In 1840 the foundation stone was laid for a column on the Brocklesby estate which can be found near Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. Eventually reaching a height of 130 feet, it could soon be seen from miles around. The plantations surrounding it have long since matured, and today you have to look a little harder to find what became known as Pelham’s Pillar.

Charles Anderson (1749-1823) succeeded to the Brocklesby estate of his great uncle, Charles Pelham, in 1763, and added the Pelham name to his own. Pelham, created Baron Yarborough in 1794 greatly improved the vast estate, ornamentally and productively, with advice from Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Building work on his monument was begun by his son, Charles Anderson Pelham (1781-1846), created 1st Earl of Yarborough in 1837, and the column commemorates the 12,532,700 trees planted by his father between 1787 and his death in 1823. Construction was completed by his son, Charles (1809-1862), 2nd Earl of Yarborough, after he succeeded in 1846.

The architect was Edward James Willson (1787-1854) of Lincoln and the builder was Mr Tomlin of Grantham (probably John Tomlin, stonemason). Work was well underway by 1844 when ‘many workmen’ were reported to be on site. By 1845 it was rising above the trees and visible from boats on the Humber. The urn was fixed on the top in autumn 1847, and by 1848 it was said to be ‘now completed’. The lions that guard the entrance were carved by William Day Keyworth (1817-1897) of Hull.

The inscription on the column gives 1849 as the official opening date and one of the first to see the new column was Prince Albert, who was staying at Brocklesby in April 1849 when on official business in Grimsby (noting Albert’s visit to Lincolnshire in her diary, Queen Victoria wrote ‘I always miss him terribly when he leaves me’).

The Prince was driven around the park, where large groups gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal visitor. Elizabeth Dixon, a local farmer’s wife, watched the procession from the Newsham Lodge and then followed the Prince to the pillar where she had ‘an excellent view of the whole party’.

Even before it was complete the pillar had become not just a landmark for travellers on the roads and river, but a prominent spot for the Earl of Yarborough’s hounds to assemble before the chase.

Brocklesby was already home to other ornaments, including a garden temple, a hermitage and an exquisite mausoleum of 1787. In 1844 it was noted that visitors were welcomed into the park. There they could ‘wander in extensive and beautiful plantations’ and take refreshments in a woodland cottage ‘built in the Swiss style’ which stood near the rising column. In 1885 the Brocklesby estate was described in a tourist guide as a ‘place of holiday resort’, with the pillar and the Swiss Cottage amongst the highlights.

Unfortunately some of these tourists were not on their best behaviour, and in 1849 the estate office offered an ultimatum: if the carving of names in trees and the disfiguring of seats did not stop, then access to the park would be limited. The announcement continued that in future access to Pelham’s Pillar and the mausoleum would be by ticket only, obtainable on application to the estate office. Once access to the column had been gained, the message was reiterated on a plaque requesting that persons visiting the pillar refrain from writing or cutting their names or ‘otherwise disfigure the walls’.

For generations the men of the Jackson family, who lived at Pelham Pillar Lodge, were both woodsmen for the adjacent plantations and custodians of the monument. Their address was often abbreviated, making it appear that the family inhabited the column itself:

Happily the behaviour of the visitors must have improved, and the estate continued to allow access. In 1889 the Primitive Methodists met at the pillar for a bank holiday gathering, perhaps tempted along by the ‘meat tea’ that was provided. In that same year, a local cycling club visited Pelham’s Pillar and the Swiss Cottage with their ‘wives, sisters, and lady friends’. Fear not any frail female readers alarmed at this exertion: the ladies were ‘conveyed in wagonettes’.

But sadly history repeats itself: in the late twentieth century the Brocklesby estate created a popular permissive path which took in a number of the monuments, many of which had been restored. In 2021 it was announced that the route was to be permanently closed after several incidents of ‘anti-social behaviour’. Pelham’s Pillar too is out of bounds, but it can be glimpsed through trees (in winter)  from the adjoining road.

