development from that date eventually culminated in the hugely successful Alton Towers theme park.

The prominent mausoleum and eye-catcher on the West Wycombe estate in Buckinghamshire, was built in the 1760s for the Dashwood family. It was sketched for the project by Elliot Seabrooke (1886-1950), and remains today a striking feature of the landscape.

The Pilgrim Trust gave the collection to the V&A Museum, London, a partner since the early days of the project. The fabulous collection can be explored on their website https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?listing_type=&offset=0&limit=15&narrow=&extrasearch=&q=recording+britain&commit=Search&quality=0&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&before=&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch=

And there is an excellent book about the scheme, Recording Britain, edited by Gill Saunders https://www.vam.ac.uk/shop/recording-britain-110127.html

*actually a misnomer as Northern Ireland was not represented. Scotland was excluded and had its own ‘Recording Scotland’ project. Wales was represented by only a few works, and within England there was a distinct southern bias with Northumberland and Durham excluded entirely and only 3 works featuring Cumberland.