High above the Gisburn to Barrowford road a simple castellated tower dominates the skyline. It was built by Jonathan Stansfield in the late 19th century, but no-one is quite sure why, although there are of course the stories…

A modern plaque on the tower records that it was built in 1890, and it first makes an appearance, as the ‘Stansfield Tower’, on the Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1891-92. Stansfield is said to have built it so he could see Blackpool tower under erection, or alternatively to give a view into the Ribble Valley. Working without plans, he was apparently gravely disappointed when he found his tower was not high enough to see far at all, for the view was blocked by the mighty mass of Pendle Hill.

Another theory has it that it was built as an observatory for his son William, who was ‘a great student of astronomy’. Or was it a tribute to Stansfield’s first love who jilted him? A final no-nonsense answer is supposed to have come from Stansfield himself: ‘I have never drank or smoked in my life so I am taking this as my hobby.’

One of Stansfield’s contemporaries, the Rev. Gough, composed some lines on the tower that were published in Jesse Blakey’s Annals of Barrowford in 1929. The poem begins:

Friend Stansfield pleased his fancies
With Blacko Tower so high,
That draws admiring glances
From every passer-by.
E’en if no other token
His lasting fame secures,
His name will be outspoken
Long as that tower endures.

Though, like the men of bible,
Whose tower came to a stand,
He found himself unable
To finish all he planned;
More grace to him was given
Than to have had the will
To build right up to heaven
From Blacko’s stately hill.

Jonathan Stansfield was a ‘manufacturer and grocer’ according to the 1871 census return, and lived with his wife, children and a boarder in Back David Street in nearby Barrowford, an ordinary street of terraced houses. Did he really save enough money to build a tower just by abstaining from cigarettes and alcohol? The poem suggests that Stansfield was unable to complete the tower, and legend has it that the building project foundered when he went bankrupt. But Stansfield went bankrupt owing £2,300 to his creditors in 1873, and he didn’t die until 1894.  So did he bounce back with great success in the last twenty years of his life, enabling the construction of the tower? The 1890 Ordnance Survey map shows ‘Stansfield House’ close to the tower – was this his new home and the tower an eye-catcher in his garden? This very prominent tower keeps some of its history well hidden.

By 1933 the tower was described as ‘somewhat decrepit’ and in 1948 ‘an enterprise for the restoration of Blacko Tower’, as it was now known, was launched by Mr Frank Barritt of Colne. Parts of the tower had collapsed, only one of the castellations remained intact, and the floor of the viewing platform had rotted away. Local craftsmen gave their time, and with the help of the Scouts the tower was renovated. A plaque was erected which reads:

BUILT BY
J. STANSFIELD
1890
RESTORED 1950
PS.127.v.1.

It’s not clear if the original tower also carried the building date and this biblical reference, or if it was added during the restoration (Barritt was active in the Methodist church). The text it refers to reads:

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain,
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

A close look at the Ordnance Survey map shows that when first constructed the tower was in Yorkshire (but only just), although the settlement of Blacko was in Lancashire. The county boundary changes of 1974 ensured it was united with the village in the county of the Red Rose.

The tower is clearly visible from the road and from public footpaths, but stands on private land and visitors are not welcome. The folly is as inaccessible as its full history, but it remains a dramatic eye-catcher from miles round.

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High above Ashton, and visible from miles around, is the curious tower called Hartshead Pike. It was built in the 1860s to commemorate the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and to honour Queen Victoria on the occasion of her son’s marriage.

Going back in time, the hill is said to have been home to an ancient beacon, which was replaced in 1751 by a stone pinnacle bearing the legend ‘This Pike Was Re-built By Publick Contributions Anno Do 1751’. There was also a plaque bearing the polite instruction: ‘Look well at me Before You go, And See You nothing at me Throw’, a reminder that vandalism is nothing new.

