The tower on Leith Hill was erected in the 1760s by Richard Hull. The hillside wasn’t actually his property, but his home was nearby and he leased the plot from the landowners, the Evelyn family of nearby Wotton. It became a popular attraction and in 1790 it was said that the view from the tower was ‘esteemed equal, if not superior, to any in the kingdom’. Hull was so fond of his tower that he designated it as his mausoleum.

From the very start Hull, who lived at Leith Hill Place, intended the tower to be a public amenity to be enjoyed by ramblers and day-trippers. A plaque was placed above the entrance and, in summary, the Latin inscription recorded that the tower was built for the prospect, which Hull wished to be enjoyed by all.

Hull died in 1772 leaving an extraordinarily detailed will in which he gave some ‘further direction’ for his executors, setting out how he wished to be laid to rest. He desired to be buried in a very private ceremony, with only his servants present, ‘in a Grave made for me under my Tower on Leith Hill’. A plaque recorded his death as having taken place on 18 January 1772 and stated that he had purchased ‘Leith-hill Place’ for his retirement where he lived as a ‘true Christian and rural Philosopher’.

Soon after Hull’s death the tower was allowed to decay and, ‘accelerated by the hands of the mischievious’, the interior was stripped leaving the tower a shell. In 1788 the antiquarian and traveller William Bray told an audience how sorry he was to find that the tower was ‘already become a ruin’. Although the plaque on the tower gives a date of 1766, it has clearly been recut at some point (the stone has eroded but it appears to give the date of construction in a bizarre combination of Roman and Arabic numerals as MDCC66), and Bray gives the more likely date of 1763, which is corroborated by title deeds which mention the tower in 1765.

In the last years of the eighteenth century William Perrin of Tanhurst, who then owned Leith Hill Place, had the exterior of the tower ‘thoroughly repaired’. To stop further vandalism the lower room was filled with ‘lime and rubbish’, and the entrance walled up. He also raised the height of the tower to make it ‘still more conspicuous as a sea-mark’.

In 1864 William John Evelyn of Wotton added a staircase turret to the tower so that the views from the top could once more be enjoyed by what Barbara Jones called ‘county counters’. She didn’t specify just which shires are allegedly visible from the rooftop, but in 1899 it was suggested that ‘visitors with a glass’ could see twelve counties and a circuit of 200 miles.

In the later years of the ninetenth century tourists could also enjoy teas and ginger beer provided Mrs Skilton, the custodian of the tower. After 30 years in that post, aged 72, her sight was apparently so good that she could see the dome of St Paul’s, ships in the English Channel and Windsor Castle without a telescope. She also claimed that forty churches were visible from the top of the tower. There are countless picture postcards of the tower showing the many visitors who climbed the hill, but sadly no photographs have been found showing the kangaroos that Evelyn ‘set loose’ on Leith Hill, although they apparently ‘flourished for years till gradually exterminated by ruthless individuals’.

The tower also inspired the artist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), who could see it from his studio. He used it as a model in a number of works, including this watercolour of the ‘high lonely tower’ in Milton’s Il Penseroso

In 1922 the tower was offered for sale, and there were fears that public access would be lost. In March 1923 it was announced that ‘all lovers of rural Surrey’ would rejoice to learn that the tower, and five acres of land around it, were to be given to the National Trust, thanks to the generosity of Reigate businessman W. J. MacAndrew. The tower was restored in 1984 when workmen uncovered Hull’s tomb during the works.

Follies have appeared on stamps, stamp-books and coins, but this is the first example the Flâneuse has found of a folly on a sugar cube wrapper. At date unknown Tate+Lyle featured Leith Hill Tower on a wrapper which celebrated Surrey as the home of the Magna Carta. How many people idly stirred two lumps into their coffee without even noticing the handsome folly on the wrapper?

The tower can be climbed on certain days in the summer season, taking visitors to the highest point in the county, and there is always access to the hillside to appreciate the exterior. As early postcards show, it was a stiff climb up to the tower, but today a car park on the slope of the hill allows a gentler ascent. The wider site remains part of the Evelyn’s Wotton Estate, and public access is managed by Surrey County Council. A cafe operates from a hatch at the foot of the tower serving light refreshments (alas, no sugar cubes with a view of the tower). Leith Hill Place is also in the care of the National Trust and can be visited in the summer season. There’s more access information here.