The Flâneuse climbed the tower many years ago when public access was allowed, but has no decent photographs, so thanks to the Garden Historian for the photo of the lions, and to Mike Booth of M.A.B. Media for the title image and the view above. His excellent film showing the detail of the architecture and the landscape setting of the column is well worth a look and can be found by clicking here.

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After his great success in keeping Great Britain safe from Napoleon Bonaparte, the Duke of Wellington was asked to choose an estate which would be funded by a grateful nation. In 1817 he saw Stratfield Saye, and decided to make it his home. He lived there until his death in 1852, and it remains the seat of his descendants. In 1845 Queen Victoria announced that she and Prince Albert, together with their courtiers, were coming to stay with the ‘good old Duke’.

Stratfield Saye was purchased from the 2nd Baron Rivers, whose family had owned the house since the early seventeenth century. In the 1750s George and Penelope Pitt (later 1st Baron and Baroness Rivers) improved the house and pleasure grounds so that by 1762 the park was described as ‘laid out prettily’. Although there were ambitious plans to build a new palace in the park, these were never executed and the Duke was content to remodel the existing, relatively modest, house.

The Queen and her party set off from Windsor on 20th January 1845. Her route had been announced to the press and well-wishers lined the streets of the towns and villages she passed through. At Arborfield Cross in Berkshire two detachments of the North Hants Yeomanry met the royal party and formed an escort to Stratfield Saye. The Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) joined the procession to ride the last few miles to the house.

The Queen wrote about the visit in her diary. She found Stratfield Saye ‘a low and not very large house, but warm and comfortable’ and she enjoyed a walk in the pleasure grounds – although sadly she doesn’t mention a summerhouse. Prince Albert went shooting and his wife later watched him try a game of tennis (the Duke was ‘an ardent admirer of this healthy pastime’). Evenings were spent in the company of the local aristocracy and gentry.

It is not clear what the summerhouse looked like when Queen Victoria visited, but something was extant at that date and was shown on the 1839 tithe map. The summerhouse is dated 1846, so the Duke either rebuilt or refurbished it the year after Victoria’s visit to commemorate her stay. Whilst nineteenth century accounts are full of admiration for the specimen trees planted in the pleasure ground (including Wellingtonia, of course), there doesn’t seem to be even the briefest mention of this lovely rustic retreat.

The summerhouse is double-fronted, with one front giving a view into the pleasure grounds around the house, and the other a view out over meadows to the handsome stone bridge over the river Loddon, built by Lord Rivers in the eighteenth century.

The whole structure is built of natural materials: the roof is covered in wooden shingles, the floor is pebble and flint and the walls are decorated with geometric patterns made of slender stems. Inside is the date 1846 and on the side walls of one room the Queen’s insignia faces that of the Duke.

It is particularly pleasing to see the summerhouse (grade II) being restored for the benefit of future generations using traditional materials.

Stratfield Saye usually opens for pre-booked visits in August each year: put it in your diary for 2025.

As well as the house (grade I) and collections, there can also be seen the grave of Wellington’s horse, Copenhagen, and the absolutely amazing leviathan that is the carriage built in only a few days to carry the Duke’s coffin to his funeral  https://wellington.co.uk/stratfield-saye-house/

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In 1839 Charles Booker leased a plot of land in the corner of Guildford’s ‘Great Hilly Field’. There’s a clue to his purpose in the name of the site: Booker needed an elevated spot on which to build a ‘prospect tower’. After his death the adjacent land became the town’s cemetery, and the tower passed to the Burial Board (who were reluctant custodians). It later came into the control of the town council, and a contract was signed in 1927 to allow its demolition. But by a quirk of fate the tower survived, and stands tall today.

