Arch, architecture, country house, eyecatcher, garden history, Gloucestershire, Monument

The Arch, Paganhill, Stroud, Gloucestershire

Henry Wyatt lived at Farmhill, an estate on the edge of Stroud, in Gloucestershire. In 1834 he built an arch at the end of a new drive to his house, with an engraved stone tablet announcing that the memorial was erected to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. His house is gone, and the land developed but, after some near misses, the arch survives.

architecture, bath house, Bristol, Folly, garden history, Gwynedd, Summerhouse

The Bristol Colonnade, Portmeirion, Gwynedd

When Barbara Jones published Follies and Grottoes in 1953, she made no mention of the coastal village that architect Clough Williams-Ellis had been creating at Portmeirion since 1925. Reviewing the book for the Times Literary Supplement, Laurence Whistler thought this was a ‘curious’ omission as he believed the whole conception could be described as folly.