In 2006 the Royal Mail issued a set of commemorative stamps featuring ‘Modern Architecture’ in England and Scotland. Benham of Folkestone, the ‘independent collectables retailer’, spotted a link between these new buildings and some structures that might have been thought just as radical in their own day – follies. The company issued a set of first day covers juxtaposing the Modern Architecture stamps with examples of The British Folly.

The company linked each modern building with a folly in the same general area and called the series Architecture: the changing face of Britain. The brief summary of follies on the back of the envelope ended with a sentence with which readers of these posts will concur: ‘The British love of the eccentric statement of individuality still, thank goodness, thrives’.

The 1st class stamp featured 30 St Mary Axe in London (architect: Sir Norman Foster), better known by its nickname of The Gherkin. This was paired with the Chinese pagoda in Kew Gardens.

Next up was the 42p stamp with a photograph of Maggie’s Centre in Dundee (architect: Frank Gehry), a specialist cancer care centre. This was pictured alongside the tower and temple on Calton Hill in Edinburgh.

Birmingham’s new Selfridges department store (architect: Future Systems), clad in silver buttons, shared an envelope with Perrott’s Folly in Edgbaston, Birmingham and the 44p stamp.

The Downland Gridshell (architect: Edward Cullinan Architects) at the Weald and Downland Living Museum, near Chichester in Sussex, was paired with the Nore Folly on the first day cover for the 50p stamp.

On the 64p stamp was An Turas, a ferry shelter/landscape ornament (architect: Sutherland Hussey Harris) on the Isle of Tiree, and this was shown alongside McCaig’s Tower in Oban.

Finally, the 72p stamp showed The Deep, the aquarium in Hull in Yorkshire (architect: Sir Terry Farrell). This was paired with a folly many miles away, but still in Yorkshire: the sham Stainborough Castle at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley.

The text on the Royal Mail’s own first day cover for the Modern Architecture collection suggested that ‘buildings now can shimmer like beetles, wriggle like serpents, rise above the clouds. Anything that can be imagined can be built’. But as the structures pictured on Benham’s covers show, folly builders have been doing just that for centuries.

The advantage of writing about modern architecture is that the architect is known. Of the follies featured here the pagoda at Kew is by Sir William Chambers; the tower on Carlton Hill in Edinburgh was begun to a design by Robert Burn but completed by Thomas Bonnar and the Greek-inspired National Monument is by C.R. Cockerell and W.H. Playfair. The designers of the other structures are yet to be identified with any certainty.

Thank you for reading. As always, any thoughts or comments are very welcome. Scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

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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18th century Italy was bustling with rich young noblemen on the Grand Tour. This extended study trip/holiday filled the years between formal education ending and the responsibilities of inheriting an estate, and producing heirs of their own, kicked in. In the early years of the 1750s, a coterie in Rome centred on Charles Caulfeild, Viscount Charlemont, a young Irish dilettante as well read as he was well travelled: Charlemont would travel further than most and see Egypt, Constantinople and Greece. Within his circle for the obligatory sojourn in Italy were two men with strong Yorkshire connections: Thomas Brudenell, Baron Bruce of Tottenham, who had a seat at Tanfield Hall near Ripon, and Henry Willoughby of Birdsall Hall in the East Riding of the county. 

Also in Rome at this date was the architect Sir William Chambers, who was only a few years older than the three friends. As the son of a merchant, Chambers was not of an equal social standing but he became a friend and architectural mentor, and went on to design garden temples for each man – although it appears that only Charlemont had the means and the inclination to build a tribute to Italy once back home.

On his return from Italy in the later 1750s Charlemont began to remodel his estate at Marino. There was already a modest mansion on the demesne, and Charlemont had a townhouse in nearby Dublin, so the Casino, Italian for ‘little house’ was perfect for the spot. Chambers designed it to look as if it contains only one room, but the structure actually has an ingeniously designed 16 rooms and cabinets, including a grand saloon and a state room. The artifice is helped by the use of curved glass in the window panes, which deflects the light and hides the fact that walls actually divide the windows, which serve more than room.

From the Casino there were views, now lost as the city has expanded, across Dublin Bay to the Wicklow mountains. The conical Sugarloaf Mountain, which dominates the view across the water, must surely have reminded Charlemont of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.

Over in Yorkshire, Charlemont’s friends don’t seem to have had such a desire to build. Chambers had published the designs for Charlemont, Willoughby and Bruce in his A treatise on the Decorative Park of Civil Architecture in 1759. The fourth plate was ‘an Elevation of the principal Front of a Cafine, designed by me for Lord Bruce, to be erected at Tanfield-Hall, his Lordships [sic] Seat in Yorkshire’. Bruce lived mainly at Tottenham, his Wiltshire seat and in London, but Tanfield Hall was at this date used by the family for country sports. To date, there’s no evidence that the temple was built, but research continues.

Willoughby’s casino at Birdsall also appears to have been a whim that was never realised. But Chambers liked the idea so much that he had his studio produce a beautiful finished view of the elevation, now in the Royal Academy.

The Casino at Marino admitted visitors again in September 2019 after a two year closure to allow remedial works. Opening dates for 2020 are here http://casinomarino.ie

Update: thanks to David Winpenny for reminding me that Chambers too had Yorkshire connections having spent his early years in Ripon and attended Ripon Grammar School before making his way in the world.