Thank you for reading. As ever your thoughts are very welcome, as are any further examples of follies on sugar cube wrappers. Scroll down to find the comments box at the foot of the page.

Towards the northern end of the lengthy village street of Long Melford, in Suffolk, stands Melford Hall. In a corner of the garden, overlooking the road and the green opposite, stands a rutilant brick summerhouse. Once furnished with a table and chairs, the little building must have hosted the most elegant intimate parties.

The summerhouse was extant by the early years of the seventeenth century, and is shown on a map of Melford Hall dated 1613. It epitomises the kind of structure that John Worlidge, writing later in the same century, advised was an essential feature on a gentleman’s estate. In his Systema Horticulture of 1677 Worlidge wrote that a ‘small Edifice, usually term’d a Pleasure-house or Banquetting-house, may be made at some remote Angle of your Gardens’. The more remote the better, thought Worlidge, for the further from the mansion one went ‘the more private you will be from the frequent disturbances of your Family and Acquaintance’.

The summerhouse was modernised in the Georgian era by the splendidly named Sir Cordell Firebrace. He replaced the windows and panelled the interior. In 1873, the then owner of the estate, Sir William Parker, called the building the bowling-house, and noted that it stood alongside a bowling-green. At that date the interior was painted in white and gold and, according to Sir William, looked a little shabby.

Many generations will have retreated to this idyllic corner of the garden with the latest novel or newspaper, or perhaps a sketchbook, and no doubt liveried servants brought coffee and cake. Please excuse the Flâneuse for one moment as she drifts off into a reverie of a morning spent in such a manner…

Someone who was lucky enough to spend time at the summerhouse was author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. Potter often visited her cousin Ethel at the hall in the early years of the twentieth century, and her drawing of the then ivy-clad ‘Octagon’ is now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Visitors to the exhibition Feast and Fast: the Art of Food in Europe 1500-1800 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2019-20 saw the summerhouse reimagined in a new medium. Food historian and confectioner Ivan Day made the building the centrepiece of a sugar landscape in the style of those which would have graced a wedding banquet in c.1610.

Today, everyone can enjoy the building as Melford Hall is a National Trust property. As well as the summerhouse (grade II*) and hall, there are new walks out into the parkland. You can read more here.

A largely pictorial post this week as the Flâneuse is away from home rambling and researching, so thanks for viewing. Your thoughts and comments are welcome, please scroll down to the bottom of the page to get in touch.

On the quiet main street that runs through the village of Sticklepath, near Okehampton, stands a former works known as the Finch Foundry. It has been redundant since the 1960s, and is now a museum. Passing through an arch to the side of the works, the visitor is surprised to find a tranquil garden and beyond it a burial ground where the only noise is the rumbling of the river Taw. In the corner of the burial ground is a little thatched shelter, and more recently it has been joined by the most perfect of nineteenth-century rustic summerhouses.

The burial ground was first created by the Quakers, or Society of Friends, in the early eighteenth century. In the middle of the following century it was bought by Thomas Pearse, a woollen manufacturer who had a mill nearby, and vested in trustees from his family. Pearse was a Nonconformist, and it was his wish that people of all beliefs might be buried there. He was a generous donor to local good causes, and in 1838 it was noted that he was planning to mark the coronation of Queen Victoria with ‘a dinner for the whole of the persons under his employ’. The feast would however have been strictly teetotal, for Pearse was the leading light in the local Temperance Movement.

Pearse, who maintained the cemetery, is thought to have erected this little retreat in the corner of the burial ground. In 1942 it was described as having a table and seat, and ‘panels with quotations’ on the walls. Only one can be seen today, and it has lines written by the Scottish poet, journalist and hymn-writer James Montgomery (1771-1854). They first appeared in 1813 in the fifth canto of his long poem The World before the Flood.

A notice in the summerhouse states that it was originally erected in Thomas Pearse’s garden, across the road from the foundry, and that in 1974 it was gifted to the Finch Foundry Trust by a Pearse descendant, Mrs C.N. Jevons. The authors of the National Trust’s guidebook to the foundry are more circumspect about the history of the summerhouse, and it gets only a cursory mention: ‘In front of the graveyard stands what is alleged to be Tom Pearse’s old summerhouse’. Whatever its origins, it is an absolute delight.

The summerhouse is kept in the neatest order, and inside are two painted boards with verses and biblical quotations framed in gothic arches with geometric rustic-work.

