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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Searching for an image of the Egyptian Spring, a garden ornament at Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, the Folly Flâneuse found a picture postcard from the early years of the 20th century. But instead of the usual cheery message to a friend, the back of the card promised palatable prizes. So why was a folly being used to promote foodstuffs?

(Please indulge this brief diversion – we will return to the garden ornament in due course…)

Food manufacturers Symington’s were innovators in the field of customer promotions. As well as branded giveaways such as books of needles, thimbles and stamp books, the company produced picture postcards and asked shoppers to send them on to their friends.

The friend would then visit the grocer and ask for Symington’s ‘Table Delicacies’ in the hope of finding one of the yellow prize vouchers which were slipped into randomly selected products. The voucher entitled the holder to rewards such as a ‘box of samples’, or the latest cookery book. There were further rewards for those who recruited new customers via the postcard promotion.

The Folly Flâneuse was disappointed to discover that the campaign did not take follies as an overall theme, and the Egyptian Spring was possibly chosen for the marketing campaign because around the turn of the 19th century Symington’s claimed to be one of the first manufacturers to ‘promote the benefits of a healthy diet with their Egyptian food range’. The only other topographical card found to date featured a scene in Ceylon – presumably because Symington’s sold tea. Other cards had a more overt message:

After going off at that tasty tangent, we must get back to the garden ornament that started it all: the Egyptian Springs at Lower Hartwell.

It was commissioned by Dr John Lee (1783-1866) of Hartwell House as a garden ornament over a natural spring, and built in around 1850-1851 to a design by Joseph Bonomi junior (1796-1878)

Lee had a museum of Egyptian antiquities in the house and he had the well decorated with hieroglyphics, including a cartouche with characters that spell out (Queen) Victoria:

The building also had a Greek inscription, taken from Pindar’s First Pythian Ode, which translated as ‘Water, of all the elements is the best’. Early accounts of the Egyptian Springs suggest that this quotation was chosen because Lee was an advocate of temperance.

An account of 1912 states that inside the building there were carved lists of ‘celebrated men who were temperance reformers’. The author surmised that it was these unpopular temperance principles that led to the neglect of the temple after Lee’s death in 1866. By 1903, when the postcard below was sent, the building was looking pretty shabby.

By 1981 the building was described as looking ‘like a well-vandalized bus shelter’. Happily it was restored that same decade after Richard Broyd’s Historic House Hotels group rescued Hartwell House and turned it into a hotel. The spring and other garden features were restored under the supervision of architect Eric Throssel.

To end on a sweet note: Barbara Jones called the Egyptian Springs a ‘trifling curiosity’.

Although no longer in family ownership, Symington’s are still manufacturing today, so in return for this 21st century promotion the Folly Flâneuse awaits her box of ‘table delicacies’.

Hartwell House was given to the National Trust in 2008. The grounds are open to hotel guests only, but the Egyptian Springs can be found by continuing along the lane past the hotel entrance https://www.hartwell-house.com/

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Soon after her marriage in 1816 Princess Charlotte of Wales, only daughter of the future George IV and his estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick, settled at Claremont House in Surrey with her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The Princess ordered the construction of a gothic summerhouse on the spot where she first alighted on the estate, and called the retreat her ‘House on the Hill’. In the spring of 1817 there was great public rejoicing when it became known that the Princess was expecting a child who might one day be king or queen.

The site chosen for the Gothic Temple was on high ground with a view to the lake with its island and temple, and on the slope below the new building was the great turf amphitheatre created by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s. On the 25th of October 1817 the Princess was taken to view the work at the temple, which was to be her place of ‘retirement in warm weather’. But only a few days later ‘calamity arrived that robbed the nation of its dearest hopes’ – on 5 November Princess Charlotte’s child was stillborn, and the princess herself died the following day.

A distraught Prince Leopold decided to adapt the almost-completed summerhouse as a monument to his late wife. The interior was redesigned to favour more sombre colours, and representations of grief were included in the designs for the painted glass doors. Contemporary reports name the architect as John William Hiort (1772-1861) whose career was championed by Sir William Chambers, but other sources suggest that John Buonarotti Papworth (1775-1847) and Augustus Pugin (1769-1832) also contributed to the design.