Booker (c.1780-1859) was a businessman and pillar of the community who served as a Justice of the Peace and was three times Mayor of Guildford. Why he chose to build a tower is subject to some argument: some sources say it was a monument to his two sons Charles (1809-1824) and Henry (1812-1827) who both died at the age of 15 – Charles of illness and Henry in a ‘melancholy accident’ when he drowned in the town’s river Wey while bathing. Their resting place in the churchyard of Holy Trinity is clearly visible from the tower, but if the tower was a memorial to the boys it is curious that Booker waited for more than a decade to erect it. Other sources say the tower was built simply to ‘gratify a personal whim’. Although now hidden in trees the tower would certainly have been a prominent statement of Booker’s wealth and status when first constructed.

In June 1839 Booker leased the land for his tower from James Stedman, agreeing to rent 40 square feet at the south-west corner of  ‘the Great Hilly Field and Cradle Field for building a prospect tower’. For a total of 6 shillings per annum Booker also had a right of way across the field. The tower was built by a local builder, the suitably-named John Mason, but no architect’s name is recorded. Soon after completion the ‘newly-erected and elegant tower’ became a focus of Guildford’s celebration of the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in February 1840. A royal salute was fired from the tower during the daytime and the tower was ‘beautifully illuminated’ and the venue for a ‘pretty display of fire-works’ on the evening of the wedding. By then the building was ‘pretty generally known as Booker’s Tower’, and it was named as such on the tithe award of 1841. From the top Booker and his guests enjoyed wide-ranging views of the countryside and of the rapidly developing town.

Booker died in 1849 and the small parcel of land, complete with tower, seems to have reverted to Stedman. In 1856 the tower became the responsibility of the Burial Board which had bought the field from Stedman to lay out Guildford Cemetery. Stedman gave the tower to the board on condition that they keep it in good repair: this they did with some reluctance as many felt that ‘the building in question was of no utility to the ratepayers, and totally unnecessary for the purposes of the cemetery’. Grudgingly, the board honoured the terms of the donation (once it was clear they couldn’t wriggle out of it) and repaired the internal staircase which allowed visitors to admire the view from the top.

One who climbed the tower was the gentleman scientist John Rand Capron. He had an observatory nearby and in 1885 set up equipment at the top of Booker’s Tower for his experiments in ‘Atmospheric Electricity’.

In 1927 the local paper featured the headline ‘Booker’s Tower to Topple’ and it was revealed that the tower was in a dangerous condition. The council invited ‘competent House-breakers, Contractors and Builders’ to tender for its demolition and nine applications were received. These ranged between £50 and £507.10.0 and, unsurprisingly, the council signed a contract with Charles Strickland of Stoke Newington, who had submitted the lowest figure. Strickland advertised the sale of the stone from the tower in the local paper, but ended up in court on charges of fraud, having accepted a cheque for £25 but not produced the goods.

Whilst Strickland’s case went through the courts, the council began to have second thoughts and in ‘a passing fit of repenting sentiment’ decided to repair the tower, albeit on a very limited budget of £100 (less than half the sum the builders who tendered had suggested was necessary).

In 1928 the Borough Surveyor, J. W. Hipwood, drew up plans for a ‘reconstruction’ and provided two options: a tower with or without battlements. No prizes for guessing that the battlements were binned and the cheaper version with a simple parapet won the vote. The Sussex Advertiser thought even £100 too much to spend on a ‘building with nothing to recommend it’. Remembering that it had been known as ‘Booker’s Folly’ the paper thought that investing in its future would be ‘to add folly to folly’.

The newspaper concluded that the tower ‘will be demolished eventually there can be no question’. Almost a hundred years later the tower still stands, having survived the great storm of 1987 which toppled some of the trees that had grown around it. Local sentiment and a grade-II listing suggest that it will around for some time yet: it is kept in good repair by Guildford Borough Council but there is no access to the interior.

Special thanks to readers Ian and Helen Wright for suggesting Booker’s Tower as a subject. Ideas for future posts are always welcome.