In 1966 it was announced that members of the Finch family hoped to turn the ‘dilapidated’ former foundry into a museum where the industrial archaeology of the site could be explained. The Finch Foundry Trust and Sticklepath Museum of Rural Industry ran the site until 1989 when the Museum of Dartmoor Life took over. In 1994 it passed into the care of the National Trust. Finchs’ Foundry is listed at grade II*.

When researching the summerhouse, the Flâneuse discovered that it had inspired a scale model for model railway enthusiasts, and was available to buy in kit form. She was unable to resist, and here is the diminutive work in progress.

Sticklepath was once on the busy main road from Exeter to Penzance, but it is now a peaceful spot after the village was by-passed in 1987. The Flâneuse urges anyone driving along the A30 to make the short detour to visit the village and its attractions. The burial ground and garden can be seen at any reasonable time, and there’s more on visiting the foundry here.

…and greetings from the Flâneuse and thanks for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box below to share any thoughts.

On a promontory overlooking the harbour at Boscastle stands a squat white building bedecked with flags and antennas. It started life in the middle of the 18th century when it was erected as a summerhouse and eye-catcher by Cotton Amy, whose Botreaux Castle estate included the harbour and lands around it. In 1821 the land was purchased by Thomas Rickard Avery, a local merchant and, depending on who you believe, a ‘notorious wrecker’.

In 1764 a passing tourist noted the ‘summerhouse’ that Mr Amy had built as a ‘landmark’, but we know little more about its early history other than that it was named as ‘Pleasure House’ on the 1813 1st series Ordnance Survey map. The harbour it overlooks was originally known as Botreaux Castle Quay, but Botreaux Castle was soon shortened to Boscastle, as the village is known today.

The summerhouse’s story becomes more lively after its purchase by Avery (1785-1858). He was a Cornish boy and a major employer in the area — on his death in 1858 it was said that a ‘great number of people’ would lose their income as ‘Mr Avery carried on an extensive business’. Avery was also a Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall, a Magistrate and a Land Tax Commissioner, as well as chairing local business forums.

But this pillar of the community was alleged to have a much darker side: his Summer House (as it was named on the 1842 tithe map) was apparently a base for smuggling, gambling, drinking and womanising, and Avery was said to spend the evenings walking the cliffs looking for wrecks.

Although much of this history was recorded long after Avery’s death, there is a contemporary account. Avery died on 20 December 1858 and Reverend Stephen Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstow, recorded in his diary a few days later that there were violent storms in the days following Avery’s death, and the locals associated this phenomena with the death of the ‘notorious wrecker’. It should be said that Avery was not accused of deliberately luring ships onto the rocks, rather his ‘crime’ was to profit from being first on the scene to salvage the wrecked ships.

In Avery’s defence, in 1843 the former Master of the barque ‘Sedulous’ wrote to the local paper to thank the coast-guard stations at Bude and Boscastle for coming to the rescue of his stricken ship. He was ‘particularly indebted’ to Mr Avery for his ‘able superintendence’ of the situation. So was Avery the model citizen, or did he have his eye on the prize? We shall probably never know the whole story, but many years after Avery’s death the little tower played its part in avoiding further wrecks when the coastguard began to use the tower as a lookout.

This use continued until the 1970s, and the tower then stood empty until 2002 when the volunteer National Coastwatch Institution moved in. Read more about their excellent work here

The Boscastle Estate was sold by Avery’s heir in the 1880s, and in 1956 Boscastle Harbour and 146 acres of land, including the summerhouse, passed into the care of the National Trust

There are clifftop walks to the Lookout from the lovely little harbour at Boscastle.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share any information or thoughts please go to the comments box at the foot of the page.

Wandering in the glorious landscape that is Stourhead in Wiltshire there are vistas to grand classical temples and gothic monuments, but there is also a pastoral scene featuring a pretty little rustic cottage which has inspired artists – from painters to designers of tourist souvenirs – over the centuries.

Stourhead, one of the most famous landscape gardens in Britain, probably needs little introduction here, but in brief it was created by the Hoare family in the eighteenth century. A grand lake is crossed by an elegant bridge, and a walk around the water leads to features including a grotto and classical temples as well as offering vistas to gothic ornaments and a sun-topped obelisk.