In 1818 Prince Leopold granted permission for the public to visit Claremont ‘during his absence on the continent’. The newspapers reported that ‘immense crowds’ descended upon Esher to visit the house and park, where could be found the ‘small and elegant Gothic mausoleum’. The building was incomplete at that date, and the visitors would not yet have seen the painted glass being prepared by the ‘ingenious artist’ Joseph Backler (c.1788-1848). In 1819 the public had a chance to see the designs when Backler displayed the windows in his London gallery. They were then installed in the mausoleum where they cast a ‘chastened mellow light’ on the ornately plastered interior. Before her premature death the princess had sat for the sculptor Federico Nicoli: the portrait bust was completed posthumously and placed on an altar in the mausoleum (although by 1844 it had been replaced by a plaster copy).

The poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon contributed some ‘Lines on the Mausoleum of Princess Charlotte’ to Ackermann’s Forget Me Not; a Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1824. The poem ends:

It is the monument where Hope
And youthful Love sleep side by side,
Raised by the mourner to the name
Of her—his lost, but worshipp’d Bride.

In March 1843 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert walked in the ‘delightful’ pleasure grounds at Claremont and ‘visited the little Mausoleum, which is so pretty, & in such a charming spot’. There must have been a moment of quiet contemplation for the queen, for had Charlotte and her son lived Victoria would not have ascended to the throne. That evening Queen Victoria recorded in her diary that she and Albert had ‘talked of building something of the kind for our resting place’, thus anticipating the building of the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore House (Victoria’s diaries also record her interest in the mausolea at Castle Howard, Belvoir Castle and Wentworth Woodhouse).

Queen Victoria commissioned the sculptor Francis John Williamson (1833-1920) to execute a memorial to Princess Charlotte. Initially the queen suggested it might be placed in the mausoleum, but Williamson persuaded her that it would not be seen to advantage in the dimly-lit interior, and it was placed in Claremont House. In 1910 the Duchess of Albany, then resident at Claremont, gave it to the Church of St George, Esher, where Princess Charlotte had worshipped during her short life at Claremont.

The Claremont estate was sold by the Crown in 1922 and the mausoleum was demolished later that same decade with remarkably little contemporary comment. A 1931 newspaper reported that ‘the last tangible links between Princess Charlotte and the Claremont Estate are disappearing one by one’, and noted that the most recent to go was the mausoleum, with the land required for ‘building schemes’. It was at this point that it dawned on the Folly Flâneuse why there had been so little fuss – the building was not a mausoleum at all.

Princess Charlotte was actually buried in St George’s Chapel in Windsor, and what Prince Leopold created was a cenotaph or memorial. As early as 1819 an article in Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts suggested that the name was incorrect, and that ‘Gothic Temple’ was more appropriate, but ‘Mausoleum’ seems to have stuck and this is the name used on Ordnance Survey maps. As the building did not house human remains, and this was long before listed building status offered some protection, the ‘mausoleum’ could simply be pulled down (although King George V and Queen Mary were apparently asked for their consent).

The very sad ending to the story is that the land never was developed, and the building was demolished in vain. In 1949 the gardens at Claremont were given to the National Trust (the mansion is in private hands as Claremont Fan Court School). In 2017, marking the bicentenary of Princess Charlotte’s death, the National Trust commissioned ‘Props and Sets’ to create a replica of the mausoleum on the footprint of the original, with a stone bearing Leopold’s poignant words ‘My Charlotte is gone’. The replica monument has since been removed, although the footprint and stone remain.

For more on Claremont see https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/surrey/claremont-landscape-garden

The church at Esher is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust – see their website for access arrangements. If you are planning to visit between 16 October and 16 December 2023 then note that the church is open for the sale of charity Christmas Cards https://www.visitchurches.org.uk/visit/church-listing/st-george-esher.html

Thank you for reading. If you can add to the story in any way, or simply wish to share your thoughts, do please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.

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.

Thank you for reading and do please share any thoughts or comments – scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

In January 1897, with the Diamond Jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria approaching, the Darwen News featured a letter from a correspondent named only as ‘Landmark’, proposing that a tower be built on Darwen Moor to mark the occasion. There was a favourable response and the great and good of the town began to make plans.

A competition to design a tower 50 feet high was announced, with entry only open to residents of the borough. Such was the interest that the budget was increased and the proposed height changed to a maximum of 100 feet. It was stipulated that only students of engineering and design could submit ideas, and professional architects were not permitted to take part. The drawings were displayed in the council chamber under a title only, with the designer’s name concealed in an envelope. The Blackburn architect J.H. Herbert Stones FRIBA, awarded first place to the design called simply ‘Darwen’, which was the work of David Ellison who worked in the borough surveyor’s office, although his design was later tweaked by his boss: the tower’s Honorary Architect was Borough Surveyor Robert William Smith-Saville.

