In the first half of the 1760s Thomas Farr, a Bristol merchant, bought land at Henbury near Bristol, which included the prominent eminence called ‘Blaize Hill’. In 1766 he commissioned designs from the architect Robert Mylne for a sham castle eye-catcher to top the hill.

Early Bristol historians describe the hill as the site of a Roman camp, and Farr was said to have dug up ‘great quantities’ of coins when the foundations for the castle were made. It was also said to have housed an ancient chapel, and more recently had been home to a summerhouse approached by a formal double-avenue. Farr (1732-1791), a ‘person of exquisite taste’, followed fashion and abandoned this straight approach, creating instead meandering serpentine walks and rides which wound through woodland up to the fine new gothic folly.

A single drawing by Robert Mylne (1733-1811) is known to survive, and as it is annotated ‘no.3’ it is assumed that Mylne provided several variant designs. The castle had offices at ground level where the servants could prepare food, and three rooms on the first floor for socialising. The principal circular room was 25 feet in diameter and ‘very highly finished in the Gothic stile’. Stairs in one of the smaller turrets led to the roof, where the views took in ‘many miles’ of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel, as well as a prospect over the surrounding counties and across to Wales. Contemporary sources suggest that Farr would watch his ships arriving in Bristol from the top of his ‘Summer or Pleasure House’, and it was also an eye-catcher, announcing Farr’s elevated status to all who saw it.

Farr’s ambitions for his estate were foiled by bankruptcy in 1778, and he sold the estate to one Dr Denham Skeet. The poet Edward Davies was a guest of Skeet and recorded his visit in verse. This was published in 1783 as Blaise Castle: A Prospective Poem, and he includes a rather disturbing description of the effort required to ascend the footpath to the folly:

The fat and lazy would ne’er reach the Top.
Were there not Seats prepared for them to stop,
And breath [sic], while they their reeking Foreheads mop.
But after various Perils, Stops and Pain,
With trembling Knees, we reach the Castle Plain,
And panting view the Horizon again.

The artist Samuel Hieronymous Grimm visited a few years later (it is not recorded if he walked the tortuous footpath or opted for a sedate carriage ride) and took a number of views of the folly. His sketches show that the door was originally flanked by a pair of sphinx statues, which are sadly no longer in situ.

In 1789 the estate was bought by the Harford family. They built a new mansion, and invited Humphry Repton to remodel the grounds: he suggested raising one of the turrets of the castle to give it a more interesting silhouette, but his advice was not taken.  Tourists were allowed to explore the walks through the woods to the folly, although there were restrictions: one early nineteenth century visitor was unable to persuade (bribe?) the ‘churlish porter’ to allow access on a Sunday.

Blaise Castle (the folly soon gave its name to the entire estate) remained in Harford ownership until the early decades of the twentieth century, and by the later nineteenth century the ground floor of Blaise Castle was earning its keep as a residence for estate workers. The family continued to allow access to parties of naturalists, antiquarians and ramblers, and the reports of their visits in the first decade of the twentieth century provide detail of the upper room in the tower. It was by then furnished with a collection of arms and armour, rare old china and furniture, and had ‘beautiful stained glass windows’. Like the earlier tourists, the groups could climb up to the top to appreciate the magnificent scenery.

In 1926 access became available to all when the Bristol Corporation bought the estate as a ‘charming natural playground’ where the city’s citizens might enjoy ‘the beauty with which nature has endowed this place so lavishly’.

As well as the hilltop folly the grounds also featured a castellated lodge, a ‘fairy tale’ thatched lodge and places of ‘childish delight’ such as ‘The Butcher’s Cave’ and ‘The Giant’s Footprint’. In 1949 a Folk Museum was opened in the mansion, and there was also a ‘pleasant restaurant’ where visitors could dine off elegant crockery bearing the arms of the city.

By the 1970s, after years of neglect and abuse by vandals, the folly was in poor condition. The interior had fallen into complete disrepair and, as Barbara Jones noted in her research files, the stained glass had been destroyed ‘by hooligans’.

The exterior fabric was also in a poor condition, and in 1979 the council proposed pulling down the most dangerous section, and preserving the rest as a ‘conserved ruin’. Public opinion was vociferously in favour of restoring the whole castle, and in March 1981 a local paper could announce that the dangerous turret was currently being rebuilt and that it was ‘hoped to fully restore this fanciful building over the next three years’.

Today an active community charity, Friends of Blaise (born out of the campaign to see the castle restored in the 1980s) supports the city council in their efforts to maintain the estate. The volunteers open the castle (grade II*) to the public on certain days in the warmer months, but you can walk up to it at any time. There’s a walking guide here. There’s still a museum and a cafe – just don’t expect the fancy china.

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On the banks of the river Orwell in Suffolk there once stood a lofty obelisk. It proclaimed to all the filial piety of Charles Berners, who erected it in 1793 in memory of his father, William. At 96 feet tall, and topped with a golden sun, it was a prominent landmark but sadly it came to a sorry end when it was damaged by fire and then demolished in the middle of the 20th century. But as the image above shows, fragments were salvaged and survive today.

William Berners (1709-1783) acquired the Woolverstone (or Wolverstone, Woolverston) estate in 1773 when it was described as being ‘capable of great and immediate improvement’. Berners commissioned a new mansion which was built to the designs of the architect John Johnson. The house was described in 1784 as ‘fine enough’, but it was the hilltop location with views of the river Orwell that gave it ‘all its merit’: the numerous small boats which sailed up and down the river brought to life this ‘superb view’.

After his death his son and heir Charles (c.1734-1815) commissioned the architect Robert Mylne (1733-1811) to design an obelisk in memory of his father. The plan was drawn up early in 1791, and the situation decided in September of the same year, with an Ipswich mason called Edward Tovell given the job of erecting the monument.

