Searching for an image of the Egyptian Spring, a garden ornament at Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, the Folly Flâneuse found a picture postcard from the early years of the 20th century. But instead of the usual cheery message to a friend, the back of the card promised palatable prizes. So why was a folly being used to promote foodstuffs?

(Please indulge this brief diversion – we will return to the garden ornament in due course…)

Food manufacturers Symington’s were innovators in the field of customer promotions. As well as branded giveaways such as books of needles, thimbles and stamp books, the company produced picture postcards and asked shoppers to send them on to their friends.

The friend would then visit the grocer and ask for Symington’s ‘Table Delicacies’ in the hope of finding one of the yellow prize vouchers which were slipped into randomly selected products. The voucher entitled the holder to rewards such as a ‘box of samples’, or the latest cookery book. There were further rewards for those who recruited new customers via the postcard promotion.

The Folly Flâneuse was disappointed to discover that the campaign did not take follies as an overall theme, and the Egyptian Spring was possibly chosen for the marketing campaign because around the turn of the 19th century Symington’s claimed to be one of the first manufacturers to ‘promote the benefits of a healthy diet with their Egyptian food range’. The only other topographical card found to date featured a scene in Ceylon – presumably because Symington’s sold tea. Other cards had a more overt message:

After going off at that tasty tangent, we must get back to the garden ornament that started it all: the Egyptian Springs at Lower Hartwell.

It was commissioned by Dr John Lee (1783-1866) of Hartwell House as a garden ornament over a natural spring, and built in around 1850-1851 to a design by Joseph Bonomi junior (1796-1878)

Lee had a museum of Egyptian antiquities in the house and he had the well decorated with hieroglyphics, including a cartouche with characters that spell out (Queen) Victoria:

The building also had a Greek inscription, taken from Pindar’s First Pythian Ode, which translated as ‘Water, of all the elements is the best’. Early accounts of the Egyptian Springs suggest that this quotation was chosen because Lee was an advocate of temperance.

An account of 1912 states that inside the building there were carved lists of ‘celebrated men who were temperance reformers’. The author surmised that it was these unpopular temperance principles that led to the neglect of the temple after Lee’s death in 1866. By 1903, when the postcard below was sent, the building was looking pretty shabby.

By 1981 the building was described as looking ‘like a well-vandalized bus shelter’. Happily it was restored that same decade after Richard Broyd’s Historic House Hotels group rescued Hartwell House and turned it into a hotel. The spring and other garden features were restored under the supervision of architect Eric Throssel.

To end on a sweet note: Barbara Jones called the Egyptian Springs a ‘trifling curiosity’.

Although no longer in family ownership, Symington’s are still manufacturing today, so in return for this 21st century promotion the Folly Flâneuse awaits her box of ‘table delicacies’.

Hartwell House was given to the National Trust in 2008. The grounds are open to hotel guests only, but the Egyptian Springs can be found by continuing along the lane past the hotel entrance https://www.hartwell-house.com/

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