A new exhibition has just opened at Compton Verney in Warwickshire: Towering Dreams: Extraordinary Architectural Drawings explores how architects in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ‘understood the world around them and the ideas and cultures that inspired them’. The majority of the wonderful drawings in the exhibition are on loan from Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, and the subjects include structures we would know today, as well as extraordinary designs that never made it off the drawing board.

The Flâneuse couldn’t resist a jaunt, and wasn’t disappointed. Without giving too much away the exhibition includes works by Piranesi, Robert Adam and Joseph Michael Gandy among others, and features such delights as this wildly ambitious kennel, designed for Frederick Harvey, Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol’s estate at Downhill in Northern Ireland. Unsurprisingly, it never made it off the drawing board. Whilst a serious exercise in design, the ancient temple/doghouse created by Soane also has humorous touches, including a cluster of canines clambering around the vase atop the dome.

Many of the works on display, including the title image and the views above, were produced by unidentified draughtsmen in Sir John Soane’s office. They were drawn at a large scale to illustrate Soane’s lectures at the Royal Academy, where he was Professor of Architecture.

This image, showing the vast array of buildings at Kew, near London, against what appears to be a radiant sun, shows Soane’s interest in Sir William Chambers’ designs for the royal gardens at Kew. In January 1820 King George III died, and in a lecture in March of that year Soane ‘took an opportunity, in referring to the different buildings in the Royal gardens at Kew […] to pay an elegant and animated tribute’ to the memory of the late king. Sadly history does not record if this particular view of the garden ornaments was displayed on an easel to illustrate the subject.

The grounds of Compton Verney are sadly lacking in follies, but there is a pretty thatched ice-house.

Museums and galleries are having a tough time at the moment, with many under threat of closure or having to reduce their opening hours, so sponsorship is vital. The Flâneuse is therefore happy to mention that the exhibition is supported by SE-Solicitors who are based, like Compton Verney, in the heart of England.

The exhibition, curated by Jane Simpkiss, can be seen at Compton Verney until 31 August 2025 and the Flâneuse highly recommends a visit. If you don’t already know Compton Verney, there is also a fabulous permanent collection, further special exhibitions and grounds laid out by Capability Brown to explore. Everything you need to know is here.

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A prominent feature in the extensive demesne of Alnwick Castle is the Observatory on Ratcheugh Crag, a ‘stupendous and romantic rock’. The building was one of a number of landscape features planned by Hugh and Elizabeth, 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, in the 1770s, but the sham-ruined eye-catcher was not completed until after her death.

Ratcheugh Crag is an outcrop of basalt, and a watercolour in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland, dated to the mid 1770s, shows it bare. The crag, which is visible from Alnwick Castle, was a popular destination for an excursion, and in 1773 the Duke and Duchess noted their decision to build ‘A Ruin at Radsheugh’, and to lay out a new road along the rocky escarpment. The Duchess died in 1776, which may have put plans on hold, but a visitor in autumn 1782 noted an ‘unfinish’d building above the rock’, and this became the pavilion that stands today.

As work continued to complete this folly, the Duke, or rather the architect Robert Adam, went back to the drawing board and in 1783-84 a series of magnificent designs for a greatly extended symmetrical range ‘proposed to be erected upon the top of a Rock near Alnwick Castle’ were executed. A number are in the Sir John Soane museum, and at Alnwick there are wonderful highly-finished designs for a range in a castellated style (below) and an alternative in an ecclesiastical manner.

But these grand plans were never executed. At Alnwick there is a drawing of Ratcheugh by John Lambert which is annotated with the words ‘drawn from Mr Bell’s original design’. John Bell was the Duke’s mason and builder, and had accompanied the late Duchess on tour, sketching the buildings she admired. This wording suggests that it was Bell’s design that was under construction in 1782, and complete by 1784 when Adam noted on one of his plans (above) that ‘the part shaded light already executed by the Duke’.

The Duke had a new drive laid to the crag to enable visitors to arrive in comfort, and in 1785 the Duke took a guest to admire the ‘building imitating the Ruins of an Old Castle’. The upper room was glazed on all sides, and from it Alnwick could ‘be viewed to great advantage’. The panorama also took in the Cheviot Hills and the North Sea.

