In 1857 an anonymous article appeared in The Builder magazine under the title Architectural “Follies”. The author used the word ‘architectural’ to distinguish from examples of folly in literature and art: he thought there were far too many books with an eccentric choice of subject, and that there were many follies ‘perpetuated on canvas’. Sadly, he failed to develop this theme, and the reader is left wondering what exactly he had in mind (the Flâneuse is making the assumption that at this date a journalist writing for a building trade magazine was almost certainly male). Happily, he was a little more forthcoming when he moved on to follies of the built variety.

The ‘Chinese bridges and temples of George III’ were confirmed as architectural follies in his mind, as was George IV’s Pavilion at Brighton.

His next two examples were recent additions to the streets of London. Today we would consider them monuments, but to the writer they were the very height of folly. The first was an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in London, which he described as ‘an undoubted architectural folly’. More than one statue of the military hero, atop his horse, Copenhagen, could be found in London, but the author is probably referring to the colossal bronze by Matthew Cotes Wyatt that was hoisted onto the Wellington Arch in 1846. Our writer was not alone in disliking the vast statue, which was thought out of proportion to the arch. When the gateway was moved in 1883 to enable road-widening, the statue was taken down and, after much debate in the House of Lords, moved to a new home in Aldershot.

The writer then makes a brief mention of the ‘never-to-be-forgotten monument once at King’s-cross’. The Flâneuse hadn’t forgotten it – she had never even heard of its fascinating history.

The building was erected in 1830 as a memorial to King George IV, and topped with a cheaply made and, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘very uncomplimentary effigy of majesty’. This shoddy statue (when seen at close range) survived only until 1842, and the whole structure was pulled down in 1845, having apparently served as both a pub and a police station, although presumably not at the same time.

Whilst conceding that many a folly is a picturesque object, the author disliked sham ruins, believing that they mislead the tourist who might sketch them ‘in the belief of their antiquity’ only to have ‘all feelings of romance or poetry’ dashed upon discovering they were follies.  He likened their disgust to that felt by Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter’s Scott’s The Antiquary of 1816. Oldbuck, a gentleman who sees a lost settlement in every bump in a field, fights hard to regain his dignity when the ‘prætorium’ he describes to his guest is announced to be the ruins of a shelter built only twenty years earlier.

Curiously, the writer doesn’t name any actual sham ruins in his tirade, so here are two of the Flâneuse’s favourites, the castles at Balcarres in Fife and Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

Our high-minded author thought money frittered on follies could be better spent on building schools or cottages, so that the ‘labourer would have felt that he was bestowing his handiwork on matters of utility’. One suspects that as long as he was being paid, the labourer wouldn’t really mind what he was constructing: it’s unlikely a workman ever downed tools in protest when offered several shillings to knock up a sham castle (and, of course, what the writer didn’t mention is that some sham ruins were erected to create jobs and an income for those in need).

The Flâneuse disagreed with many of the author’s assertions, but happily she was wholeheartedly in concordance with his conclusion that follies are ‘worthy of thought’. Indeed they are.

The mention of Oldbuck reminded the Flâneuse that The Antiquary must surely have influenced the builder of a folly tower at Horsmonden, in Kent, which was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. You can read about the folly tower here.

There’s more information on the King’s Cross monument here.

Thanks for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information.

Most of the structures featured in these pages decorate vast estates or landscapes, or at least substantial gardens. But the sculpture pictured here is something a little different – it started life as a project for men building a reservoir, and later spent many years ornamenting a quiet garden in a Yorkshire village. It is a scale model of the dam and valve tower at Angram Reservoir, north of Pateley Bridge in the old West Riding of Yorkshire, and was built by two of the masons who worked on the construction of the reservoir.

Angram was one of a string of reservoirs built in remote spots along the course of the river Nidd in the early years of the twentieth century. The water was to supply the prosperous city of Bradford: by constructing the reservoirs on high ground, gravity would allow the water to flow to the treatment works on the edge of the city without the need of pumps.

The model was made by the father and son team of Robert Drummond (1844-1920) and his son Duncan (1883-1942) whenever they had some spare time. The 1911 census shows that both men lived with their wives and families on site at Angram, in the specially-constructed ‘temporary village’ for workers constructing the reservoir and massive stone dam.