The cottage has been described by many names since it was first constructed in the middle of the eighteenth century. There is a reference to Pantheon Cottage, and it is also mentioned as the Rustic Cottage or Arcadian Cottage. For many years it was called the Watch Cottage, most likely because it was home to a keeper, but it is now known as the Gothic Cottage. As the watercolour below shows, the picturesque little building was overgrown with creeping plants such as woodbine and clematis, commonly found in cottage gardens.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century the cottage was in frequent use as a summer retreat, with a comfortable sitting room for the ladies of the house. In this period the thatched roof was replaced with stone slates.

In 1946 the Hoare family gave the house and grounds to the National Trust, and the charity’s early guidebooks and maps called the rustic house the Watch Cottage.

The cottage was restored in 2007 and the roof covered with thatch to return it to its original appearance. The Folly Flâneuse dreams of living in such a rural retreat, but only after the crowds have gone home: in 2023-2024 over 370,000 visitors were able to wander around the lake and past the Gothic Cottage. But as an obsessive collector of all things folly, she can gaze upon it in various iterations from the comfort of her desk…

This little pottery model of the ‘Gothick Cottage’ was made for the National Trust by the Boncath Pottery in 1979. The design is by ‘Dorn Williams’ – Miss Dorn Williams produced other decorative and commemorative pieces for the National Trust.

In 1983 Ian Logan Ltd produced a series of tins featuring National Trust properties. Bill Dare produced the illustration used on this tin, which was ‘based on the Gothic Cottage, Stourhead’. Note that both the model above and this tin show the cottage with the slate roof that was in place at the time they were made.

Sometime towards the end of the 1980s the Flâneuse bought a ceramic model of the Gothic Cottage ‘in the tradition of the pastille burners made by the Staffordshire potters early in the nineteenth century’. It was made at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke on Trent, for a company called Recollections Ltd (the recollections of the Flâneuse stretch no further than that). Although the cottage is modelled with a thatched roof, this was acknowledged as artistic licence by the maker.

For more on Stourhead click here.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box if you wish to share any thoughts or further information. 

A short distance from Rothley Castle, on land which was once part of the Wallington Hall estate near Morpeth, is a sham fort known today as Codger Fort. It was built as an eye-catcher by Sir Walter Calverley Blackett in around 1770 as part of a programme of improvements at Rothley.

Rothley Castle (featured here last week, see link below if you missed it) was erected in 1746-47, and the landscape was further embellished with the creation of Rothley Lake in the 1760s. Sir Walter took delivery of a boat to sail on the lake in 1768, and at around the same date he was planning an adjoining piece of water to be known as Rothley Low Lake, with a sham fort on high ground above it.

This ornament was to be erected on the rocky outcrop called ‘Cadjah Crag’, high above the two lakes (to thwart researchers Cadjah is also recorded as Codjah, Codger, Codgy and Cadgey before Codger became the accepted name in the 19th century). The ‘intended fort’ was discussed in a letter in March 1770, when Sir Walter’s instructions were that no work should begin until Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s plan for the head of the new lake had been executed in the summer of that year. In 1772 five brass cannon were delivered to the folly which were to be fired in celebration when work on the lake was complete.

A drawing for the fort survives in the collection at Wallington Hall, dated September 1769. It is attributed to Thomas Wright of Durham (1711-1786) and shows that a tower was originally planned to complete the fort, but does not appear to have been executed.

The historian William Hutchinson described the ‘stupendous cliff’, which he called ‘Codgey Crag’, in his A View of Northumberland published in 1778, but having already failed to appreciate nearby Rothley Castle, he dismissed the fort as just ‘another uncouth ornament’.

In around 1860 the surveyors working on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map were noting significant landmarks for inclusion on the maps. Part of their work involved ascertaining the history of such structures, and they were told that ‘Codger Castle’ had been ‘erected at the period of the Scotch Rebellion of 1745 to scare the Enemy’. Whilst the Jacobite uprising had indeed caused concern at Wallington, the fort was built principally as an ornament some 25 years later (although with Northumberland’s history of border skirmishes a visible deterrent to any future invaders from the north may have been a secondary consideration).

In August 1893 a Sunday school party was ‘marched’ to the folly ‘where a repast of milk and buns was served’. Decades later the Flâneuse too picnicked on the spot during a Girl Guide hike, and went home desperate to learn more about it. That passion for follies endures.

The grade II listed folly is in the care of the National Trust, but it is not on a public right of way. It is best viewed when travelling south towards Rothley on the B6342.

