Painshill, or Pains Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, was the creation of the Hon. Charles Hamilton. From 1738 he landscaped the valley of the river Mole and decorated his estate with an enchanting array of garden buildings, including this pavilion which is known as the Gothic Temple. In 1953 Barbara Jones wrote that she feared the park was ‘beyond help’, but thanks to an amazing restoration project, which began in the 1980s and continues today, it has been returned to its former beauty and elegance.

The open temple, probably one of the first ornamental buildings to be erected in Hamilton’s park (the earliest reference found to date is 1761), was constructed of wood treated to look like stone. As well as being an eye-catcher from the walks and rides in the park, its location was carefully chosen so that visitors would be led to the building from which they could admire a panorama which featured a Turkish tent, a gothic tower, a bridge, a hermitage and a classical temple. On a circuit of the pleasure grounds the visitor would also encounter a ruined Roman arch and a grotto decorated with sparkling minerals.

Barbara Jones described Painshill in Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. Her first thought was that Hamilton (1704-1786) was a visionary. She imagined him looking at the ‘naturally pretty’ valley and having the courage to turn it into ‘raw earth, puddles, planks and little naked trees’, knowing that ultimately it was ‘going to be alright’. Whilst Jones mused on the origins of the park, Rose Macaulay, whose Pleasure of Ruins was published in the same year, delighted in the decay, describing the neglected park as a ‘delicious wilderness of follies’.

A photograph of 1937, taken by Herbert Felton for the Architectural Review, shows the temple in reasonable condition. The art historian Osvald Sirén (1879-1966) explored Painshill in the late 1940s, and in his China and the Gardens of Europe, published in 1950, he described the Gothic Temple as being in a ‘better state of preservation’ than many of the other garden features (Sirén was spotted photographing the ruined buildings by a young John Harris (1931-2022). Happily for history, the nascent country-house snooper had ignored the ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs.)

Whilst some of the garden buildings were lost because of neglect, others had fallen victim to deliberate destruction: the hermitage was apparently chopped up for firewood in the 1940s. Harris saw the Temple of Bacchus as a crumbling wreck in the 1940s, and it had disappeared when he returned in 1954. When a visitor in around 1960 enquired after the temple he was told that it had ‘got a bit dicey so they took a tractor to it’.

By the 1970s the temple was rapidly falling into dereliction, and in February 1977 Elmbridge District Council served a repairs notice on the owner of the park and sent in a team to support the temple within a scaffolding shell. Two months later came big news when the council confirmed that, after some years of negotiation, they were to purchase 47 acres of the ‘much neglected Painshill Park’.

Heritage societies, including the Georgian Group, the Garden History Society and the Council for the Protection of Rural England had already been working behind the scenes to gather information, and in 1973 the historian Alison Hodges had published the first comprehensive history of the garden in Garden History, the journal of the Garden History Society. The Friends of Painshill was founded in 1975, with support from landscape architects, antiquarians, journalists, M.P.s and local residents.

It took until 1980 for the council to acquire a further 106 acres of the park. In 1981 the Friends issued their second newsletter, in which it was announced that ‘Elmbridge Borough Council have now appointed Mrs. J. Burford as the first full time administrator of the park’. One of the earliest structures to be restored was the Gothic Temple (grade II*), with work complete in 1985.

The Painshill Park Trust was founded in 1981 and work began to raise the required funds. One of the principal sources was the National Heritage Memorial Fund, created in 1980, which by 1988 had pledged £1.4 million ‘towards a management plan and towards continuing restoration work’. In 1988-89 the British Museum hosted Treasures for the Nation: Celebrating National Heritage, an exhibition showing the public how the fund was using taxpayers money to save the UK’s most important heritage treasures. Painshill was featured as an example of a garden rescued with the help of NHMF funds, and the text noted the garden as a rare example of one which ‘did not suffer violent change, but was simply abandoned to the hand of time’.

It is impossible to summarise here the vast amount of research, fundraising and building work that took place in the subsequent years (the restored and dazzling grotto alone is a magnificent achievement, and the Temple of Bacchus, toppled by tractor, has been reconstructed), so visit the website to learn more, or better still visit the park itself.

There are some who, whilst full of admiration for the restoration, have a nostalgia for the ‘mystical and wonderful’ ruinous park that they explored as a child, when it was in that condition which the artist John Piper called ‘decrepit glory’. As Henry Parr, who sent the Flâneuse the pre-restoration photographs shown here, wrote: ‘in its ruinous state, Painshill park was beautiful but mysterious, pretty but sinister, lovely but rather unnerving’.

