In 1807 the 9th earl of Winchelsea built a rustic retreat deep in woodland in his park at Burley-on-the-Hill. The building was known as ‘The Hermitage’, and soon became the subject of tales which were somewhat fanciful, even in the fantastical world of follies.

George Finch (1752-1826) succeeded his uncle as the 9th Earl of Winchelsea in 1769. The Burley-on-the-Hill estate that he inherited included the elegant mansion on its hilltop site, a building which will be familiar to anyone who has driven near Oakham in Rutland.

The parkland was home to a vast wood, cut through with straight rides in a star shape by a previous generation. In one of the segments of the woodland Finch built a summerhouse in the form of a hermit’s abode. The floor was a mosaic of pebbles and the knucklebones of sheep, and featured a ‘W’ for Winchelsea and the date 1807, which is assumed to be the date of construction.

In 1858 a local newspaper described the Hermitage as ‘an object of interest and amusement’ and encouraged readers to walk the ‘narrow and meandering’ path through the woods to find the rustic cottage, which was built almost entirely of wood except for a huge chimney built of rough stones. There were two rooms – a bedroom with wooden bed and straw mattress covered with sacking, and a front parlour. The centrepiece of this room was a ‘huge block of wood’ which served as a table. The table was by that date already covered in graffiti, as the many visitors had carved their names or initials into the surface. Despite this vandalism, the Hermitage remained ‘constantly open for inspection’.

The same account introduces the first ‘history’ of the building. In brief, a man wanted by debt-collectors went into hiding in Burley Woods (he is not named in the report but locally he is remembered as a Mr Booth or a Mr Bennett). Being ‘sufficiently versed in construction’, he built the ‘humble tabernacle’ and only ventured out occasionally for provisions. Eventually, the bailiff found his secret hideout and tried to take him into custody, but the fugitive locked the bailiff in the hermitage and ran for it. The bailiff, being a stout man, was allegedly stuck in the cottage for days until rescuers found him, much to the amusement of the locals.

An alternative version of the tale has the lurid twist that the fugitive was in fact a murderer. To atone for his crime he sequestered himself in the woods and lived as a hermit, bound by oath not to speak to his fellow men. A short distance from the Hermitage was a smaller rustic shelter called Soloman’s Hut, and according to the legend this is where food was left for the hermit to collect.

Still more diabolical is the history recounted in 1911, which has an ancestor of the Finch family selling his soul to the devil. When Satan tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to keep his word, a deal was struck that the bond would be broken when a Finch had spent 7 years in solitary confinement in the Hermitage. Until this was accomplished the devil would retain his hold over the family. The report concluded that ‘within living memory’ one member of the family had managed two years of isolation before he ‘lost his reason’. Clearly the writer didn’t believe a word of the nonsense he was feeding to his readers, and he concludes with the anti-climactic ‘At any rate, it is a fact that there is at Burley to this day a Hermit’s cell’.

Barbara Jones described the Hermitage in the first edition of Follies and Grottoes in 1953. She thought it a ‘magnificent example’ of the hermitage genre of landscape buildings, and was amazed to find the interior intact. The furnishings included ‘three triangular stools of remarkable rustic discomfort’, and the vast table was still in situ. Her wonderful sketch shows just how intricate the fan-vaulted ceiling was, with branches for the ribs and huge elm bosses.

The Hermitage was visited by architect Neville Hawkes (1910-1988) in 1955 and his photograph shows that by that date the building was looking a little shabby and protected by a barbed-wire fence. Hawkes was probably accompanied on that visit by his son, William (1939-2024), and a year later William and a schoolmate returned to explore the building. Their status as pupils at the local public school of Uppingham gained them permission to visit the Hermitage, and for future historians this would be one of the best decisions the estate office ever made. Young Will, later to train as an architect, recorded the floorpan of the building in a lovely sketch.

Only six years after Will Hawkes visited, the Hermitage was set alight. On Thursday 5 July 1962 the Oakham firemen fought to save the structure, but it was totally destroyed (N.B. Barbara Jones gives the date 1965 which she was given in error by the estate office). A police investigation was launched, but it is unclear if the perpetrators were ever found and the blame is generally pinned on ‘schoolchildren’. The demise of the Hermitage caused great sorrow to an anonymous correspondent with the local paper. The writer remembered picknicking there with ‘the late Squire Finch’ and wished everyone to know that the ‘story of the Burley hermit is a myth’.

Today only a handful of photographs and sketches of the Hermitage survive to record its history, although visitors to the Rutland County Museum might see a miniature model of the building. It was made by local resident William H. Sewell, aka Billy Bennett (1912-1985). The exact date of the model is not known, but it shows the building much as Neville Hawkes saw it in 1955, with the chimney partially collapsed.

The Burley-on-the-Hill estate descended to the Hanbury family, and by the middle of the twentieth century the woods had been closed to the public (there’s an interlude when the estate is owned by the later-disgraced entrepreneur Asil Nadir that needs only the briefest of mentions here). The house was converted into houses by Kit Martin in the 1990s, but the parkland remains with the Hanburys who are currently planning to create an ‘immersive visitor attraction’ called Wild Rutland. Perhaps the Hermitage could be recreated – what could be more wild than a solitary hermit’s cottage?