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Although initially mocked in some quarters as Prince Albert’s ‘folly’, the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park was a triumph. But the agreement had always been that the great glass gallery, which had become known as the ‘Crystal Palace’, would be removed after the fair was over, and the parkland setting then restored. But as the Earl of Carlisle wrote when that time approached, ‘the destruction of the Crystal Palace would be as perverse and senseless an act of vandalism as could be perpetuated’. Moving the building to an ‘open and accessible spot’ outside the city seemed the most sensible solution, but one man had other ideas…

In May 1852 The Builder magazine ran a feature entitled ‘Proposal for the Conversion of the Great Exhibition Building into a Prospect Tower 1000 Feet High’. The author was Charles Burton, who called himself an architect, although he seems to have made his living as an artist. Burton proposed that a tower could be constructed from the materials of the Crystal Palace, giving an opportunity to erect a ‘gigantic tower at so comparatively trifling a cost’. There would be a conservatory at ground level, and four ‘carriages or ascending rooms’ would run on a steam-powered ‘vertical railway’ to take visitors to the top. The tower terminated with a glazed gallery as well as an open platform for the more adventurous.

Burton had produced lithographs giving aerial views of the Crystal Palace, having developed a passion for bird’s-eye views after travelling by balloon over London, and also over the Niagara Falls when he lived in America.

It is not clear how seriously anyone took Burton’s idea, but it was widely discussed in the newspapers. The Kendal Mercury informed its readers that the tower ‘would be as high as St Peter’s, St Paul’s and the Nelson Column, one stuck on top of the other!’.

Burton ended his proposal with the important note that ‘Messrs Fox and Henderson have expressed their conviction that the project could be carried out’. Fox and Henderson were the civil engineers who constructed the Crystal Palace, and who were contracted to take it down. They were presumably pleased that Burton’s plan was rejected, for they received the lucrative contract to rebuild the vast structure at Sydenham (they also received knighthoods).

Revisiting the story some decades later in 1889 a Birmingham Weekly Mercury reporter thought an opportunity had been missed to create a ‘marvellous and beautiful sight’ and he was clearly miffed that France had taken the glory when Gustav Eiffel proved that ‘these giant edifices were possible’. The patriotic paper concluded that ‘it stands to reason that if there are to be great towers in the world England must have one, but a chance of leading the way was lost in 1851’.

Charles Burton remains something of a mystery. He does not seem to appear as an ‘architect’ anywhere except in connection with the tower, and the Charles Burton (1805-1866) who called himself ‘artist’ in the census returns of 1841-1861 is probably our man. When the tower proposal was published in 1852 he was newly-returned to England after a period in the United States. Ironically, his ideas for a building 1,000 feet high might have been better received in America, which in only a few decades would become famed for the development of skyscrapers.

Of course England did later become home to a number of Eiffel Tower lookalikes, of which only the grade I listed Blackpool Tower, constructed in the last decade of the 19th century, survives.

Built in the same period was the tower at New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula. It was the tallest building in Britain at that date, and built atop a grand Cheshire chateau housing a ballroom. The tower was taken down after the First World War, and the ballroom sadly destroyed by fire in 1969.

Also contemporary, and by far the most ambitious, was the tower planned by Sir Edward Watkin to attract people to the developing London suburbs. This was the first of the British responses to the Eiffel Tower when work began in 1891. The tower was to rise to over 1,000 feet, deliberately out-doing the Parisian original, and it was to be the centrepiece of a grand park. But work was abandoned after only the lowest section was complete, and the site is now home to the Wembley Stadium. The story of the tower featured in Metroland, John Betjeman’s celebration of the suburbs, produced by Edward Mirzoeff. Serendipitously, the film is being shown on BBC4 on Sunday 26 February 2023 to mark the 50th anniversary of its first broadcast. There’s more here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cyyqw

Looking at the London skyline today Charles Burton was clearly a man way ahead of his time – the Shard, London’s tallest tower, is 309.6m, or 1016′ high, and was completed around 160 years after Burton’s proposal.

Thank you for reading. Comments are always welcome: please scroll down to the foot of the page to share any thoughts or further information.