The Duke died in 1786 and early the next century his son added an extension to the the ruin (not illustrated) to provide a home for the Keeper, which became known as Crag Cottage. The 1844 tithe map calls the hilltop folly the ‘Ratcheugh Tower’ and by the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1867 (surveyed 1861-4) it is marked as ‘Observatory’. The surveyors noted it as a ‘Mock Ruin of which the Observatory forms the Apex’, adding perceptively that it had been ‘erected about a century ago to add to the effect of the naturally beautiful landscape’.

The Crag was celebrated in a very curious poem by John Scafe, an Alnwick-based poet and geologist. In 1820 he combined his interests to write King Coal’s Levee, or Geological etiquette, a versified study of stone, which Goethe described as containing ‘all the knowledge of Geology a man wants’.

Thence to Ratcheugh Crag he pac’d:
– A little wilderness of taste
Dropt on the fertile lands,
And still, by ducal visits graced,
The hoary summit stands.

Northumberland Estates has restored the building, and it continues to be used by the Percy family. There is no public access, but there are occasional open days for local charities, and Ratcheugh Crag and its folly can be admired from public rights of way and the road.

For some stunning drone photos of the observatory, and a short film, visit https://fabulousnorth.com/place/view/ratcheugh-observatory/

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Nostell Priory, not far from Wakefield in West Yorkshire, is a magnificent 18th century mansion built adjacent to the site of an Augustinian priory. Architect James Paine worked at Nostell for around 30 years, before Robert Adam was called in to add new wings and other works. Adam also designed one of the most luscious of lodges to be found on a country estate.

The new house was commissioned by Sir Rowland Winn, 4th bart. (1706-1765), whose family had owned Nostell since the middle of the 17th century. The original design was by gentleman-architect Col. James Mosyer, but it was modified by James Paine who went on to work at Nostell for 30 years. In the same period the grounds were landscaped with lakes and plantations. Sir Rowland was succeeded in 1765 by his son, also Rowland (1739-1785) and it was he, the fifth baronet, who invited Robert Adam to Nostell. Adam remodelled the stables, created stunning interiors, began ambitious (but ultimately largely unrealised) additions to the house, and designed new lodges.

In the 18th century the terms obelisk and pyramid could be synonymous, so whilst we today would think this structure pyramidal, it was known as the Obelisk Lodge. Adam drew up plans for the ‘Gateway for the Park’ in 1776 and work began immediately. The original drawings show that a pair of sphinx were to terminate the flanking walls, but if they are ever installed they are now lost without trace (see link below). The drive straddled by the lodge brought traffic from the important Pontefract to York road, and it must have been a great thrill for visitors to pass through this monumental lodge in their carriages, before sweeping down over the end of the lake and then climbing again for the mansion to burst into view.

There was accommodation for the gate-keeper in the two small rooms flanking the pyramid. With the arrival of the railway in the 19th century, the Obelisk Lodge was used less and a gate-keeper was no longer needed, although a colliery labourer, a stonemason’s labourer and gamekeepers (the lodge was well-placed to spot poachers entering the park) are recorded in residence over the century. The lodge was by now known locally as the Needle’s Eye (or Needle Eye), perhaps because of its similarity to the arch-pierced pyramid at Wentworth Woodhouse, about 15 miles away. It continued as a family home until the 1950s, but once empty began to decline.

By 1977, when surveyed for the National Monuments Record, it was dilapidated and the tip was crumbling. A decade later the lodge featured in the exhibition (and accompanying catalogue) Georgian Arcadia: Architecture for the Park and Garden, which was held to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Georgian Group. The ‘dramatic Piranesian conception’ was described as neglected and vandalised, and so it remained until the beginning of the 21st century.

In 2002 it was announced that £4.2 million pounds of Heritage Lottery Funding would allow the acquisition of this previously private part of the estate, as well as meeting the costs of a major programme of renovation and restoration at Nostell that included the Grade II* listed Obelisk Lodge. The singular lodge, which had become pointless in more ways than one, is now once again a magnificent parkland feature.

