In 1829 William Bettison Esq. purchased a country retreat on Newbegin in Hornsea, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. From here, he commuted by phaeton to Hull, where during his career he was owner of the Humber Street Brewery and proprietor of the Hull Advertiser. The house came with ‘extensive Pleasure Grounds’ and some time around 1844 he constructed this curious tower built of what are called treacle bricks, over-baked rejects from the kiln.

Bettison left Hornsea about a decade later but his name would live on. The story told locally is that a local lad/sailor climbed the tower and hung a placard from the top emblazoned with the words ‘Bettison’s Folly’, and thus it got its name. The legend also has it that Bettison built the tower so that his son/a servant could clamber up, spot him returning from Hull in his carriage, and give the order to cook to get the supper on the table.

In 1882 the estate was purchased by Mr. C. Shaw, and in 1901 he hosted a garden party in aid of the Wesleyan Society. The Hull Daily Mail sent a reporter who was fascinated by the tower (which could be climbed for twopence) and enquired into its history. A local man, Mr Roxby, remembered the tower being constructed and named the builder as John Russell, a Hornsea bricklayer – although other accounts say that it was built by a Hull builder who was never paid as Bettison went bankrupt.

Whoever the builder was, it must have been an unusual commission given the curious use of Flemish bond with projecting headers. Roxby could even give the source of the bricks as the Hornsea Burton Brickyard (Hornsea Burton was a nearby hamlet now lost to the encroaching sea). These bricks are usually said to have been ‘rejects’, over-baked in the kiln, but our anonymous journalist was told they were a ‘special make’. Whatever their origins, they are extremely unusual and extremely effective, catching the light (on a good day) and making the tower shimmer. The designer was quite a pioneer of recycling: as well as using the waste from the kiln the tower also has beer bottle windows*, presumably from Bettison’s brewery.

The newspaper article didn’t mention any of the tales associated with the tower, but concluded that Bettison ‘simply built it as a fad in order to have an opportunity of admiring the surrounding scenery’. The view would have taken in a local beauty spot, the large freshwater lake called Hornsea Mere.

When Barbara Jones was researching for the second edition of Follies and Grottoes she missed the tower on a 1971 recce and appealed to local contacts for information. By that date the Tower House (as it had become known) had been demolished and in 1966 a care home “The Willows’ was built on the site. Happily Jones must eventually have managed to see the tower, and in the revised book she describes it as ‘enchantingly pretty’.

The key source who helped Jones with information was Raymond Fieldhouse, a Scarborough schoolmaster who had served with Jones’s husband Clifford Barry in India during the Second World War, and later became friends with the couple. His initial response was that he didn’t know the structure, but intrigued he set off to Hornsea to investigate. He admired the tower, especially the bricks which he described as ‘a beautiful dark purplish-red’, but he drew the line at entering after the gardener advised “I wouldn’t if I were you, everything’s a foot deep in pigeon muck’. Fieldhouse also learned that the Hornsea Town Band used to climb the tower and perform on May Day. This must, he wrote, have been quite an achievement in a narrow tower, and he concluded that the ‘trombonist would be a positive menace’.

Fieldhouse (1913-1979) was well known in Scarborough where he contributed a column to the Scarborough Evening News and Mercury, and in 1973 co-wrote and illustrated The Streets of Scarborough, a guide to the town’s architecture. He was a talented artist, almost entirely self-taught, and Fieldhouses’s pen and ink sketch of Bettison’s Tower (above) appeared in the revised 1974 edition of Follies and Grottoes, one of only a handful of contemporary sketches by an artist other than Jones herself.

The nursing home has gone and the tower is now surrounded by housing. It is well-maintained and whilst currently there is no public access to the interior, the exterior is easily seen and there is an information board showing the series of stairs and platforms that lead to the roof.

The Folly Flâneuse is rather susceptible to being sidetracked… In the course of finding out more about Raymond Fieldhouse she discovered that he had designed the cover for the programme for the Northern Command Tattoo, held in Roundhay Park, Leeds, in June 1954. This was quite a spectacle (see film clips below) and Princess Margaret was one of the guests of honour. Fieldhouse’s illustrations are lovely, but equally fascinating is that the schedule of events which accompanied the programme could ‘be seen in the dark’. It was printed on special paper and ‘when held against the searchlights each item can be clearly seen’.

And the wonderful cover too has a luminosity which would make it stand out on a darkening evening.

There are clips from Pathé News showing the Roundhay Park Tattoo here https://www.britishpathe.com/video/princess-margaret-at-military-tattoo-reel-1

Fieldhouse’s drawing of the tower was still in Barbara Jones’s studio at the time of her death. It is currently with Neil Jennings Fine Art. Contact neiljennings20@gmail.com for more information.