Queen Victoria bought the Balmoral estate in 1848, and it later became the place where the Queen sought solace after Prince Albert’s early death, 160 years ago in December 1861. There were soon plans for monuments to the late Prince Consort, including the famous Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, but at Balmoral a huge hilltop pyramid was under construction only a few months after Albert’s death.

On 21 August 1862, on a bright day, Queen Victoria set off in her ‘little pony chair’ for the summit of a hill on her Balmoral estate. Accompanied by 6 of her 9 children she looked at the foundations of a ‘cairn to be erected to the memory of my precious Albert’. The chosen spot, at the top of the hill called Craig Lowrigan, had been chosen for its fine views, and also because it could be seen from a great distance.

Stones bearing their initials were laid by the Queen, her eldest son Albert, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) and her two youngest sons Arthur and Leopold. The youngest daughters Helena, Louise and Beatrice followed next. Stones were then laid on behalf of the three children who were not present: the two married daughters Victoria and Alice, and Alfred who was serving in the Royal Navy.

The Queen recorded her plans in her diary later that day: the cairn was to be 40 feet wide and 35 feet high, and the inscription to read:

TO
THE BELOVED MEMORY
OF
ALBERT,
THE GREAT AND GOOD:
PRINCE CONSORT,
ERECTED BY HIS
BROKEN-HEARTED WIDOW,
VICTORIA. R.
21ST AUGUST
1862.

HE, BEING MADE PERFECT IN A SHORT TIME,
FULFILLED A LONG TIME,
FOR HIS SOUL PLEASED THE LORD,
THEREFORE HASTED HE
TO TAKE
HIM AWAY FROM AMONG THE WICKED.
WISDOM OF SOLOMON,
CHAP IV. VERSES 13 AND 14.

The ‘large cairn of pyramidal shape’ was complete by May 1863,  when newspaper reports recorded the inscriptions in place, just as the Queen had planned. The biblical quotation, taken from the Apocrypha, incensed the evangelical Dr Candlish, a leading light in the newly-established Free Kirk, who believed (in brief) that it threw doubt ‘on the inspiration of the Bible’. Newspapers dismissed Candlish as a ‘frantic divine’, but the Queen was furious that the ‘beautiful inscription’ that she had so carefully chosen had been ‘shamefully attacked’.

For the rest of her life Queen Victoria visited her ‘beloved’s’ cairn whenever she was at Balmoral.

A number of other cairns in the grounds mark events such as the purchase of the estate, and the marriages of her children, but none can compete with the grandeur of Albert’s pyramid.

One newspaper recorded the completion of Albert’s Cairn with the prophecy that ‘this rude monument will form an object of deep interest to future visitors to the Highlands’. The cairn (also known as the ‘pyramid’) remains a popular destination for walkers, but the once bare hillside is now covered with trees, and the monument is no longer a major eyecatcher from the valley below. But the view from the monument remains superb.

There’s a steep climb up to the cairn from the Balmoral car-park at Crathie (no pony and cart for the Folly Flâneuse, sadly) but the monument and the view repay the effort. And as the Queen herself did in 1863, you can walk back ‘down the steep part with shaking and trembling knees’.

As ever, please scroll down to the comments box if you would like to share any thoughts, or add any information. Thanks for reading. The Folly Flâneuse is taking a short break, but will be back early in 2022

THE FOLLY FLANEUSE WISHES YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND HEALTH AND HAPPINESS IN 2022.

In September 1842 the 2nd Marquis of Breadalbane and his family welcomed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Taymouth Castle. They were greeted, with great ceremony, by pipers and by crowds of well-wishers in full highland costume, and a gun salute was fired. The Queen was charmed. During their brief stay Albert went hunting and shooting, returning with a bumper bag each evening, whilst the young monarch spent the days walking and riding in the park.