Nostell Priory was given to the National Trust in lieu of tax in 1953  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/nostell

For Adam’s drawing in the collection of the Sir John Soane Museum see http://collections.soane.org/THES92166

All modern photo’s were taken on rather lovely day in November 2020, when local restrictions allowed, and the National Trust team were doing an excellent job of managing safe access to the park.

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Gosford House, a seat of the Earl of Wemyss and March, is a stunning mansion which looks across the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh. Designed by the eminent architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) shortly before his death, building work began in the 1790s. The house sits in the prettiest of grounds, with watercourses, ponds, summerhouses and a sublime mausoleum. In the following century one of the summerhouses was given a new use by the Aberlady Curling Club, which held matches there whenever the pond was suitably frozen.

The construction of the new house at Gosford (also known as Wemyss House at this date) for Francis Charteris, 6th earl of Wemyss (1723-1808), went on for almost two decades, and was beset with problems from the start. It was said to be built of local ‘sea stones which no art can every dry’, and in the 1820s and 1830s visitors believed it was ‘totally uninhabitable’, and that it would ‘shortly be pulled down’. The family continued to live in the old house, not far from the new site, and only a few rooms in the new mansion were used as a picture gallery. Happily the pessimistic predictions were wrong, and the house survives today, with rebuilt wings flanking Adam’s central block.

As the construction of the house dragged on, work continued to transform the demesne. Passing by in 1796 the Duke of Rutland couldn’t believe that Lord Wemyss would build a house in such an ‘objectionable’ situation in a ‘barren rabbit warren’, so clearly a landscape and garden had to be conjured out of nothing. The design of the pleasure grounds is attributed to James Ramsay (died 1820), a Scottish architect and landscaper, and the general design of ponds, walks and rides was decided by the time William Forrest surveyed Haddingtonshire for his map dated 1799. Sadly, this map, and Ainslie’s estate map of 1808, do not detail the smaller garden buildings (although the mighty mausoleum is shown) so their date remains uncertain, but by 1832 a visitor could describe the ‘labyrinth of groves and walks’ and the ‘grottoes of every kind of material’.

One of these ‘grottoes’ is the building at the head of the pond, which is marked as ‘summerhouse’ on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1854. Originally thatched, the little rustic pavilion and its flanking walls are built out of tufa, and traces of its shell-work decoration survive. This is the building which became the base of the Aberlady Curling Club after it was formed in 1860: curling stones and brushes were stored inside, and the room also gave players warmth and shelter.

Curling had been an important sport in Scotland for centuries, but was very much in vogue in the 19th century, its popularity summed up in a newspaper article of 1896: ‘In the society of Scotsmen it is universally admitted that there is no winter amusement which excites more lively interest than a well-contested match on the ice’. And although our writer mentions the Scotsmen, the game was also popular with female players.

The pond at Gosford was considered perfect for the sport, as its sheltered situation ensured the ice was preserved for a long period. In 1886 Lord Wemyss, as patron of the club, was thanked for making the ponds available, and allowing the game to be played with ‘so much personal comfort’. Such is the local passion that when Lord Elcho, heir to the estate, celebrated his 21st birthday in 1933, the club presented him with commemorative curling stones. The present Earl of Wemyss and March is patron of the club today, and although matches have for many years been played in indoor rinks, there was a Grand Outdoor Event at Gosford when conditions allowed in 2010. If you’d like to see the club in action have a look at their Flickr album here https://www.flickr.com/photos/aberladycurling/albums/72157625562513200

In recent years a major project has seen the restoration of the pleasure grounds. The park is open daily and you can find out more here http://www.gosfordhouse.co.uk/house-tours-grounds/

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Brizlee Tower* stands high on Brizlee Hill, near Alnwick, and overlooks Hulne Park, a detached pleasure ground close to the Duke of Northumberland’s principal park at Alnwick Castle. It was built in the late 18th century as a prospect tower and eye-catcher, and also as an object to be visited on a drive from the castle through Hulne Park.