You can find the post on Rothley Castle here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/rothley-castle-rothley-northumberland/

Wallington Hall’s website is here  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington

The Flâneuse is always delighted to receive your thoughts or comments. Scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

Soon after her marriage in 1816 Princess Charlotte of Wales, only daughter of the future George IV and his estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick, settled at Claremont House in Surrey with her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The Princess ordered the construction of a gothic summerhouse on the spot where she first alighted on the estate, and called the retreat her ‘House on the Hill’. In the spring of 1817 there was great public rejoicing when it became known that the Princess was expecting a child who might one day be king or queen.

The site chosen for the Gothic Temple was on high ground with a view to the lake with its island and temple, and on the slope below the new building was the great turf amphitheatre created by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s. On the 25th of October 1817 the Princess was taken to view the work at the temple, which was to be her place of ‘retirement in warm weather’. But only a few days later ‘calamity arrived that robbed the nation of its dearest hopes’ – on 5 November Princess Charlotte’s child was stillborn, and the princess herself died the following day.

A distraught Prince Leopold decided to adapt the almost-completed summerhouse as a monument to his late wife. The interior was redesigned to favour more sombre colours, and representations of grief were included in the designs for the painted glass doors. Contemporary reports name the architect as John William Hiort (1772-1861) whose career was championed by Sir William Chambers, but other sources suggest that John Buonarotti Papworth (1775-1847) and Augustus Pugin (1769-1832) also contributed to the design.

In 1818 Prince Leopold granted permission for the public to visit Claremont ‘during his absence on the continent’. The newspapers reported that ‘immense crowds’ descended upon Esher to visit the house and park, where could be found the ‘small and elegant Gothic mausoleum’. The building was incomplete at that date, and the visitors would not yet have seen the painted glass being prepared by the ‘ingenious artist’ Joseph Backler (c.1788-1848). In 1819 the public had a chance to see the designs when Backler displayed the windows in his London gallery. They were then installed in the mausoleum where they cast a ‘chastened mellow light’ on the ornately plastered interior. Before her premature death the princess had sat for the sculptor Federico Nicoli: the portrait bust was completed posthumously and placed on an altar in the mausoleum (although by 1844 it had been replaced by a plaster copy).

The poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon contributed some ‘Lines on the Mausoleum of Princess Charlotte’ to Ackermann’s Forget Me Not; a Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1824. The poem ends:

It is the monument where Hope
And youthful Love sleep side by side,
Raised by the mourner to the name
Of her—his lost, but worshipp’d Bride.

In March 1843 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert walked in the ‘delightful’ pleasure grounds at Claremont and ‘visited the little Mausoleum, which is so pretty, & in such a charming spot’. There must have been a moment of quiet contemplation for the queen, for had Charlotte and her son lived Victoria would not have ascended to the throne. That evening Queen Victoria recorded in her diary that she and Albert had ‘talked of building something of the kind for our resting place’, thus anticipating the building of the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore House (Victoria’s diaries also record her interest in the mausolea at Castle Howard, Belvoir Castle and Wentworth Woodhouse).

Queen Victoria commissioned the sculptor Francis John Williamson (1833-1920) to execute a memorial to Princess Charlotte. Initially the queen suggested it might be placed in the mausoleum, but Williamson persuaded her that it would not be seen to advantage in the dimly-lit interior, and it was placed in Claremont House. In 1910 the Duchess of Albany, then resident at Claremont, gave it to the Church of St George, Esher, where Princess Charlotte had worshipped during her short life at Claremont.

The Claremont estate was sold by the Crown in 1922 and the mausoleum was demolished later that same decade with remarkably little contemporary comment. A 1931 newspaper reported that ‘the last tangible links between Princess Charlotte and the Claremont Estate are disappearing one by one’, and noted that the most recent to go was the mausoleum, with the land required for ‘building schemes’. It was at this point that it dawned on the Folly Flâneuse why there had been so little fuss – the building was not a mausoleum at all.

Princess Charlotte was actually buried in St George’s Chapel in Windsor, and what Prince Leopold created was a cenotaph or memorial. As early as 1819 an article in Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts suggested that the name was incorrect, and that ‘Gothic Temple’ was more appropriate, but ‘Mausoleum’ seems to have stuck and this is the name used on Ordnance Survey maps. As the building did not house human remains, and this was long before listed building status offered some protection, the ‘mausoleum’ could simply be pulled down (although King George V and Queen Mary were apparently asked for their consent).