The thrill of pushing through overgrown shrubs and stumbling across an abandoned temple might be gone but, thanks to the amazing restoration project, one once more sees Painshill as Charles Hamilton envisioned it.

There’s lots more on Painshill here. Thanks to historian Cherrill Sands for being an excellent cicerone.

Thank you for reading. As ever, the Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from readers with any thoughts or comments. Scroll down to get in touch.

In the 1980s follies played a part in promoting a new breakfast cereal: special packs of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain contained picture cards featuring ‘Gardens to Visit’. The twenty cards were illustrated with views of gardens in Britain and Ireland, all of them open to the public, and five follies or quirky garden ornaments were among the cards to be collected. As the blurb on the box announced ‘Most of us are enchanted by the magic of a beautiful garden’.

Nutri-Grain was launched in 1987 and, as well as publishing the collectable cards, the marketing team promoted it via recipe leaflets: a ‘cosy supper dish’ of trout stuffed with Nutri-Grain was one suggestion. But the Flâneuse digresses…

Once you had the full set of cards you could send off for a folder in which to display your collection…

The album had an introduction by Clay Jones, then chairman of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and co-presenter of Gardeners’ World on BBC2. He wrote that ‘no matter where you live in Britain, there is sure to be a magnificent garden not far away’ (although the cards didn’t actually reflect this – only one was in Scotland, one in Wales and two in Ireland and the majority were in southern England). Acclaimed writer and photographer Heather Angel provided most of the photographs, including all of those featured here, and wrote that she hoped ‘this series will stimulate a greater interest in our gardens’.

The cards are small, only 58cm x 75cm, and the print quality is not the finest, but the Flâneuse would still have been very happy to discover these wonderful photographs in her cereal box…

Card three featured the Pagoda Fountain at Alton Towers in Staffordshire. The autumnal view was accompanied by text describing the ‘magical sight and sound’ of the water falling onto the tiered copper roofs and cascading down causing the copper bells to tinkle.

Number five in the series showed the Gothic Temple at Painshill in Surrey, which had been returned to its former elegance after a major restoration only a couple of years earlier. The card explained that work continued to bring Painshill back to life, and that the park deserved to be better known. Work has continued at Painshill since 1987, and the magnificent grotto, described on the card as damaged during the Second World War, once again sparkles and surprises.

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal in North Yorkshire was the focus of card eight, and in particular the Temple of Piety complete with its much-photographed reflection in the Moon Pond. The card encouraged collectors to visit and find the ‘spectacular’ surprise view of the ruins of Fountains Abbey.

Card seventeen in the set had a view of the Chinese House and Bridge at Shugborough, in Staffordshire. The card praised the ‘Chinese shrubs’ planted to complement the garden building, and recommended seeing the other ‘notable monuments’ in the park.

The only Irish garden was Mount Stewart in County Down in Northern Ireland. The card didn’t feature the famous Temple of the Winds, but instead showed the Dodo Terrace, where quirky concrete sculptures were placed in the early twentieth century.

All of the gardens remain open to the public, although if visiting the follies at Alton Towers you might be distracted by a different kind of folly – the screams of those riding the Toxicator (‘take hold and brace yourself’) or Nemesis Reborn (‘more uncontrollable than ever before’).

Thanks to Cherrill S for introducing the Flâneuse to the cards, and thanks to you for reading. As ever your thoughts and comments are welcome via the box at the foot of the page.

As with all good serials, there will be a wait until the next episode, but the Flâneuse will be back with a snap, a crackle and a pop in 2026. Until then, wishing everyone happiness whatever your plans for the festive season. Goodbye for now, or should that be Cheerios? (Apologies, but it is the season of the corny Christmas cracker joke).

In the early 18th century Bramham Park, just south of Wetherby in West Yorkshire, was the seat of Robert Benson, 1st Baron Bingley. His laying-out of the park was summarised by Lady Oxford after her visit in 1745: ‘Lord Bingley has adorned a barren country in a most delightful manner with water and wood walks’. The next generation continued his work, and their additions included a little gothic temple which could be seen from different viewpoints in the gardens.