The park was designed by ‘the inimitable Brown’, aka Capability, working with local engineers and designers, and was also home to the ruins of mediaeval Hulne Abbey, embellished and repurposed by the Duke and Duchess as a banqueting house, pleasure garden and menagerie for exotic pheasants. This is one of The Folly Flâneuse’s favourite follies: the detail is just so joyful, or as historian Alistair Rowan so wonderfully put it: ‘at Brizlee there is fantasy and flamboyance’.

Brizlee Hill had been landscaped in the previous decades, and there were already plantations and a network of rides. A tower had been planned for the hill during the Duchess’s lifetime, but she died in 1776 before building had started, and it was left to her husband to erect it in her memory. Many early accounts of the 87 feet high tower are at pains to stress that the tower was ‘planned entirely’ by Hugh 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714-1786) . But whilst the location and the Gothick style were probably his choice, he did have just a little help with the detail from his friend Robert Adam. Adam’s drawings for the tower, prepared in 1777 and 1778, survive in the collections at Alnwick Castle and the Soane Museum, London.

Although the tower carries the date 1781, the ‘celebrated Tower at Brizlee’ wasn’t completely finished until 1783. The exterior is decorated with carved stones showing the Duke’s Order of the Garter, 12 coats of arms representing the couple’s lineage, and at first floor level two Coade Stone roundels showing the profiles of the Duke and Duchess. The finishing touch was ‘a curious grate on which a bonfire is kindled on extra-ordinary occasions’. This ironwork basket was made by industrialist James Sharp at his factory: Sharp grew up at the rectory in nearby Rothbury, where his brothers included the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp.

Visible from the first floor platform is a plaque inscribed:

Circumspice
Ego omnia ista sum Dimensus;
Mei sunt ordines,
mea Descriptio:
Multae etiam istarum arborum.
Mea manu sunt satae

(Look around. I have measured out all these things; they are my orders, it is my planting; many of these trees have even been planted by my hand).

The inscription begins circumspice which roughly translates as ‘look around’; the Latin word was most famously used in Sir Christopher Wren’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral. His epitaph reads si monumentum requiris, circumspice: (if you seek (his) monument, look around), which instruction guided the reader to look up at the beauties of the cathedral, Wren’s great achievement. The Duke was surely echoing this when asking visitors to gaze out upon the castle, pleasure ground, and productive farmland he had improved or implemented at Alnwick. The second part of the inscription is from the ancient Greek account of Lysander meeting Cyrus, the King of Persia. The words are Cyrus’s response to Lysander’s admiration of his gardens.

Most early visitors waxed lyrical about the Duke’s work, with one describing it as ‘well-imagined and in an excellent Taste of Gothick Solidity’ and another writing that the ‘elegant and lofty Belvidere […] will ever remain a noble specimen of his skill in Architecture’. One less generous tourist agreed the tower was elegant, but thought the inscription savoured ‘too much of vanity’.

From the top of the tower the view was bounded by the North Sea in one direction, and the Cheviot Hills in another. Looking south-east the mid-ground was dominated by a stunning view of Alnwick Castle and its park, with the River Aln running through. This is best illustrated in Girtin’s view from Brizlee of c.1800 and in a verse from one of the pastoral poems so beloved of the Victorians. Composed by John Lamb Luckley of Alnwick, and published in 1848, ‘Beautiful Brizlee’ extols the wonders of the spot:

Here Warkworth rears her ancient towers
Above the winding dale;
There Cheviot’s frowning summit lours
Far o’er the cultivated vale;
Hulner with her ruin’d altars lies
Beneath the mountain tree;
And varied views delight the eyes
From beautiful Brizlee.

By 1999 there were severe problems of water penetration and rusting ironwork which had left the slender stone balustrades unsafe and a range of other problems, which put the tower ‘at risk’. The Northumberland Estates commissioned specialist conservation architects Robin Kent Architecture & Conservation to carry out repairs with grant aid from English Heritage. After thorough investigations work started in January 2004 and the grade I listed tower was reopened by the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland on 21 November 2005.