By the time the writer John Aikin saw it at the end of the 18th century, the tower had become a ‘favourite and well-known object’ and was a popular resort for walkers. It was however already in a poor condition, with a ‘split from top to bottom near half a yard in width’. Aikin thought that ‘a few pounds laid out in repair’ would secure the structure for the century to come. But this was not to be, and the Pike continued to decline throughout the first half of the 19th century.

In autumn 1862 it was announced that the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, would be married to Princess Alexander of Denmark early the following year, and across the country committees were convened to decide how best to mark the occasion. Somewhat at the eleventh hour, the great and the good of Ashton met on 21 February (less than a month before the wedding), and the Mayor of the Manor, Samuel Lees, suggested that the ‘auspicious event’ be marked by the repair of Hartshead Pike. This idea was received with enthusiasm (hear hear), and plans were made to launch an appeal for funds.

First to subscribe was the Lord of the Manor, George Henry Grey, the 7th Earl of Stamford & Warrington, on whose land the tower was to be built. He also made a donation of twenty pounds and gave the stone for construction. The prominent civic figures and wealthier members of the community donated between 1 and 5 Guineas each, and those working men who could afford it gave 2/6d. It soon became apparent that rather than repairing the existing pike, which stood on poor foundations, a new tower was required and a number of designs were submitted. After careful consideration, the committee unanimously agreed to commission design number 3, by local architect John Eaton (1810-1876).

The foundation stone was laid on 17 September 1863 but progress was slow, and the funds inadequate. The committee met in April 1864 to discuss how to proceed, and Eaton was asked if it would be possible to modify the initial plans and finish the tower at the height it had then reached. Nothing was decided, and the tower was left unfinished. Letters to the local papers both attacked and defended Lees (party politics), and the situation dragged on until June 1868 when the Earl of Stamford & Warrington agreed that the land around the tower should become a recreational facility for the local area. He placed the ground in the hands of trustees, and gave the generous sum of 50 Guineas towards the project. The tower was eventually completed some time before the end of 1869.

The inscription from the collapsed earlier pike was relocated to the new tower, along with further inscriptions recording its history, and a plaque with the Grey family crest and motto A Ma Puissance (To My Power). A hart’s head weather vane is known to have topped the earlier pike, and this was either salvaged, or a copy was commissioned for the new tower, as seen in the postcard view above.

Over the next century the tower, high on the exposed hillside, continued to be hammered by hurricanes and hooligans, and remedial action was taken on a number of occasions to ensure its survival. In 1911 it was announced that the tower would be restored to ‘commemorate the Coronation of King George’,  but it was not until 1914 that work was completed, and by 1928 vandalism and a storm meant that yet another restoration was required. In the years leading up to the Second World War the tower was open to the public, and a small shop sold refreshments, but the door and windows were bricked up in the war years.

In September 2019 metal fencing was erected around the tower as it was once again crumbling and falling masonry posed a risk to the public, and in May 2020 there was good news when Tameside Council announced that £61,000 was to be spent restoring Hartshead Pike..

Work was almost complete when The Folly Flâneuse visited in Autumn 2020. Sadly the local pub was closed because of local Covid19 restrictions, as it has the most wonderful and enticing sign…

There’s a circular walk, cleverly described as a ‘hike to the pike’ here https://www.tameside.gov.uk/countryside/walksandtrails/hiketothepike.pdf

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Holme Island is a small island in Morecambe Bay. It sits close to the coast, not far from Grange-over-Sands in Cumbria (formerly Lancashire). The island was connected to the mainland by a causeway in the 19th century, by which date it was home to a rather special small estate.

In 1828 Holme Island was offered for sale, with the particulars stressing its value as the site ‘for a Villa’. The small estate was bought by a Warrington lawyer called John Fitchett, and he had a summer residence built to the designs of the Kendal architect George Webster. After Fitchett’s death the estate was advertised for sale, with the 1839 sales particulars describing the ‘newly-erected Ornamental Residence’ surrounded by glades, lawns, ornamental shrubs, alcoves and terraces.