One day the royal party walked to the Dairy. Queen Victoria wasn’t sure quite how to describe the building, but settled for ‘a sort of Swiss Cottage, built of quartz’. As well as its practical purpose, the Dairy was also a belvedere, with the upper room and balcony giving a magnificent view of the River Tay flowing into Loch Tay, the pretty village of Kenmore, and up the loch to the hills and distant mountains.

Catherine Sinclair, visiting a couple of years earlier, had a more fanciful description: ‘nothing enchanted me more than the fancy dairy, built some years ago of transparent spar, like rough blocks of ice […] It looks as if an ice-berg had been stranded here and excavated for the occasion’.

The Queen’s own journal entry about the visit to the dairy is short, but by ‘her Majesty’s command’ Sir Thomas Dick Lauder wrote a detailed account of her visit to Scotland, published as Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland in 1843. He describes how the Queen walked in by the kitchen door, much to the surprise of the ‘damsels of the Dairy’ who were ‘astonished to see so fine a lady, though they could hardly have guessed that it was the fair Sovereign of these mighty kingdoms’. (This seems highly unlikely, as the workers on the estate had been preparing for the royal visit for weeks, but we must allow Sir Thomas his hyperbole.)

The dairymaids escorted the Queen around the Dairy, where she tried her hand at making butter before asking to try oaten cake. This caught her hosts unawares: they had nothing so rustic, but instead only a plate of ‘delicate’ cakes sent from the castle. The Queen did however enjoy a glass of ‘fine cold milk’ before continuing her walk. She was so impressed with the building that she revisited with Prince Albert on her final morning at Taymouth; the weather was clear and bright and she took her consort up onto the balcony to admire the view, where the Prince ‘entered fully into her Majesty’s admiration of it’.

Her visit was also celebrated in a poem by Samuel Fergusson. Be prepared – it’s very much of it’s time…

And then with steps of love descends
To learn some dairy lore;
And churning with her snow-white hands
Looks lovlier than before.

Tommore (or Tom-more), the hill on which the Dairy stands, was formerly home to a little 18th century pavilion, the Temple of Venus, which like its replacement had been so placed to take in the marvellous view of the lake and mountains.

The Temple of Venus was maintained until 1814, but demolished only a few years later to make way for the Dairy. Erected in 1830-31 to the design of William Atkinson (c.1774-1839), a pupil of James Wyatt, the ‘elegant and costly dairy’ rapidly became a highlight of a tour of the ‘celebrated pleasure grounds at Taymouth’. Its builder, John Campbell, created Marquis of Breadlabane in 1831, died in 1834, and it was his son the 2nd Marquis, who welcomed his sovereign to Taymouth Castle in 1842.

Sadly, as the photographs here show, the grade A listed Dairy is surrounded by scaffolding which has been in place now for a decade, and the structure lingers on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland. Trees now surround the building, and the famed views can no longer be appreciated. Taymouth Castle became a hotel, and its grounds a golf course, in the 1920s, but after various uses the mansion has sat empty since the 1980s. It is currently being renovated as a hotel, and hopefully the Dairy too will be brought back to life in the not too distant future.

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In the 18th century the Campbell family, Earls of Breadalbane, embellished the park around the family seat at Taymouth with temples and mock forts, complementing the natural beauties of the surrounding hills and the River Tay that flows through the estate. Just a couple of miles away, on the shores of Loch Tay, was a more dramatic feature, a rustic shelter and a roaring cascade, which added a sublime element to the beautiful policies of Taymouth.

An exact date for the construction of The Hermitage is not known, but it was extant in 1769 when the traveller and naturalist Thomas Pennant admired the ‘hermitage, the great cataracts adjacent, and the darksome chasm beneath’. Contemporary accounts suggest that the building was the creation of John Campbell (1738-1771), son of the 3rd Earl of Breadalbane, and his wife Wilhelmina (1741-1786), who were styled Lord and Lady Glenorchy. They married in 1761, so the Hermitage was most likely built soon after that date, and was quite new when Pennant saw it.