Although there was a reading and recreation room on site, there must have been little to do in such a ‘wild, solitary spot’, and construction of the scale replica kept the men busy when not at work.

The model was first erected on land near where the Drummonds lived in the temporary housing shown in the background of the photograph above (which the workers christened ‘Angram Terrace’). According to the date stone it was completed in 1913, although the tower on the actual dam carries the date 1916.

The village was cleared when work on the reservoir was complete. The model was then moved to stand outside Bradford Corporation’s Water Works at Chellow Heights, but was threatened with destruction when the works were modernised in the 1970s. It was rescued by the Drummond family and moved to the garden of one of the family in East Morton, near Keighley in West Yorkshire.

There it remained for many years until the house was to be sold, and a new home for the model was required. Robert and Duncan Drummond’s descendants approached the Nidderdale Museum, in Pateley Bridge, to ask if they might find some space to display it: the museum is the perfect home as it already tells the history of the building of the reservoirs. With financial support from Yorkshire Water, the model was restored by monumental masons H.A. Green of Ripon, and moved to stand outside the museum. In summer 2023 the Lord Mayor of Bradford, performed the ceremony to welcome what is now known as the Angram Monument to Pateley Bridge.

In 1921 work began to construct Scar House, an even larger reservoir further down the valley (where Duncan Drummond was also employed). The Chairman of Bradford Council’s Waterworks Committee was Lt Colonel Anthony Gadie, and not everyone supported his decision to invest so much money in the reservoirs. Scar House Reservoir became known as Gadie’s Folly, but Bradford’s naysayers were forced to eat (or rather drink) their words when the city had ample water in periods of drought later in the century. The reservoirs continue to serve the people of Bradford and district today.

There is a circular walk to Angram and Scar Top reservoirs from the Yorkshire Water car park near the village of Lofthouse.

Visit the Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge to learn about the construction of the reservoirs (and much more).

Thank you for reading, and as ever do please get in touch to share any thoughts or further information.

High above the town of Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale stand two strange stone pillars which look like the remnants of some ancient ecclesiastical edifice. Until 1893 there was a third, and they were known as the Three Stoops, or alternatively as Yorke’s Folly after their begetter, John Yorke. They are often dated to around 1800, but they are actually some decades earlier, being constructed at the height of the Georgian vogue for mock ruins and eye-catchers.

Yorke (1733-1813) first considered building an eye-catcher on Guyscliffe, to be seen from his house at Bewerley in the valley below, in 1768*, the year in which he succeeded his father. The sham ruin’s gothic form may have been suggested by Bewerley having once housed a grange serving the monks of Fountains Abbey, which stands only a few miles away. The folly was complete by 1779 when a lady touring Nidderdale admired the ‘beautiful wooded hill crown’d with cliffs’. But she was not impressed with the folly, and complained that Mr Yorke had expended £300 on ‘a most wretched imitation of a Ruin’. Perhaps she might have felt differently if she knew that this was not just a gentleman’s whim, but a philanthropic enterprise to help the poor of the district.

Writing in Follies & Grottoes in 1953, Barbara Jones noted that unemployed men from the neighbourhood were recruited to build the folly in return for 4d a day and a loaf of bread. Jones gives no source for this story, but an account written in the early years of the 19th century, during Yorke’s lifetime, corroborates her account. On seeing the folly in 1805, Charles Fothergill was delighted to learn of Yorke’s benevolence and described him as a ‘gentleman of ancient family and very good fortune, perhaps not less than £20,000 per annum; the greater part of this sum he regularly expends in ameliorating the condition of the indigent poor and sick’.

Yorke died in 1813, and by his request was quietly buried in Hudswell churchyard, close to his other family seat in Richmond, Yorkshire, where his gravestone has a simple inscription, free from encomiums. But others praised his ‘charity and benevolence’: the Leeds Mercury reported that he was ‘universally lamented’ and the Richmond historian Clarkson wrote that ‘the poor have lost in him their most bountiful benefactor’.