Although ostensibly celebrating the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne, the tower had, from the start, a secondary political motive. In the later 19th century the moorland, owned by the absentee Lord of the Manor, Reverend William Arthur Duckworth, was out of bounds to locals, with gamekeepers on patrol to deter trespassers. Many locals ignored this rule, believing that there were ancient rights of way over the land, and eventually a court case decided that this was the case. In 1896 the local authority acquired a vast tract of the moor, thus enabling ‘thousands of toiling operatives who spent the best part of their lives in the smoky valley below, to mount the hill and breathe the more exhilarating air’.

Duckworth later claimed that he had known little of the fight for access to the moors: he lived in Somerset and employed local agents. He was certainly a friend to the town once the court case was settled, and donated the stone for the construction of the tower, which was constructed under the supervision of local man Richard James Whalley. The first sod was cut on the hilltop on 22 June 1897, the day on which Queen Victoria’s jubilee was celebrated.

The Darwen Tower, 86 feet high, was officially opened on Saturday 24 September when 3000 people are reported to have climbed up onto the moor. The tower was an instant success, attracting large numbers of visitors and soon entrepreneurs were pushing for the rights to be the sole purveyors of refreshments on site. Although a few saw the tower as an ‘excresence’,  a ‘pimple’, and a ‘blot on God’s fair earth’, their thoughts were summarily dismissed in the local paper as those of the sort of ‘average man’ who is ‘dull of comprehension or lacks refinement’.

A dramatic view of the lofty tower is known to drivers on the M65 and local routes, with its buttresses giving it the air of a space rocket (although it has been missed of late when the white-clad scaffolding temporarily replaced the familiar silhouette). But this exposed position leaves it vulnerable to weather damage, and the top section has been blown off on three occasions – the current replica in stainless steel was donated by local firm WEC Ltd in 2010 and was flown in by helicopter.

In recent years a local campaign has secured around  £300,000 in funding to restore and weatherproof the tower for future generations. Sterling work by the town’s Rotary Club included building a Lego model of the tower in the Market Hall to encourage donations and raise awareness. Renovation began in June 2021 and was completed in the first days of June 2022.

At the opening ceremony in 1898 Reverend Duckworth gave a speech in which he said that the tower ‘would for many generations commemorate the most important, longest, and happiest reign in English history’. 124 years later the tower has been restored as Victoria’s great-great-grandaughter celebrates an even longer reign, and the tower continues to delight later generations.

The restored tower was officially unveiled on Thursday 2 June 2022 when a beacon was lit to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and the tower was illuminated in red, white and blue.

It’s a steady and well-signposted climb up to the tower from the car park at the top of Earnsdale Road in Darwen.

You can follow the construction of the Lego tower here https://www.rotary-ribi.org/clubs/page.php?PgID=542732&ClubID=1154

Comments are most welcome, please scroll down to the bottom of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

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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In the late 19th century Braystones was a peaceful hamlet close to the Cumberland coast with views out across the Irish Sea. It was here that William Henry Watson built a tower to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. Half a century later, the view would change dramatically: were one able to climb the tower today the eye would be first caught by the great mass that is the Sellafield Nuclear Plant.

William Henry Watson (1859-1934) was the son of a Bolton ‘analytical chemist’, Henry Hough Watson (1810-1886), whose success had enabled him to buy a seaside retreat at Braystones, ten miles south of Whitehaven, which was newly accessible with the coming of the railway. Henry Hough Watson, a Fellow of the Chemical Society, was chemist to the Bolton Gas Company, and advisor to many of the waterworks companies supplying fresh water to Lancashire towns. But he was best known locally as the scientist the police turned to in cases of murder by poisoning, most of which were reported in lurid detail in the local papers.

William Henry Watson also trained as an analytical chemist, but with his father’s wealth behind him he was able to live the life of a gentleman. As well as being a dedicated public servant, he could indulge his interests in geology, meteorology, painting, photography, and the antique.

He was also devoted to his monarch, and as the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne approached, he decided to mark the occasion with a 30 foot high tower. Either side of the door stood a pair of cannon which were apparently sent from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and ‘bearing date the year of Waterloo’. From the rooftop the views (with the usual proviso ‘on a clear day’) took in Scafell Pike, St Bees Head, the Isle of Man and the ‘Scotch hills’. A plaque records that the tower was erected:

IN HONOUR OF THE QUEEN, AND IN COMMEMORATION OF HER DIAMOND JUBILEE, SIXTY YEARS REIGN, 1837-1897, OF HER GLORIOUS MAJESTY VICTORIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, THIS TOWER WAS ERECTED BY WILLIAM HENRY WATSON, OF BRAYSTONES ESQUIRE, AND OPENED BY JOHN QUAYLE, FOR THIRTY-SIX YEARS OVERSEER OF THIS PARISH, AND BY THOMAS JENKINSON AND EDWARD STEELE, CHAIRMAN AND VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE FIRST PARISH COUNCIL. THE 22nd DAY JUNE 1897

The rather austere tower was officially opened on Tuesday 22 June, the day of the Jubilee, and there were great celebrations. The proceedings began at noon with the firing of a signal rocket, and after the speeches a choir of schoolchildren sang hymns from the top of the tower, before a magnificent firework finale.