The obelisk was square in plan and surmounted with a golden metal ball surrounded by sun-rays (possibly inspired by the obelisk to the Duke of Cumberland in the park at Windsor of 1765 or the one at Stourhead in Wiltshire which was topped with a gilded bronze sun in 1748). But unusually it had a hollow centre which contained a wooden staircase, and presumably the circles near the top of the shaft were peepholes through which to admire the view, although as the engraving above shows the view was pretty impressive even from ground level.

Old postcards record how the obelisk looked, and show it to have been decorated with decorative roundels. These are very likely products of the Coade artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth, as that the company is known to have supplied the huge plaque featuring Diana the huntress which adorns the pediment of the mansion, as well as vases, urns, consoles and capitals. There were two inscriptions which were recorded on a pen and wash drawing by Issac Johnson of Woodbridge.

The first inscription translates as ‘In memory of William Berners Esq., best of fathers and well meriting the building of this obelisk by his son Charles Berners 1793’. The second plaque recorded that William was born on July 10 1709 and died on September 18 1783.

Sadly it was the internal void which brought an end to the obelisk. In July 1943 a fire was started at the foot of the wooden stairs which quickly spread (naval ratings returning from the pub were blamed). Considered beyond repair, the monument was demolished with explosives soon after.

But all was not lost: a few lucky villagers salvaged ornamental fragments which survive in private gardens, including what seem to be some of the Coade stone plaques from the obelisk.

The keen-eyed will have spotted two further landscape curiosities in the earlier illustrations to this post, both of which were once part of the Woolverstone estate. The map shows Freston Tower (top left), a ‘tall, imposing and picturesque bit of Tudor brickwork’ now a holiday home in the care of the Landmark Trust.

The engraving of Woolverstone Park shows a small ornamental building (bottom right): this ‘pretty little lodge’ became known as the Cat House, with the tale told locally that a stuffed cat was displayed in the window to warn local smugglers that the authorities were in the area. It has since been substantially extended and is now in the grounds of the MDL Woolverstone Marina.

Woolverstone Hall (grade I) was requisitioned during the Second World War and has been in use as a school since the 1950s. The views which the obelisk once enjoyed can be seen from a public footpath.

The Woolverstone obelisk is a sad loss, but the obelisk in Windsor Great Park, also topped by a golden sun, was recently restored by Cliveden Conservation, and looks rather handsome on a bright day.

The Folly Flâneuse wishes to thank Simon Pearce of Woolverstone for sharing his research and for being an excellent guide to the area. Thanks also to the owners of the surviving plaques for permission to view.

Woolverstone Hall is currently home to Ipswich High School. There are excellent views of the house on its website https://www.ipswichhighschool.co.uk

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Sundorne House in Shropshire was the seat of the Corbet family and the estate included the picturesque ruin of Haughmond Abbey. In 1774 John Corbet added a dramatic eye-catcher to the ensemble – a sham castle on the summit of Haughmond Hill.

John Corbet (1751-1817) spent 1773 on the Grand Tour, where he was painted by Pompeo Batoni. He had inherited the Sundorne estate from his father in 1759, when still a minor and on his return from Europe he began to remodel the mansion using the architect Robert Mylne, and his improvements to the park included a vast new lake.

Although his portrait by Batoni shows him with a plan of the Pantheon in Rome, he chose to ornament the park with a building in the Gothick style. High on Haughmond Hill he built a mock fortification called Haughmond Castle.

The architect Robert Mylne sent Corbet a ‘design of a castle to be erected on the top of a hill’ in November 1774. Mylne had experience in the field having already built Blaise Castle in Bristol: Haughmond Castle had a similar triangular floor-plan of a central core surrounded by three circular turrets, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps. It was complete by 1777 when a lucky visitor stayed in the ‘pea green’ room at Sunborne and his view took in the building on Haughmond Hill.

As well as being an eye-catcher from Sundorne, the Castle would have served as both a landmark and a refreshment pavilion during the chase, for Corbet was a passionate huntsman. Locally it is told that a flag was flown when hunting was to take place the following day, although an alternative version has it that the flag was hoisted to warn the servants at Sunborne House that the hunt was over and the participants were heading back for dinner.

It was also a belvedere and from it there was a ‘magnificent panorama’ which included ‘the valley of the Severn, with the ancient town of Shrewsbury, backed on the horizon by the Welsh Mountains, while further south the wooded crest of the Wrekin towered above the valley’.

The prominent eye-catcher played a key role in the celebrations of the coming-of-age of Corbet’s eldest son Andrew William in 1822. Cannon were fired from Sundorne Castle (the house by now remodelled and renamed) and ‘these were answered by discharges from the Castle on the hill’. Tenants and their friends were invited to partake of a ‘cold collation’ at the Castle, and in the evening the building must have been a magical sight when it was illuminated.

For some years the eye-catcher doubled as a home for estate workers. Photographs and postcards from the early years of the 20th century show the Castle in good condition, but in the 1930s it collapsed. In 1938 a visitor noted the ‘ruins of Haughmond Castle’ and by 1973 only ‘traces’ remained.

Sundorne Castle too is gone – demolished in 1955, although a very attractive gatehouse and chapel were left standing.

All that remains of Haughmond Castle today are a few moss-covered bits of masonry and some curved ironwork. The view can still be appreciated, although the valley has been developed since Corbet’s day. There are walks to the site from the Forestry Commission’s Haughmond Hill car park https://www.forestryengland.uk/haughmond-hill/walking-trails-haughmond-hill

Haughmond Abbey is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited all year round https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/

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