In November 1893 a storm hit Pateley Bridge, and the third (and most substantial) stoop was ‘blown down’. The Pateley Bridge and Nidderldale Herald reported that it was surprising that the folly had survived so long in its exposed position, and with a nice understanding of the picturesque noted that the stoops ‘so interestingly break the monotony of the edge of Nought Moor’. The collapse of the third stoop was remembered in the Yorkshire Post in 1929, and a Yorke descendant wrote to the paper with the pessimistic premonition that ‘doubtless the last two will, in time, share the same fate’.

Happily he was wrong, and although ambitious plans to rebuild the third stoop as a millennium project came to nothing, the Two Stoops remain a dramatic landmark, and the grade II listed folly is a popular resting spot for friendly ramblers enjoying a panorama of Nidderdale.

If you plan to visit Yorke’s Folly, allow time to explore the Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge and support the volunteers who keep it flourishing  https://www.nidderdalemuseum.com

* This very useful reference is from Margaret Hadley Watersons’s From Folly to Flower Garden: The Yorkes in Nidderdale (2015) which is on sale at the museum.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome and can be shared via the comments box at the bottom of the page.

Last week’s brief post on the sham Druid’s Temple, near Masham, was something of a preamble to The Folly Flâneuse sharing this wonderful letter written by Barbara Jones in 1949. Jones is, of course, the doyenne of folly-spotters, and in this missive she shares the ups and downs of researching for the first edition of Follies & Grottoes. It is a delight to read: camping at the Druid’s Temple, finding Hackfall, and best of all a run-in with the formidable Captain Fordyce, Agent to Lord Hothfield at Skipton Castle. Here’s the unadulterated letter in full:

The Follyhenge. Sunday a.m.
Dearest Tom
Yesterday was one of those days that happen to somebody else, not us. So much work on such follies never never before. I got up at six, rewrote article for Ambassador and made a fair copy (later in the day, it was actually registered and posted). Down to breakfast at 7.30: we were just out of Pateley Bridge SETTLE, last flop folly of a day of follies not only flop but WET, and were in a C.T.C. B&B, dirty beds, nothing to eat but bread & butter, gloomy sitting room to write in, all pure hell but 7/6 supper b&b — cheapest yet! Breakfast was more heavy starch food but we made a magnificent start to Skipton, straight into the risen sun, all gold and dew and long shadows of geese in the meadows. Skipton was PO, that touch of acidity that a good day needs: The wonderful Scaife follies resolved themselves into one shell room in the castle gate. Not open till 10.30. Draw? Without permission from Captain Fordyce? So I swep [sic] up to the Estate Office, which is cunningly arranged at the top of a vast spiral of medieval stairs so that one enters the prescence [sic] breathless. Oh, he is only the Agent, not God. I send in a card — impossible to see him, impossible to send a message, perhaps if I write permission might be given for a week hence. He is busy, he isn’t here, he’s going to a wedding. I leave card with request and Constables letter shall return in half an hour. Last thought — can I phone the actual owner. Enormous po. Back in half an hour, all smiles, JesusC has said YES, on condition that Lordie is sent a complimentary copy through the office. TOP PO from me. J.C has really left by now and cannot withdraw permission, so we go to the Shell House made by Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke. I only knew about her very nice ‘Arcadia’ — she built Yorkshire too. The shell house is charming, tiny and rough but  EARYL EARLY, dear, EARLY. A rough little female figure with a head like a football with cats’ ears is known as ‘Father Neptune’. Made drawing locked ourselves in, took long exposures with Syb. and away into the town. Coffee, pies for lunch, and a new racket — you take 3lbs of sugar to a stall and he sells you toffee (delicious) and fudge (smashing) for 1 11d a lb and the sugar, pound for pound. Toffee is controlled at 2 4d lb & they knock off the 5d you paid the grocer. Exit from Skipton, eating pies and giving Captain Fordyce a last loving Shugborough:

On thro’ superb moorland country to the hills above Pateley Bridge, where is the easiest & loveliest of hilltop follies — Yorke’s. You suddenly see across the bracken and heather 2 great shafts of stone, the remains of a folly of arches; a pleasant walk across the hilltop from the road and there it is. Photos & on. Awful recce by me with lipstick rubbed of [sic] from Congregational Minister, an old poppet but hopeless. Further try in P.B. Hopeless too. (While I am writing this, Bill is Syb Sibylling our 4th new & utterly unrecorded folly in 2 sq miles — one at every bend of the road. Culture-carrier — I am looking for a tall white-haired man in every bush. Little red open Austin goes by — everyone waves paws.)