The new owner was John Thompson, and in 1845 he commissioned Messrs Seward, a Lancaster foundry company, to cast ‘sixteen noble pillars in the Corinthian order’ which would form a circular temple. This ‘very beautiful specimen’ of iron-casting was seen by the citizens of Lancaster to reflect not only Thompson’s impeccable taste, but also the civic pride at being home to such superior metalworkers. The local paper reported that ‘When the pieces are put together the effect will be very fine, and reflect the highest credit on the skill of the good old town’. George Webster’s practice was extending the house for Thompson around this date, and the design of the temple is also attributed to that office.

Local tradition has it that the temple was ‘executed by Italian craftsmen’. This may refer to the lovely painted studies of Roman goddesses that decorated the interior of the dome.

By the time the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map was published in 1848 (surveyed 1845), the island had formal gardens, lawns, plantations, walks and a scattering of ornamental buildings including a ‘pleasure house’ and grotto. At the southern tip of the island was the temple, the elegant edifice raised on a mound and surrounded by a moat crossed by a bridge. Holme Island was described in 1860 as ‘a perfect marine paradise’ and the temple as ‘perfectly modelled after the temple of Vesta’. Like the original outside Rome, the Corinthian columns supporting a frieze decorated with garlands and skulls, although it is not an exact copy.

Holme Island is strictly private, accessed only by a private drive from the coastal road. The grade II listed temple is now hidden by trees.

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John Wilkinson (1728-1808) made his fortune in the iron industry in the second half of the 18th century. Such was his ardour for developing and innovating in his field, that he became known as ‘Iron-mad Wilkinson’, and that passion even included a plan to spend eternity encased in iron.

Wilkinson was born in 1728, and started his career in his father’s iron furnaces in Lindale and Backbarrow in Lancashire (now Cumbria), but ambition to learn more about the industry soon took him to the West Midlands. He established foundries there, moved in the same circles as great engineers such as James Watt, Matthew Boulton and Abraham Darby, and accumulated great wealth. He was admired for his industrial prowess, but also considered ruthless in business, and there were accusations that he had claimed the innovations of others as his own. He was proud of his success and the status it gave him: when establishing a works in north Wales, he stayed at an inn in Wrexham where he did a deal with the landlady to ensure the best room was always at his disposal – much to the annoyance of the aristocracy who were sent to lesser rooms, and visiting ladies who expected gentleman to be gallant and allow them the finest accommodation.

Over time Wilkinson bought estates near his works in Staffordshire and North Wales, but Lancashire remained his greatest love and in the 1770s he built a house called Castle Head (sometimes Castlehead) overlooking Morecambe Bay, close to the village of Lindale. At Castle Head he created a pleasure ground, converting ‘barren waste into beautiful gardens and shrubberies’. The estate took its name from a lofty hill which he landscaped with picturesque winding walks and rocky steps leading to a walled garden on the summit, where he grew fruit. Ever the engineer, he built walls and sluices to control the sea, and he was highly praised for reclaiming land from the marshy coastline. By 1789 it was reported that what ‘was once an entire bog is now nearly covered with verdure and grain’.

In 1783, when only in his mid-fifties, Wilkinson finished work on an area of the garden that was very important to him – the ‘Place designed to receive [his] Remains’. A cavity cut into the rock of the hillside, facing the house, housed six cast iron cases which had been made at his foundry. Here Wilkinson would be buried alongside ‘select friends’ who might wish to spend eternity with him. The ends of the iron coffins had doors so that wooden coffins could be slid inside, and then the iron coffin would be sealed and an inscription added. Trees and shrubs were planted around the unconventional mausoleum ‘which in Time will form a Grove’.

The trees had plenty of time to mature, as the ’eminent and opulent’ ironmaster lived on for more than two decades, dying at his Bradley estate at the age of 80 in 1808. Originally he had stated in his will that he wished to be buried without any ‘Parade or Pomp’ at whichever of his three estates he was then resident at: if at Brymbo he was to be buried in the Chapel; if at Bradley in his garden; and if at Castle Head in the ‘place I have there prepared for that purpose’. In a codicil however he changed his mind, and stipulated that his body was to be taken to Castle Head and buried in the ‘Iron Case’.