As well as honouring his monarch, Watson had also built the tower to house his ‘collection of antiquarian objects’. In 1899 the contents of the nearby Distington Museum were sold, and Watson bought pieces for his collection. Other items came from a variety of sources: stone troughs were unearthed nearby and neolithic axe-heads and stone tools were found when the local tarn was drained. Most curious was an accession in 1902: men working for G. Patrickson of Ulverston found ‘what is supposed to be a fossilised human foot’, and it was ceremoniously presented to the museum.

In 1920 Watson added a second plaque to the tower commemorating the local men who lost their lives in the First World War, and honouring those who served and survived.

Watson died at Braystones in May 1934 and was buried in nearby St Bridget’s, Beckermet. His gravestone, now a little overgrown, records his dedication to public service:

WILLIAM HENRY WATSON
OF BRAYSTONES,
JUSTICE OF THE PEACE FOR THIS COUNTY
YOUNGER SON OF
HENRY HOUGH AND JANE WATSON.
HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE CUMBERLAND
COUNTY COUNCIL, & OF THE STANDING
JOINT & POLICE COMMITTEES OF THIS
COUNTY, & FOR 39 YEARS , OF THE
WHITEHAVEN UNION BOARD OF GUARDIANS
DISTRICT COUNCIL. ALSO ONE OF THE
PERMANENT COMMITTEE OF THE BRITISH
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
SCIENCE , & A FELLOW OF THE GEOLOGICAL
& CHEMICAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON
BORN MARCH 15TH 1859
DIED MAY 19TH 1934

Who wrote this magnificent account of his achievements? His family? A fellow member of one of the many committees? No! It is entirely autobiographical. So determined was Watson to ensure his work was remembered, that he had his entry on the family gravestone carved during his lifetime, leaving only the date of his death to be added after his demise. The story reached the press, and far away on the opposite coast the Hull Daily Mail ran the story under the headline ‘Epitaph Carved in Advance: How a Magistrate Made Sure’.

Little more than a decade after Wilson’s death, the tranquil hamlet of Braystones would be overshadowed by the development of the nuclear plant at Windscale, later renamed Sellafield. Today the Jubilee Tower is an empty shell, with no public access allowed, although it is easily viewed from the roadside.

The Beacon Museum in Whitehaven has 2 portraits of Wilson (not on display). After a truly determined attempt The Folly Flâneuse failed to get permission to feature one in this piece, but you can see him here  https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/william-henry-watson-143335

Thanks for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box if you have any thoughts or further information.

The last decades of the 19th century saw a passion for all things rustic in the garden – seats, arbours, bridges, and above all summerhouses. For as it was said in 1870, a garden summerhouse of some sort was ‘desirable, and indeed almost necessary’.

These are the words of Shirley Hibberd, an influential Victorian garden writer, in his Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste of 1870. In this volume he advocated all things rustic: boat houses, fishing houses and some curious, and alarming, hybrids such as a ‘Rustic Reading Room and Bee-shed combined’. He believed a rustic summerhouse was essential as a ‘place of retirement for rest, shelter, conversation […] the quiet enjoyment of a book, or an afternoon nap’.

One of the most famous suppliers of such gardens buildings was the firm founded by Henry Caesar in Knutsford. Although 20th century catalogues for the company state that it was founded in 1871, the rustic work probably came a few years later. In the 1871 census 18 year old Henry describes himself as a ‘joiner’, and in 1878 he advertised as a builder of ‘Hot Houses and Garden Frames’. But by 1884 he had decided his future lay elsewhere, and he placed an advertisement in the local papers:

HENRY CAESAR
RUSTIC HOUSE BUILDER
KNUTSFORD
RUSTIC CHAIRS, SEATS, VASES, BRIDGES, PORCHES, ARCHES, TABLES, AND EVERY
DESCRIPTION OF RUSTIC WORK. HOUSES RETHATCHED AND REPAIRED.

