In the 1740s William Kent designed a new garden ornament for Thomas Coke of Holkham. An artificial hillock was constructed on which the temple was to stand, giving it the name the Seat on the Mount. The temple was later pulled down, but fragments of the four busts which once decorated it were salvaged, and incorporated into a cottage in a nearby village. The Flâneuse has written about follies built from the remnants of houses, but a cottage decorated with the remnants of a garden temple is something new.

The ‘New Mount’ at Holkham was constructed in 1742, and the Seat on the Mount the following year. The sculptor Peter Scheemakers provided the four figures, two female and two male, that decorate the front elevation. Coke (1697-1759), created Baron Lovell in 1728 and 1st Earl of Leicester in 1744, could visit the seat and from its elevated site he is said to have watched as his new house was constructed.

The architect Matthew Brettingham Senior, who had overseen building work at Holkham, produced a volume of views which included an engraving of the Seat on the Mount. His text tells us that the temple was home to a ‘small antique figure of the Nile’ and a ‘Coro Marino’ (Sea Chorus) of sea nymphs, centaurs and cupids in alto relievo. The figure of the Nile was added to the earl’s collection in 1752, and the bas-relief panel of sea creatures was bought by Coke in Rome in 1716, and was originally part of a sarcophagus. It was noticed by a visitor in 1767 who saw the summerhouse with an ‘ancient Bass-relief in the wall’.

It would seem likely that the Seat on the Mount was taken down when parts of the garden were remodelled in the late eighteenth century. The figure of the Nile had been moved into the house by 1817, and the summerhouse does not appear on nineteenth century Ordnance Survey maps. The art historian Adolf Michaelis complicates matters by mentioning the ‘Seat on the Mount’ in his Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, which was published in 1882. Perhaps he was using outdated information? What is certain is that by 1907 the heads from the Seat on the Mount had been used to embellish a simple cottage in nearby Burnham Overy Town (actually a village, but thus named to distinguish it from Burnham Overy Staithe).

How the figures came to be moved to Burnham Overy Town to decorate the little cottage remains another puzzle, and many passers-by must have wondered about the history of the carved heads.

One such curious tourist was the late follyphiliac Jeffrey Whitelaw, and in 1960 he wrote to Country Life magazine asking if anyone knew the origins of the statuary. Whitelaw questioned if the busts were artificial stone from the Pulham factory, but the mystery was solved a couple of weeks later when the Duke of Wellington replied via the magazine’s letters page. The Duke confirmed that the ‘canephoræ’ originally decorated the temple at Holkham. Arthur Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington (1885-1972) was an architect, and is of course famed in follydom as the designer of Lord Berners’ tower at Faringdon. Canephoræ are caryatids bearing a basket on their heads that serve as a capital (although strictly speaking canephoræ are female, and two of the figures here are male).

In the later years of the twentieth century the fragments were moved to new positions in the tiny front garden, where they remain today. The cottage is now called ‘The Images’ and can easily be seen from the road through the village, and here’s a rather appealing view of it by artist Richard Swallow.

Holkham may have lost the Seat on the Mount, but other fine garden buildings can still be seen including the Obelisk (see the plate above) and the Temple. The latter was built in 1734 after a sketch by William Kent.

And of course there is the mansion itself and the wonderful collection it holds. The statuette representing the River Nile and the bas-relief panel remain in the family collection (not currently on display), although the latter has fallen apart and is now incomplete.

Coincidentally (i.e. the Flâneuse is not on commission) the cottage is currently on the market. There’s more here. Everything you need to know about Holkham can be found on their website.

For information on sculpture at Holkham the Flâneuse is indebted to The Holkham Collection of Classical Sculpture by Elizabeth Angelicoussis.

Further information is always very welcome. You can get in touch via the comments box at the foot of the page (only your name will appear – your email address remains private). Thank you for reading.

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In the grounds of Benington Lordship, an early 18th century mansion near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, is a sham ruin on a grand scale. Constructed in the 1830s it combined the roles of eye-catcher, gateway, smoking room and banqueting hall in one rambling structure.

George Proctor had bought the estate in the 1820s, by which date most of the mediaeval castle that once stood on the site had been gone for six centuries. A charming manor house had been erected in its place around the beginning of the 18th century. The spectacular sham was executed in 1835-1838 by the inchoate Hertfordshire family firm of Pulham, which grew to specialise in building garden features in artificial stone – although seldom on the scale of this range which features a sham Norman arch and gatehouse and a separate summerhouse.

The designer is thought to have been the Hertford architect, Thomas Smith (1798-1875). Documentary evidence doesn’t seem to survive, but the work is attributed to him on the basis that he was active locally, and also because he had built a ‘tower and fine archway in the Norman style of architecture’ in his own garden.

The Benington Lordship folly, inspired by the genuine fragments that remained on site, was erected in the form of a substantial ruined Norman castle. Built of flint and artificial stone, it was pictured in the Pulham company’s c.1877 account of their work to date: ‘Picturesque Ferneries and Rock Garden Scenery’. No doubt some antiquarians were horrified at Proctor’s ‘alterations’, but as a visitor in 1897 wrote ‘it cannot be denied that the work is most artistically carried out’.

Elsewhere in the garden remnants of the ancient castle were ‘improved’ as ornamental features. In her research notes Barbara Jones makes clear that she did not think this work as successful as the folly. She described the remains of the keep as a ‘formless lump’ with a ‘fake’ doorway which led to a walk to another ‘lump of stuff’.

Sadly George Proctor did not enjoy his new garden ornament for long: he died in 1840 and was succeeded by his son Leonard. The estate was bought by the Bott family in 1905, and it remains their family home today. Barbara Jones featured the ‘very fine large folly’ in the 1st edition of Follies & Grottoes in 1953, and when working on the revised edition in 1972 (it would be published in 1974) the Bott family were happy to confirm to Jones that the folly was ‘still safely standing’. Fifty years on the same is still emphatically correct, and today’s visitors can even enjoy a cup of coffee and very tasty cake in the structure.

Benington Lordship has been the location for a number of television and film productions, and looks stunning in One Day, the new (2024) Netflix adaptation of the 2009 novel by David Nicholls (episode 9).

The house and grounds also appeared in Late Flowering Lust, the 1993 BBC tribute to Sir John Betjeman starring Nigel Hawthorne and with the dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures (now New Adventures) choreographed by Matthew Bourne. You can see it here, with a great view of the folly about 28 minutes in https://new-adventures.net/news/late-flowering-lust

The castle folly is listed with the house at grade II*, the summerhouse and attached curtain wall are listed at grade II, the remains of the ancient keep are grade I and the gardens are registered as grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

The Bott family open the gardens at Benington Lordship regularly. The snowdrop season has just finished, but things hot up with a chilli festival in August. See the website for details of further open days this year https://beningtonlordship.co.uk. 

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