The tower can be seen from walks in Hulne Park, and there are occasional charity open days, but there is no vehicular access. At the time of writing the park is closed due to the COVID19 pandemic, but in due course will reopen and you can find out more here http://www.northumberlandestates.co.uk/the-estate/walks-trails/

* aka Brislee, Brisley, Brislay, Briesley, Brislaw…

Note: The Folly Flâneuse is continuing to Stay Home. Special thanks to all those who have helped with images and expertise so these posts may continue to appear. This week particular thanks to Robin Kent.

On recent sedate tours of Britain The Folly Flâneuse was intrigued to find two pairs of pavilions which had sadly lost their principal part. Near Towcester in Northamptonshire are the Palladian pavilions that once flanked a fine house. Meanwhile at Mistley in Essex the twin towers of a Robert Adam church have long since lost their linking nave. The surviving pairs are, however, far from forlorn and seem to be throughly enjoying their independence.

The mansion at Stoke Park  was built for Francis Crane in c.1630 and is attributed, with some authority, to Inigo Jones. It is claimed as the first house in Britain to use the Palladian model of a central villa with two flanking pavilions linked by colonnades. This is of course ironic, as the main block was destroyed by fire in 1886 leaving only the pavilions. Curiously, when a new house was built a few years after the fire, it was constructed on a virgin site behind the eastern pavilion rather than on the footprint of the lost house. Stoke Park was requisitioned by the military during World War Two, and allowed to fall into decline when the war ended.

Robert Duff Chancellor became the saviour of Stoke Park when he bought the estate in 1954. He demolished the derelict Victorian house, leaving only a very pretty service wing, and put all of his efforts into restoring the pavilions, with one being converted into a private home. The setting, with ornamental pond and overflowing borders is fabulous.

Until 1928 the estate had stayed in the hands of the same family for around 300 years, but had never once passed from father to son.  Stoke Park then had a number of commercial owners until Robert Chancellor bought it in 1954. He bequeathed it to his nephew, Alexander Chancellor, and as he and his wife Susanna have only daughters the pattern looks set to continue for another couple of generations at least.

At Mistley in Essex two elegant towers look out across the estuary of the River Stour, close to the border with Suffolk. These towers are also the work of a major architect, in this case Robert Adam who designed only one other church: Gunton in Norfolk.

Robert Rigby of Mistley Hall had grandiose plans to turn Mistley into a spa and attract prosperous visitors to the area. The mediaeval church was not considered an attraction so Rigby asked Adam to come up with something a little more modern and elegant. Sadly, Rigby’s plans came to nothing, and by the mid 19th century Adam’s design was in turn considered dated.  Another new church was built nearby, but the towers of the Adam church were remodelled to make them symmetrical and left standing as seamarks for ships on the river.

The towers were sold to local families who planned to use them as mausolea but this plan also failed*. The pavilions were restored in the 1950s and are now in the care of English Heritage.

The Stoke Park Pavilions are used as a stunning wedding and events venue, but are open to the public from 24 July to 20 August 2019 between 3pm and 6pm. Don’t miss this chance to visit. http://www.stokeparkpavilions.co.uk

The exteriors of Mistley Towers can be visited at any time, and the key to one of the towers is available locally, for more information see https://www.englishheritage.org.uk/visit/places/mistley-towers/

* There is however a very curious black granite mausoleum in the churchyard, the resting place of the Norman family.

Having fallen in to serious disrepair, the Hermitage at Kedleston was restored by the National Trust in 2016. The project was made more difficult because a large, and very lovely, plane tree has established itself alongside the building, which also makes (non-professional) photography something of a challenge.

In the 1760s Lord Scarsdale and Robert Adam conceived a circuit walk around the park at Kedleston, with views in to the house, and out into the country beyond. The three mile gravel walk was bordered by flowering shrubs, and punctuated with buildings including a Turkish Tent; but only the Hermitage survives today. There’s no evidence that a hermit was ever employed to inhabit the folly, and as it was furnished with a tea table it is more likely that it was used as a tranquil spot for refreshments.

The Folly Flâneuse followed in the footsteps of 18th century visitors and stayed at the inn designed by Robert Adam.