Thanks to John Fieldhouse for helping with information about his late father. In another of those curious coincidences which The Folly Flâneuse so loves, John studied at the Royal College of Art in the early 1970s where he would often spend time with Barbara and Clifford.

* Predating Barney and Stig by over a century.

“It is a pleasant delusion to think that this is the last fragment of a noble baronial pile” wrote the author of a guide to Roundhay Park in 1872. It was, he explained, simply ‘an object of interest’, the creation of a gentleman of ‘good taste’: in short, a folly.

That gentleman was Thomas Nicholson. In 1803 he had bought a large part of the ancient Roundhay hunting park in partnership with fellow Quaker Samuel Elam. Whilst Elam hoped to profit by developing homes for the burgeoning professional class in Leeds, Nicholson intended to build his country seat on the northern portion of the estate.

By 1806 Nicholson gave his address as Roundhay Park, although it is not clear exactly when his new mansion house was complete. A plan of the park made at the time of the purchase in 1803 shows that Nicholson worked with the existing topography, and retained the plantations already in situ when developing the new pleasure ground. By 1807 it was said that Nicholson was ’embellishing’ estate at ‘no small expense’, and the sham castle, top lake, and a haha had been created by 1811 when they are mentioned in a newspaper report of trespass within the grounds.

The castle was constructed as an eye-catcher from the mansion, and also functioned as a belvedere and summerhouse. It is an elaborate construction with squat towers, a central arch, and a cross passage within. Above is a room that was used for shooting lunches and picnic parties, and the battlemented roof offered views of the woodland and lakes (a second, the Waterloo Lake, was added by damming a beck in 1815). The construction is attributed to George Nettleton, stonemason, of Roundhay, but the name of the designer is yet to be discovered.

By 1871 the family no longer wished to reside at Roundhay and the park was offered for sale. The Mayor of Leeds, John Barran, was determined that the people of his city should have access to a park, and he began the process of purchasing the estate for this purpose. It was a complicated process, not without major obstacles and some acrimony, but that has been covered in detail elsewhere*. The process even involved the Leeds artist Atkinson Grimshaw being commissioned to paint views to help the cause.

Barran and his supporters within the Leeds Corporation eventually achieved their goal, and George Corson was commissioned to design the new public park with all the necessary accoutrements: boathouse, bandstands and shelters. With work barely underway Prince Arthur, 3rd son of Queen Victoria, visited the city to declare the park open on 19 September 1872.

To commemorate his visit Mr William Joseph Booer, of the Leeds glass merchants and stained glass manufacturers Booer &Co., presented painted glass to be installed in The Castle’s window. Booer had made the ‘art of Glass Staining his life-study’ and his work was much in demand in the Leeds and Bradford area. For The Castle he designed and painted a three light window (the shape visible in old photos) in the centre of which was a ‘bust of Prince Arthur in appropriate attire’ which was ‘charmingly represented in medallion form’. Booer also designed and installed stained glass windows in a number of local churches and in private homes as far afield as Africa**.

A commemorative handbook was published which included lines by the Yorkshire dialect poet Joseph Eccles, although perhaps in honour of the royal visitor he stuck to the Queen’s English. Previously known simply as The Castle, the folly was now romantically renamed ‘The Ivy Castle’, and Eccles’ ode included the lines

Yet what a rich and charming view
From off its towering walls,
Of woodland, lake, and village spire,
That to the mind recalls
Some ancient tower in bygone times,
When watchers gazed below,
Ready to mark the first approach
Of some advancing foe.

The 1872 handbook noted that the upstairs room was in a ‘dilapidated’ condition, although public access to the roof was possible, if one avoided the ‘rush of tourists’ clogging the spiral stair. Sadly, this treat is denied to today’s visitors, and The Folly Flâneuse and her Curious Confidante had to be content to appreciate the view from ground level.

By the 1960s the Castle had deteriorated and the section of wall above the arch had collapsed, destroying the window. The folly was restored to its present appearance later in the 20th century and remains a popular attraction within the park.

Roundhay Park remains a hugely popular visitor attraction in Leeds and the Friends of Roundhay Park work with Leeds Parks to maintain it for future generations.

* For a full history of the park see Steven Burt’s volume online at http://www.thoresby.org.uk/content/townships/roundhay/illhist/rp01i.php

** Sadly largely lost or forgotten but Booer’s career deserves further research. His quirkiest production was a window (now lost) in Grove House, Pudsey, depicting the story of the Pudsey Pudding, a giant confection which was created to celebrate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. There’s more on this great event here http://www.pudsey.com/clanvis/loc/pudpud.htm