Tales of Wilkinson’s burial abound, and it is very difficult to sort fact from fiction. According to local legend the coffin in the garden turned out to be too small, so Wilkinson’s body rested in the garden until another could be delivered from the midlands foundry. That coffin then supposedly became stuck in the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay as it made the crossing, and the men had to wait for the tide to turn before they could haul it out. What is certain is that Wilkinson was given a funeral service in Lindale parish church and then by ‘order of his executors deposited in the gardens of Castle Head’ where the ‘iron pyramid’ was then erected. The inscription, in gilded letters, had been composed by Wilkinson himself, and was intended to read:

‘Delivered from persecution, malice and envy here rests John Wilkinson, Ironmaster, in certain hope of a better state and heavenly mansion, as promulgated by Jesus Christ, in Whose Gospel he was a firm believer. His life was spent in actions for the benefit of man and he trusts, in some degree, to the glory of God.’

A most unusual epitaph, but curiously that is not the wording on the monument today. It seems that Wilkinson’s family and executors quietly decided on a less strident version:

Wilkinson rested in peace at Castle Head for two decades whilst his natural children and his nephew squabbled over his will. Eventually, the ‘beautiful mansion house called Castle-Head’ was offered for sale in 1828. Someone must have decided that a corpse, even one encased in iron, was not a great attraction to a buyer, and Wilkinson’s body was quietly removed to a vault in the parish church on 16 August 1828. There Wilkinson was reunited with his wife who had requested a more conventional burial, and specifically ‘desired that her remains might not be put in an iron coffin’.

The obelisk is described in situ in 1848, and is clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map published in 1850, but Castle Head remained unoccupied for some years and whilst the ‘tenantless hall’ sat empty it seems that the obelisk toppled over. When Edward Mucklow, owner of a Dye Works in Bury, bought the estate he proposed moving the monument to a more public spot on the edge of his estate, near the road into Lindale village. A plaque on the monument records his munificence:

REMOVED FROM
CASTLEHEAD GARDENS
JUNE 1863 & RE-ERECTED BY
EWD MUCKLOW ESQR

A letter to the local paper suggests that Mucklow then sold the remaining iron coffins as scrap metal.

Mucklow died in 1906, and the Castle Head estate was put on the market the following year. With the centenary of Wilkinson’s death approaching there were moves to buy and restore the obelisk. A Wilkinson Memorial Fund was initiated, but progress was slow, and probably not helped by newspaper descriptions of the obelisk as ‘inartistic’ and ‘ugly’. It wasn’t until 1915 that the Westmorland Gazette could announce that the site had been secured. A small park was created around the monument, originally with a picturesque arrangement of large rocks, although they had disappeared by the middle of the century. Within two decades the obelisk was recorded as being in poor condition, but the outbreak of war meant that repair was delayed until the 1950s, when the Manchester branch of the Institute of British Foundrymen raised the necessary funds.

The obelisk was listed at grade II* in 1970, and photos from around this date show that it was again in poor condition and held together with metal bands. At that date the obelisk was a natural oxidised red in colour, with the plaque and the circular portrait in black with the face and lettering in gold. In 1984 funds were raised to enable a full-scale restoration at Dorothea Restoration’s works in Buxton, and in May 1985 a ceremony was held to mark its return to Lindale. At this date the column was painted black with the relief portrait face and lettering gilded.

By 2007 the obelisk was again in need of attention, with paint peeling off. A fundraising campaign in 2008, marking the 200th anniversary of Wilkinson’s death, allowed further restoration, leaving the obelisk a uniform black, with no gilding. Congratulations to all in this little village who have, for more than a century, ensured that this most interesting of monuments receives the constant attention it needs, and saved it from the scrapyard.

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