The little village of Bawdrip in Somerset was once home to a rugged and romantic ruin. Standing on Knowle Hill, it was built by Benjamin Cuff Greenhill of Knowle Hall as an eye-catcher and observatory, and to add a ‘Gallic touch to the Somerset countryside’. Sadly it is long gone, but it is remembered in local legends and picture postcards.

In 1829 Greenhill (c.1805-1881) married Henrietta Lavinia MacDonald, a granddaughter of the Flora MacDonald who helped ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ escape. The couple had Knowle Hall constructed as their family home, but the marriage broke down and as a divorce case and custody battle ensued Henrietta, showing some of the pluck of her grandmother, fled to France with her children (this has absolutely nothing to do with the tower, but was too fascinating to leave out).

So to resume the history of the folly… Greenhill married for the second time in 1854. His new wife was Pelagie, a Frenchwoman described as the daughter of the Count de Breuilly, and they settled at Knowle Hall as their family grew. Knowle Hall had fine grounds and Greenhill embellished them further with the completion of a sham castle on Knowle Hill, close to the house. This was described as a ‘watch-tower of large dimensions, having at the top a turret from whence can be obtained one of the most magnificent landscape views’. The panorama included the Welsh coast and the islands in the Bristol Channel, as well as the Mendip and Quantock ranges of hills. Building had taken three years under the supervision of the local contractor Mr John Varman, but by summer 1867 work was almost complete, and cannon were placed around the folly as the finishing touch. These were presumably the guns fired in September 1867 to mark the coming of age of Greenhill’s son.

After Greenhill’s death his widow moved to the south coast and the estate was offered to let. The 1883 particulars described the ‘tower and observatory with castellated building, from which magnificent views are obtained on all sides’. But by the next century the ‘romantic and baronial castle’ had acquired a much more fanciful history.

As the story is told, Greenhill built the tower to help cure his wife’s homesickness by reminding her of her childhood home (a rather delayed reaction as they had by then been married for a decade). In 1950 the local paper made the wild and seemingly unsubstantiated claim that it ‘was probably identical to the tower at the chateau’. The Folly Flâneuse tried to track down Pelagie’s childhood home to test this theory, but without much luck. It is not even clear exactly who her father was – her memorial in Puriton church calls her the daughter of the ‘Count de Breuille’, but her marriage certificate names him as ‘Paul Dubruille gent’.

The writer, and soon to be acclaimed poet, Edward Thomas saw the ‘tower and many ruinous arches’ in 1913, and quickly recognised it as a ‘sham’, rather than an ancient relic. But viewing the folly at twilight he was still able to ‘dally a little with the kind of feeling which the real thing would have produced’ – exactly the response the builder would have hoped for when he erected his romantic ‘ruin’.

The slightly battered postcard above dates from early in the 20th century, but wasn’t actually posted until 1972, when the sender noted it was ‘a very old card’. Sadly, at that date the tower itself no longer existed. By the middle of the 20th century the tower was no longer in vogue, and the sham ruin had become genuinely distressed, so much so in fact that it was ‘considered dangerous to cattle’. For this reason it was demolished in the summer of 1950 – a sad loss.

Most of the images on this post come from private collections of vintage postcards, which are particularly useful when researching lost buildings. One collection, unsurprisingly, is that of the Folly Flâneuse herself, but many of the old postcards featured in these pages each week are generously shared by another collector. The Folly Flâneuse would like to record her immense gratitude.

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In 1771 the agriculturalist and country house afficionado Arthur Young visited Halswell in Somerset. He admired the house, but admitted that what ‘chiefly attracts the attention of strangers, are the decorated grounds’. Sir Charles Kemeys Tynte (1710-1785) ornamented his park with temples, rustic shelters and elegant bridges, all of which fell into disrepair, or disappeared completely, after the Second World War. Happily, recent years have seen a major programme of restoration, which continues apace.

In May 1950 the estate was dispersed at auction ‘by direction of Lord Wharton & his trustees’. Lot 26 was 750 ‘Well Grown Trees’ standing in Mill Wood. The purchaser, E.C. Wyatt & Sons of Taunton, paid £18,700 for the lot, and promptly felled the trees, leaving the ornamental structures vulnerable in a bare landscape. The Druid’s Temple, a rustic timber rotunda, is now known only from photographs, although archaeologists have discovered its site. And only one pier remains of an open arch which once sheltered a giant statue of Neptune.

There was a happier future for the Temple of Harmony, which was restored by the Somerset Building Preservation Trust in 1995-96 (in 1997-98 they restored Robin Hood’s Hut, high above the house, which is now offered as a holiday let by the Landmark Trust).

In December 2013 the house was purchased by Edward Strachan, who quickly bought back other parcels of the former estate and embarked on a huge project to bring the house and landscape back to life. The once roofless rotunda, which stands close to the house, was the first landscape feature to be brought back to its original elegant state, and more recently another ambitious scheme has seen the restoration of the beautiful and unusual Bath Stone Bridge in Mill Wood.