The very sad ending to the story is that the land never was developed, and the building was demolished in vain. In 1949 the gardens at Claremont were given to the National Trust (the mansion is in private hands as Claremont Fan Court School). In 2017, marking the bicentenary of Princess Charlotte’s death, the National Trust commissioned ‘Props and Sets’ to create a replica of the mausoleum on the footprint of the original, with a stone bearing Leopold’s poignant words ‘My Charlotte is gone’. The replica monument has since been removed, although the footprint and stone remain.

For more on Claremont see https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/surrey/claremont-landscape-garden

The church at Esher is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust – see their website for access arrangements. If you are planning to visit between 16 October and 16 December 2023 then note that the church is open for the sale of charity Christmas Cards https://www.visitchurches.org.uk/visit/church-listing/st-george-esher.html

Thank you for reading. If you can add to the story in any way, or simply wish to share your thoughts, do please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

In the middle of the 18th century the Earl of Strafford was embellishing his seat at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. A new wing was added to the mansion and the grounds were decorated with temples, columns and garden seats. Strafford asked his lifelong friend Horace Walpole for advice on an ornament for his menagerie, and this little gothic temple was the result.

The Menagerie, or Menagery, at Wentworth Castle (historically also known as Stainborough) was already well-established when Walpole was consulted. A substantial building, completed in 1717, provided a home for the keeper who looked after the ornamental birds and also provided a space for refreshments when Lord Strafford was taking his guests for tours of the park and gardens. In April 1738 ‘two good fires’ warmed a party who had been out exploring the estate, and an inventory of a few years later shows that the Menagerie House had a settee and cups and saucers for tea.

The menagerie grounds included ponds and cascades as well as homes for the birds (there is no evidence of any other animals). In 1771 there were ornamental pheasants but a poem of 1731 shows that there was an avian presence 40 years before that:

From thence with Pleasure you may see
Strange Birds at the Menagerie,
Some Squeek, Some Cry – Some Sing, Some Squall,
Whose echo Sounds unto the hall;

In 1739 William Wentworth (1722-1791) succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Strafford of the 2nd creation. Two years later he married Lady Anne Campbell (1720-1785) and the couple’s social circle included Horace Walpole (1717-1797), creator of the gothic delight called Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. When his friends asked him to design a building for the menagerie, Walpole suggested a structure ‘in the manner of an ancient market cross’, and in particular that at Chichester in Sussex.

In 1756 Walpole’s friend Richard Bentley (1708-1782), a fellow member of the self-styled Committee of Taste based at Strawberry Hill, produced a drawing for Strafford’s masons and construction of the temple began soon after.

The menagerie was Lady Anne Strafford’s domain, and her passion for the peacocks and ornamental pheasants in the grounds led Walpole (who revered Anne as both a beauty and a wit) to refer to her as ‘the lady of the menagerie’.

Walpole visited in August 1760 to see the finished work and he admired the situation of the temple ‘on a high bank in the menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks’. Walpole’s role in the design must have been pointed out to visitors as a traveller in 1761 noted ‘the Elegant Gothic temple designed by Mr Horace Walpole’.

Whilst Wentworth Castle was very much on the 18th century ‘tourist trail’, and is mentioned in countless travel journals, there are very few accounts of the little temple, but Arthur Young wrote a good account in 1771. He walked across a grass lawn overhung with oaks to find ‘a Gothic temple, over a little grot, which forms an arch, and together have a most pleasing effect’. Behind it was a piece of water with an island and the banks were ‘prettily planted’. The history of the chamber underneath the temple is not clear – it is not mentioned in Walpole’s correspondence and possibly pre-dates the building of the temple.

A little guidebook with the comprehensive title of Stainborough & Rockley, their Historical Associations, and Rural Attractions was published in 1853 (this is the source of the title image). By then the Menagerie wore ‘an air of neglect’ and the shrubs and trees had run wild. Some ‘traces of its former beauty’ were still visible and these included the piece of water and the gothic temple ‘on an elevated basement’, which was ‘beautifully artistic, and of elaborate character’.

Wentworth Castle featured in Country Life in 1924 when the magazine’s Architectural Editor H. Avray Tipping described the feature as ‘somewhat ruinous’, although he was referring in particular to the grotto chamber rather than the ‘mock-mediaeval frippery’ of the temple itself. During the Second World War troops were stationed at Wentworth Castle and the story goes that the temple was used for target practice.

