In the middle of the eighteenth century Ralph Allen, who had both a Bath townhouse and the Prior Park estate in a fine landscape just out of town, erected a gothic eye-catcher on high ground above Bath. The folly took the form of a turreted and castellated screen, unadorned at the back and intended only to be viewed from the city. By the end of the eighteenth century the folly had become known as the ‘Sham Castle’, and it has attracted the gaze of artists ever since it was built.
Tag: Samuel Hieronymous Grimm
Blaise Castle, Bristol.
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.
Racton Tower, Racton, West Sussex
The hamlet of Racton, in a quiet corner of West Sussex, is little more than a church and a cluster of cottages. What catches the eye is the dramatic ruin, with tapering central tower, that stands above the settlement. This is the belvedere erected by George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax, as an ornament to his Stansted Park estate.
Vandalian Tower, Uppark, West Sussex
High on the Sussex Downs, near the village of South Harting, stand some curious ruins. The jagged and dilapidated stonework is all that remains of the wonderful ornate tower built by Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh of Uppark (or Up-park) in the 1770s and later known by the curious title of the Vandalian Tower.