Most visitors arrived by carriage, but the more intrepid could hire a boat and sail down Loch Tay to a jetty close to the falls. A guide met visitors and led them along a wooded walk and then into a dark, rugged passage.

Senses suitably excited by the gloomy tunnel, the visitor could then gasp in awe as they entered the chamber and found a bow window framing the waterfall ‘in all its splendour’.

The Hermitage, as it has always been known, was built to appear as a cave hewn out of solid rock, although it is actually a carefully constructed sham, with thatch and moss originally disguising the mode of construction.

The earliest 18th century accounts give little mention of the interior, but by 1786 the Hermitage was decorated in a whimsical style as home to an (imaginary) hermit. The seats and bed were dressed with the pelts of wild animals, and the walls were covered in moss and ‘ornament’d with shellwork and plaister in imitation of fruit – which is supposed to be the Hermit’s food’. There was also a shelf of books, which the fictional solitary occupant could apparently peruse to enrich his mind. But this artifice was unconvincing, and in 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth was not fooled, noting that the volumes were wood wrapped with old leather covers. She did however admire the ‘quaint apartment’ and the ‘beautiful prospect’ from the window which took in not only the waterfall, but also the handsome village of Kenmore and Loch Tay (now blocked by trees, but visible from the paths up and down from the Hermitage).

Not everyone shared the general consensus that the building was ‘rural and romantic’. The Reverend James Plumptre was conducted to the Hermitage in 1799 and found the place ‘much too modern and magnificent’ to house a hermit retiring from the world, although he conceded that a ‘London Hermit’ might be quite at home. William Gilpin, the great exponent of the picturesque, was less critical, but felt the Hermitage unnecessary as the waterfall was perfectly capable of enchanting without it.

Many more visitors recorded their visit in poetry and prose, including the famed Robert Burns. On a tour of Scotland in 1787 he visited the Falls of Acharn and composed the poem originally called ‘Written in the Hermitage at Taymouth’, featuring the lines:

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,
Lone wandering by the hermit’s mossy cell…

This poem was later published as ‘Verses written with a pencil over the chimney-piece, in the parlour of the inn at Kenmore, Taymouth’.

In the middle of the 19th century these lines could still be seen by guests at the inn (as indeed they can today), but for added drama visitors to the Hermitage could hear them recited by the guide, who whilst they were distracted by a first sight of the falls, had slipped into a mask and a costume and ‘came forth personifying an eremite’. Wearing a ‘dress of shaggy goatskin’ and a ‘long and venerable beard of lichens’ the guide appeared ‘to the amusement, and sometimes the alarm, of his visitors’.

The Marquis of Breadalbane was later reported to have wanted to instal a permanent hermit, but ‘no-one could be found bold enough to act out the part’, and anyway candidates would have known that it was much more lucrative to be a loquacious guide and extract tips from the many English visitors: in 1857 it was written that ‘Milk and honey flow abundantly from the lips of the genuine Celtic cicerone; and hard-hearted must the Sassenach be who does not feel the effects of the soft sawder in the most sensitive part of his person, his breeches pocket’.

In 1842 it was reported that the Hermitage had ‘undergone a scrubbing’ in preparation for a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Sadly this work appears to have been in vain, for whilst the young queen recorded her pleasure at being rowed up Loch Tay with ‘the pipes playing, & boatmen singing old Gaelic songs’, she makes no mention of a visit to see the cascade.

The modern visitor approaches just as the early tourist did. A walk up a ‘steep and rugged path’, followed by a pause to get one’s breath back, and then a moment to gaze ‘with wonder and amazement at the ‘magnificent landscape’ before entering the Hermitage to view the cascade. Sadly, the Hermitage was damaged in a storm in the 1950s: the roof is long gone, and the shellwork interior lost, but this remains an enchanting spot.

Taymouth Castle is currently being renovated as an hotel, but visitors are free to walk in the park. There’s a delightful circular walk to the falls from the hamlet of Acharn.

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