Barbara Jones went to see the temple when she was researching for the first edition of Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. She described the ‘little summerhouse’ as being ‘of the very best mid-eighteenth century gothic’, and she was saddened to learn that the building had been intact until the Second World War. When she saw it in the decade after the war the elegant pinnacles were gone – ‘wanton destruction’ was her conclusion. By the time the revised edition of her book was published in 1974 the temple was ‘only rubble’. Nikolaus Pevsner called the temple ‘the umbrello’ in the 1959 1st edition of The Buildings of England: Yorkshire the West Riding, and that name seems to have been adopted from that date.

The stone fragments were recorded by the National Monuments Record in 1965 and nature then covered over the remains. In 2006 Archaeological Services WYAS were commissioned to survey the collapsed structure. Happily, the masonry was found to be largely extant, and we can hope that one day the funds might be found to enable a restoration.

Much restoration work has already taken place under the auspices of the Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Castle Heritage Trust which was established in 2001. The site of the Gothic temple is not publicly accessible but a sham castle, temples, obelisks, a column and extensive gardens make a visit to Wentworth Castle (not to be confused with neighbouring Wentworth Woodhouse) more than worthwhile. The house is home to the Northern College but opens for monthly tours. In 2018 the National Trust took over the management of the gardens and park https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/wentworth-castle-gardens

No feature on Wentworth Castle is complete without a mention of the pioneering research of Dr Patrick Eyres and Dr Michael Charlesworth: their work is gratefully acknowledged.

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In 1954 Agatha Christie wrote a novella which was intended to raise money for her local church. Upon completion she was so taken with the story that she decided to develop it into a full novel, and submitted a different story to the fundraising effort. The work she had originally written was called Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, and this work was expanded and eventually published in 1956 as Dead Man’s Folly. 

The story is set at Nasse House in Devon, a ‘big white Georgian house’ overlooking a river that is home to Sir George Stubbs and his young wife. Preparations are underway for a grand garden fête which will feature a Murder Hunt with clues leading to a sham murder. But as this is Christie the death turns out to be for real: that’s not a spoiler, it is blindingly obvious what the course of events will be from the earliest chapters – but as ever the big question is… ‘whodunnit’?

Before the folly can take centre-stage in the story, Christie has to ensure that Poirot knows what a folly is. A character explains to the detective that the folly is ‘one of those little sort of temple things, white with columns’, adding that he has ‘probably seen them at Kew’.

The grounds at Nasse House are also home to a ‘picturesque thatched’ boathouse and an architect is present with a commission to build a new tennis pavilion and repair the folly. Said architect is Michael Weyman, and he is not impressed with Sir George’s choice of location for the folly, which is lost in trees and functions as neither eye-catcher nor belvedere. And having been erected hurriedly only a year earlier (Poirot notes this clue), the temple is already listing on poor foundations. ‘These things were meant to be seen’ complains Weyman, and revealing his knowledge of landscape design in the 18th century he complains that the folly should be visible on a mound: ‘situated on an eminence – that’s how they phrased it’. The architect then reveals that he has been asked to design a tennis pavilion in the form of a ‘kind of Chinese Pagoda’, and grumbles that this is a ‘crime against good taste’.

Dead Man’s Folly was turned into a film in 1986, with Peter Ustinov in the role of Poirot. West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire became Nasse House, with the Temple of Venus playing the folly, although the statue of Venus seen in the photo’ was removed for filming.

A television adaptation was shown in 2013, and it marked the end of an era: it was the last episode to be filmed in the 13 series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in which David Suchet played the detective. Dead Man’s Folly was filmed at Greenway House, Christie’s own summer retreat which she bought in 1938, and which was clearly the model for the ‘big white Georgian house’ at Nasse.

Christie’s own boathouse becomes the scene of the murder but, as Greenway has no folly, a temporary temple had to be built for the episode (a square temple rather than a rotunda). The closing scenes reveal the crucial role the folly plays in the story.

Christie first came up with idea for a murder mystery based around a folly in 1954, only a year after Barbara Jones had raised awareness of garden buildings when she published Follies & Grottoes in 1953. The Folly Flâneuse would love to know if Mrs Mallowan, as Christie then was in her private life, had seen a copy.

For more on Greenway visit https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/greenway

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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

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