According to an account by the estate steward of the time, the bridge was built in 1755. Architectural historian Gervase Jackson-Stopps attributed it to the architect and polymath Thomas Wright of Durham, on the basis of a very similar sketch design in Wright’s papers.

Research continues as part of the project, and undoubtedly there will be more to report in due course, but for now we should celebrate the outstanding quality of the restoration of the bridge, which was overseen by architect Robert Battersby of Bristol based Architecton, working with the enthusiastic Halswell team.

By the time work began a fair chunk of the bridge, which is actually a dam controlling one of the series of ponds that are a feature of Mill Wood, had been toppled into the water. One of the two curious carved figures that once terminated the wings of the bridge was lost (happily the torso has since been recovered and is displayed nearby), and the other needed some serious beauty treatment. Stonemason Mike Orchard and sculptor Tom Waugh take the credit for the new stonework and carving, which blends beautifully with the old.

Waugh also included a very modern detail. The laurels planted as a backdrop to the bridge will slowly mature, and it will be hidden. In centuries to come garden historians will discover it, and ponder its meaning.

The work was recognised in the prestigious Georgian Group Awards, winning the 2021 prize for the Best Restoration of a Georgian Structure.

To see the delights of Mill Wood you will need to visit on a Sunday afternoon in summer. Halswell House and its grounds can be seen via the Invitation to View tours operated by Historic Houses. Or to have the place to yourself the Folly Flâneuse can highly recommend a stay at the beautifully restored Tudor House at the heart of the estate.

Lots of links this week, but all worth a look…

The excellent Halswell Park website has loads of interesting information, including more on staying on the estate https://halswellpark.wordpress.com

For tours of Halswell visit https://www.historichouses.org/house/halswell-house/tours/

The Temple of Harmony reopens in spring https://www.templeofharmony.org.uk/

Robin Hood’s Hut can be booked here https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/robin-hoods-hut-11228/#Overview

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Newton Surmaville, just outside Yeovil, was bought by the Harbin family in the early 1600s, and they immediately set about constructing a very handsome new house. Sometime in the middle of the following century they added this summerhouse on Newton Hill, high above the house, and the story locally is that it was one of a trio of towers in the area, used by their owners to flag the message that it was time to ‘gallop over for a convivial evening’. 

The Summerhouse at Newton Surmaville was probably built by Swayne Harbin soon after he succeeded to the estate in 1741. It is situated on the highest point in the area with sweeping views over the town of Yeovil and beyond. The hall and its summerhouse caught the eye of clergyman John Swete, who was touring the area in the 1780s. He asked a passer-by for information and recorded this exchange in his travel journal:

‘… pray my pretty lass (said I to a young girl I met with) […] whose house may that be under the wood? lord Zur doant you know! Why ’tis Squier Harbins! cawled Newton! – and pray what is that Building on the top of the wood? why Zur ’tis the Squier’s Zummer House!

‘Such was the vulgar dialect of the country’, concluded the patronising parson.

The two other edifices which were part of this (possibly mythical) signalling network are the tower on St Michael’s Hill at Montacute, built by the Phelips family in 1760, and a tower belonging to the Goodfords of Chilton Cantelo. There seems to be no trace of a tower at Chilton Cantelo today, but the tower at Montacute does survive, and is now in the care of the National Trust.

That it was built for the view is clear from the inscription in Greek above the door, which translates as ‘Periscope’. Collinson’s History & Antiquities of Somerset of 1791 confirms that there was indeed a ‘flag-staff fifty feet high, on which a flag is occasionally displayed’, as seen in the engraving below.

Happily the tower at Newton also survives. The building consists of a central tower with two low wings, which were probably added when the summerhouse was converted into a dwelling, as they are built of a different stone. By the middle of the 19th century it was marked on maps as ‘cottage and garden’ and for the rest of the century it was home to the estate shepherds. It has remained a dwelling ever since.

It was however the building’s original purpose which gave its name to the mount on which it stands – Newton Hill became known as Summerhouse Hill. An article in Country Life in 1952 described it as ‘charmingly designed’ and a ‘particularly pleasant example of folly architecture’. The building is now known as The Round House, which initially feels wrong as the central section is clearly an octagon: or is it? The Buildings of England (‘Pevsner’) volume for Somerset reveals that the summerhouse has a ‘sophisticated design’, and is ‘not octagonal because the diagonal faces are quadrant curved’. So the Round House it is.

The excellent news is that the Round House is soon to be restored as a family home. The Folly Flâneuse thanks the owners for inviting her to visit, and wishes them all the very best for this fabulous project. There are public footpaths on Summerhouse Hill, but the building is strictly private.

The tower at Montacute is accessed by a public footpath from the village.

For more images of the Round House see http://www.yeovilhistory.info/roundhouse.htm?fbclid=IwAR0MVPJcxkLiYDFAA7-_NrVqhNyQsuBqjsHpxql378kDtAF1r0X2M0WMvbM

There’s more on Newton Surmaville house here https://www.newtonsurmaville.co.uk

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