This early letterhead shows the sort of summerhouses and furniture he had on offer, and that enquiries were coming in from across Britain. The summerhouses were made with a wooden frame that was decorated with branches and bark to give the rustic effect. The roof was thatched, or covered in wooden shingles, and the windows usually featured floral motifs in coloured glass.

Very quickly Henry decided that the best way to attract custom was to showcase his rustic work at country fairs, and in June 1885 he was at the Essex Agricultural Society Show. In 1886 he exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Exhibition in Wavertree Park in Liverpool, where he ‘carried off the medal’ for ‘garden seats &c.’. Not just the judges were impressed: the paying public loved the work too, and at the Shropshire and West Midland Agricultural Show of 1906 ‘so comfortable looking were the seats, and so inviting the summer-houses, that many were unable to resist the temptation to use them.’

By 1889 the business had been renamed ‘Henry and Julius Caesar’, and at the Warwickshire Agricultural Society Show of that year the newly-named company won a medal for a summerhouse. It seems that Julius was entirely fictional, and Henry simply decided to promote his business by adopting a more august name. And if one has the surname Caesar, who better to have on your letterhead than Julius to help you conquer the competitors?

Henry Caesar died in 1891 and his wife Jane continued the business, being described as a ‘Rustic House Manufacturer’ in the census later that year. The company continued to flourish, and in 1893 it could be found at stand 399 at the Royal Agricultural Show in Chester. The Manchester Courier reported that ‘Messrs Henry and Julius Caesar of Knutsford and Kings Cross Station’ were showing a collection of rustic houses. The paper continued that ‘this firm enjoys a high reputation for this class of work, and their present display will undoubtedly come in for a good deal of notice.’ As the summer houses were built in panels, and essentially ‘flatpack’, the range must have been (relatively) easy to transport, and a ‘very pretty summer house’ was shown in Dublin in 1899, and ‘some artistically constructed rustic summerhouses and seats’ at the Highland Show in Cupar in 1912.

The summerhouses were snapped up for gardens in the town and country, and were at home in the gardens of the middle classes as well as those of the grander country houses – Queen Victoria owned one and Edward VII is rumoured to have presented a Henry and Julius Caesar rustic shelter to many of the Edwardian hostesses who invited him for the weekend (and gave Alice Keppel the adjoining room). That the King was a patron is confirmed by a plaque in one of the company’s summerhouses which reads ‘Henry and Julius Caesar Rustic House builders to the King and Royal Family, Knutsford, Cheshire’. There was even one in the garden of the Governor’s House at Reading Jail, although for reasons unknown it rapidly became surplus to requirements and the ‘almost new’ summerhouse was offered for sale in 1899.

A late example can be found at Tudor Croft in Guisborough, Yorkshire. Known as The Hideaway, it was probably erected soon after the house was built in 1934. It has been fully restored and re-roofed, and can be visited on charity open days (see below) when a hidden sound system plays 1930s music to add to the atmosphere.

By this date the company had changed hands. Jane Caesar sold the business in the first decade of the 20th century, and with her three unmarried daughters set up a confectionery business in Barrow in Furness. Later owners continued to trade as Henry and Julius Caesar of Knutsford, and in 1939 were awarded the Gold Medal for a Rustic Summer House at the Southport Flower Show. Sadly, the company ceased trading soon afterwards.

Many Caesar summerhouses will have been discarded as fashions changed, and although the structures were robust if cared for, if neglected they rotted away. Those that survive remain popular today, and models occasionally appear at auction or in the catalogues of specialist garden antiques dealers. There were of course other manufacturers designing and building rustic structures, but the Caesar company ensured their name was not forgotten by adding a plaque to many of the summerhouses, cannily also reminding the owner that they were available to execute repairs in the quieter winter months.

Tempted? Move fast; at the time of writing there’s one for sale on eBay.

UPDATE JULY 2021: thank you to everyone who got in touch with information about further extant summerhouses. The Knutsford Heritage Centre has added them all to its records, and the team there continue to research the Caesar business.

For more on the Himalayan Garden, which features a number of unusual garden structures, visit https://www.himalayangarden.com

Tudor Croft is open in aid of charity on a number of weekends in 2021, subject to Covid restrictions: 22-23, 29-30 May, 26-27 June, 3-4 July. See their Facebook page for more information https://www.facebook.com/TudorCroftGardens/photos/a.111875330351585/251624659709984/

The Knutsford Heritage Centre has a display on the work of ‘Henry and Julius Caesar’. For updates on opening visit http://www.knutsfordheritage.co.uk

Thank you for reading. If you know of any Caesar summerhouses, or would like to add any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box below.