Days and days later — forcing the pace. You are getting a most inadequate number of cards, & never never this pretty letter. Today I shall post it whatever. To revert to Good Saturday. Hackfall woods — a Tom Pot — was the next; by some miracle we gave ourselves times to decipher the hand of the master and didn’t cut it out — you arrive in the indicated village — Grewelthorpe, we think — and ask for the H. woods. “Why, there they are.” At last we realise that “there” is a gate into a field. Very dim. After 3 fields a little wood begins to straggle. Suddenly there is a lovely gothic stone folly and behind it, with no warning, the woods — great gorges packed with trees, no paths, and five more follies. We went down 60° screes covered with scrub and marsh underneath, & little flowers and ferns six feet high, and burdock three feet across and old man willowherb seven feet high and Kew fern house smell and everything. Really key. Supper brewed at sunset inside last folly.

Then Bill got the bit absolutely between his teeth & bashed on to Masham in the dale — lovely village built round a huge planted square — pub recce, and then he says he knows where Stonehenge is. We bash up dark lanes and he says “In that copse”. We cross moonlit stubble fields and enter a sold black wall of conifers. Hand in terrified hand we creep tho’, owls with daggers in their belts in every tree.

At last even Bill has had enough; it isn’t here. More recce and more recce and at last a cottage with a light on in the moors. 11pm. I knock & say “I’m sorry to disturb you so late — would you please tell me where the Druids’ Circle is” Why, yes, explicit directions & never a hair turned. Up the English. We go along a rising lane, leave the car, take to the open moor seeing here & there a tall stone and finally by a pine wood, flanked by monoliths, lies the stone circle, in full moonlight on the moors. Bill has been brewing up this one secretly all day. All effort, all gloomy Grisels are justified. It is smashing. We are so impressed that we rush back to the car for the things and living in the circle on gorgeous turf like a feather bed. Wake in the morning to watch the sun rise over the circle — all in the wrong place, bless them, and have breakfast on the sacrificial stone.

And that’s where this letter began. The other little bit was written later. I’m in Stamford now, hotel bedroom, C&N are living somewhere in the night. Today we do Exton, which we saw yesterday evening — bark architecture, full of black nails; the ultimate architecture of blood and pain, the most neurotic and awful folly yet. Its so terrifying we can’t bear to touch the bark. I saw it years ago & never forgot it; so did Harry Bentinck — which explains his letter! Wait till you SEE it. Coo. We shall be back in London on Sunday evening. Could pick up a card Wednesday at IPSWICH. Im so upset about 4 months plaster, Tom — will you read all the Folly literature for me?                                    Much love Barbara

…………………..

The letter is addressed to Tom Ingram (1924-2007) a writer friend who accompanied Jones, and Bill Howell (1922-1974), architect, on the first of her 1949 first folly-spotting forays after she was commissioned to write Follies & Grottoes by the publishers Constable. As the letter was found in Barbara Jones’s papers it is unlikely it ever reached him, and he must have made do with the postcards. After a couple of trips the trio had been involved in a car crash in the Midlands, leaving Ingram with a badly-damaged arm, so Jones and Howell made the northern excursion whilst he recuperated. Ingram was usually the photographer and his expertise was clearly missed – note the finger over the lens in the photo’ above.

As Jones wrote of the thrill of a night at the temple in the published book: ‘Does the Englishman exist who never to himself has sworn to see Stonehenge just once at dawn? It occurred to us that here was a nobler opportunity, to see the sun rise, not over that common circle in Wiltshire where charabanc parties stand bewildered under a sky of solid cloud, but over a private Stonehenge, in perfect weather, in peace.’

Notes: Sibyl is a camera made by Newman and Guardia, CTC is the Cyclist’s Touring Club. Some in-jokes remain unexplained.

The current owner promises a much warmer welcome at Skipton Castle, and the grotto is a delight https://www.skiptoncastle.co.uk

To visit the Druid’s Temple https://www.swintonestate.com/bivouac/

If you missed the previous post on the Druid’s Temple scroll down.