The Rutland County Museum has a fascinating collection, although please note that the model of the hermitage is not currently on display. Visit before 4 October 2025 to see an exhibition of the works of the artist Rev J.L. Petit (1801-1868) of which the highlight for the present writer was, of course, this view of the folly known as Old John in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Thank you for reading. As ever, your thoughts are very welcome. Please scroll down to find the comments box.

As the festive season approached in 1970, families would have pored over the special edition of the Radio Times to see what treats the three television channels could offer. If on New Year’s Eve had they walked across the room to warm up the set, and twiddled the knob to find BBC One, they would have seen a programme called Follies of the Wise presented by Spike Milligan. The writer, actor and comedian toured Britain looking at follies: ‘strange monuments to our ancestors and their passions’. It must have reached a good audience, broadcast at 6.45pm and sandwiched between Nationwide and The Andy Williams Show.

The programme starts with Milligan on the roof of St Peter & St Paul in Ormskirk, Lancashire. Legend has it that two sisters were unable to decide whether the church should have a tower or a spire, so eventually they built both – it is complete nonsense as the tower and spire were built a century apart, but Milligan liked the tale and composed a limerick which he recited from the rooftop:

A lady in Lancs said a spire
Is what every church must require
But her sis with a glower
Said ‘A church needs a tower’
So they built one with both … and it’s dire.

Milligan then enjoys creating a glorious gallimaufry of characters, real and imagined, to tell the story of folly building, or ‘littering great lumps around the countryside for us to contemplate’, as he calls it. The programme budget must have been generous, as in England Milligan filmed follies as far apart as Somerset and Yorkshire. In Wales he acted out the history of Paxton’s Tower, and in Scotland he visited the monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, McCaig’s Tower in Oban and the Pineapple at Dunmore.

At Dunmore a Scotsman (Milligan in the style of Fyfe Robertson) interviews the Earl of Dunmore (Milligan) and asks the question in the minds of all who see the structure: ‘why a pineapple?’. After a pause the earl splutters… ‘well, why not?’.

In Somerset, Milligan became Jack the Treacle Eater, the mythical messenger who climbs down from atop his monument to fortify himself with treacle before running great distances to carry news. Milligan is seen scampering up and down the rocky base to the little turret having gorged on a mug of treacle.

At the Triangular Tower in Northamptonshire Milligan becomes the ghost of Sir Thomas Tresham, and at Dunstan Pillar in Lincolnshire and West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire he plays a troubled Sir Francis Dashwood on the psychiatrist’s couch. In Yorkshire he appears at the top of Wainhouse Tower as the eponymous builder of the huge chimney. And many more follies are visited with the creation of many more characters – the Flâneuse lost count when she reached 36 costume changes.

As one TV critic commented at the time (probably quoting a BBC press-release), ‘Spike’s explanation of why they were built may sometimes be more entertaining than plausible’. Actually, he doesn’t take too many liberties with the truth until he reaches Old John tower in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Here his imagination runs riot, and in the character of a colourful local he tells a gullible American tourist (also Milligan) that the tower is used for ‘fish squirting’, ‘knee-crushing’ and ‘owl riveting’ and also as a ‘nun refinery’. The reviewer for the Leicester Daily Mercury thought the programme ‘delightful’ even though an ‘odd explanation’ was given of the history of the Leicestershire landmark. This is something of an understatement, and in fact a look at the original shooting script reveals that Milligan ad libbed this wacky description.

Bringing things right up-to-date Milligan featured Centre Point, the new 34 storey tower on London’s New Oxford Street. Milligan felt it was a folly as it had cost a fortune, but had stood vacant for some years after completion. The developer was insistent that it should be let to a single tenant, and he could afford for it to sit empty until he achieved this goal. Campaigners thought it would be better used to provide temporary accommodation for London’s homeless: Centrepoint, the charity which supports homeless young people, was named after this cause célèbre. 

Milligan ended the broadcast outside the building dressed as what the BBC called a ‘Hippie’ and singing The Tombs they are a-changing – an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s hit with lyrics about the follies he has visited.

Follies of the Wise was repeated in 1971 and 1972 before disappearing into the BBC archives. The Folly Flâneuse was lucky enough to see the very grainy (hence no stills featured here), and very zany, film.

Follies of the Wise was written by Sandy Brown and Martin Pawley after an original idea by R.G.Payne, and was directed by Jim Franklin. The Costume Designer, Barbara Lane, is to be commended for providing Milligan with outfits for his many characters.

The Folly Flâneuse has made a donation to Centrepoint in recognition of the help she received with this post https://centrepoint.org.uk

A fellow folly fan remembers racing off to visit Jack the Treacle Eater in Somerset after seeing it in Milligan’s broadcast. Does anyone else remember watching? Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts. Thank you for reading.