Benson died in 1731, and the title expired with him. Bramham passed to his daughter Harriet, and her husband George Fox, and the couple continued to improve the landscape. In the summer of 1750 the prolific diarist and traveller Bishop Pococke visited Bramham and wrote that there was a ‘Gothick building not quite finished’. The architect of the little temple is not known, but in fact all that Harriet and George really needed was a competent stonemason, for the design was taken directly from a recently published pattern book: Batty Langley’s Ancient Architecture of 1742.

Batty Langley (1696-1751) first dabbled in garden design before switching his focus to architecture. He was an excellent self-publicist, and confidently described his designs as ‘Exceeding every Thing thats Extant’. His brother Thomas supplied the engravings, but seems to have received little of the credit.

Pattern books were guides to the latest taste in architecture, with engraved designs that could be copied by gentlemen and their builders. Sometimes the plates just provided inspiration, and the plans could be tweaked to suit their purpose, but at Bramham however the design was followed very closely.

In the 19th and into the 20th century the building was surrounded by formal flower beds and statuary, as shown in this sketch and watercolour, and in the many postcards views that were printed.

In 1828 there was a devastating fire in the mansion at Bramham, and the house then stood empty for many years (although the gardens were maintained as the family continued to live nearby). In the first decades of the 20th century Col George and the Hon Mrs Lane Fox set to work to restore the house and grounds. They converted the Gothic Temple into a water tower, removing the original pointed roof, and fitting concrete beams on which the tank could sit under a flat roof.

In 1958 the next generation, Col ‘Joe’ and the Hon Mrs Lane Fox (the current owner’s grandparents), restored the interior plasterwork, with the support of the Historic Buildings Council and the expertise of the Plastering Instructors at Leeds College of Technology and Halifax Technical College. The Hon Mrs Lane Fox then commissioned the garden designer James Russell to lay out the grounds around the temple and the adjacent bowling green and dogs’ graves.

In recent years the present owner, Nick Lane Fox, has remodelled the area, and reopened views into the Black Fen parkland, as was originally suggested in John Wood’s 1728 design for the park. All but a couple of the best trees were removed, and the meadows replanted with traditional grasses and wildflowers. Nick is very pleased with the results (although not so keen on the days he had to spend digging out thistles), with the meadows now looking as ‘if they have been there forever’. He has plans to rebuild the roof to the original pointed design as soon as funds are available.

Almost certainly contemporary with the building at Bramham was the Gothic Temple at Davenport House in Shropshire, the seat of Sharington Davenport. The temple, based on the same Batty Langley design, is sadly long gone, but some years ago historian John Harris recognised the temple’s design source when examining a painting of Davenport House by Thomas Robins. Sharington Davenport was laying out his grounds at Davenport House in the same period that the Bramham temple was erected. 

Also based on Langley’s design is the frontage of an ornate cottage in County Kildare in Ireland. Lady Louisa Connolly added the gothic facade to an existing cottage in 1785, creating an eyecatcher from the river walk on her Castletown estate.

Touring Painshill in Surrey in 1761 Horace Walpole, aesthete and social commentator, noted ‘the Gothic building […] taken from Battey Langley’s book’. Unlike the Bramham or Castletown buildings, the Painshill temple is not a literal translation of any of Langley’s published designs, and it is not clear why Walpole made the connection. But it did give Walpole, who was no fan of Langley, an excuse for a moan: he thought the temple an ‘unmeaning edifice’ and objected to the use of the gothic style for a garden pavilion because, he opined, ‘the Goths never built summer-houses or temples’.

The gardens and landscape at Bramham can be explored, but prior arrangement is necessary as the park is sometimes closed for special events https://www.bramhampark.co.uk

Batty Langley Lodge at Castletown is available for holidays via the Irish Landmark Trust https://www.irishlandmark.com/property/batty-langley-lodge/

The temple at Painshill (GII*) is just one of the beautifully restored landscape ornaments in the park https://www.painshill.co.uk

The wonderful Robins painting of Davenport House is on long-tern loan to the Bath Preservation Trust and can be seen at their museum No 1 Royal Crescent in Bath https://no1royalcrescent.org.uk

You can find out more about Thomas Robins and his wonderful views of gardens in Cathryn Spence’s excellent and lavishly illustrated new book on his work: Nature’s Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden https://www.stephen-morris.co.uk

For more on Batty Langley see https://thegardenstrust.blog/2017/08/05/batty-goes-gothick/

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