In November 1960, The Queen magazine published a special issue that asked the question ‘What’s so different about the British?’ Amongst the contributors were Norman Parkinson on ‘British Clothes’, Ambrose Heath on the British and cooking and Laurie Lee on the village of Slad. And what could be more British than follies, the subject discussed by Nicholas Guppy, and illustrated in wildly extravagant fashion by cartoonist ffolkes.

Guppy (1925-2012), writer, environmentalist and explorer, thought that ‘follies suit the British temperament’. He elaborated that there is ‘something light-hearted, whimsical and above all disorderly about many of them’ and concluded that they are ‘manifestations of eccentricity, and of rebellion’. Guppy’s article was entitled Follyphilia, the word he coined to describe those with an affectionate regard for such structures.

Some follies, thought Guppy, were built as ripostes to the ‘smug world of columned Palladianism’, (and he pointedly excluded classical garden ornaments from his article). His examples of such ‘crudely-made though often costly buildings’ included St David’s Ruin in Yorkshire, Dunstall Castle in Worcestershire and Arnos Castle near Bristol (pictured top in 1972).

‘…a crumbling edifice on the horizon’, he wrote, ‘inspired awesome thoughts about the vanity of earthly ambition, etc., or at least a fashionably genteel melancholy’.

Follies could provide an imaginary link with ‘a more heroic past’ in the form of a false-fronted cottage, a sham castle or abbey, a tower, or even an entire faux-druidical temple, such as the one near Masham in Yorkshire.

Then there were the towers that just soared higher and higher, often in a bid to outbuild the competition or to announce great wealth and position. Or, in the case of the one at Sway, to test the future of reinforced concrete in building towers.

Dank caves and subterranean passages like Sir Francis Dashwood’s at West Wycombe were too ‘curiously horrid’ for Guppy’s liking, but he did appreciate ‘gay affairs of glittering crystal-spar, of pearly shells and patterned pebbles’ such as the Shell House at Goodwood. Reaffirming his distaste for the Greco-Roman garden ornament he found the grotto at Stourhead ‘too classical’.

But for Guppy the ‘ultimate folly was the hermitage’, combining as it did the ‘picturesque features of a ruin and a grotto, the utmost eccentricity of building materials’ with a human inhabitant. Guppy gives the rustic shelter known as the Sanctuary of Hermit Finch at Burley-on-the-Hill, in Rutland, as his example, but sadly this folly was destroyed by fire in 1962, only a few years after this article was published.

The main image accompanying the article is of a structure that is unlikely to have ever graced a landscape. The cartoonist Michael ffolkes (1925-1988), conjured up a wonderful tower featuring elements of just about every British folly ever built (and a bowler-hatted Brit enjoying the view).

The article is illustrated with small black and white photographs of the follies, and no photographer is credited, so the Flâneuse has chosen to illustrate this post with better quality images of the same follies. All are roughly contemporary with the article, and all are from the Neville and William Hawkes Collection. Neville and William, father and son, were both architects and follyphiliacs, and Neville (1910-1988) took the views shown here at much the same time as Guppy was writing this article.

The Hawkes family donated the photographic archive to the Folly Fellowship, the charity which aims to to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings, and the photographs are reproduced here by kind permission.

Dunstall Castle is in the park at Croome, a National Trust property; the Druid’s Temple on the Swinton estate is freely accessible as is Arnos Castle on the edge of Bristol. The tower at Sway is private, but can be seen from miles around.

If you find the folly illustrated by ffolkes please get in touch.

Thank you for reading. The Flâneuse is always delighted to learn more, or to hear your thoughts, so please scroll down to the comments box to get in touch. 

The sham castle folly on Mow Cop was built by Randle Wilbraham of Rode Hall in 1754 as a summerhouse to which the family could ride for picnics. Its elevated position meant it could be seen from the mansion, some three miles away on the Cheshire side of the county boundary.

The folly became famous in 1807 when it was the site of the meeting that launched Primitive Methodism. Since that date there have been regular assemblies at Mow Cop to mark the anniversary. The centenary celebrations in 1907 led one journalist (whom we can assume to be a member of the established church) to comment that Mow Cop looked like ‘a gigantic ant-hill’ which crawled with ‘thousands and thousands of pilgrims’.

Local people had always enjoyed access to the folly and the surrounding land, and there was an outcry and public demonstrations in 1923 after an entrepreneur bought the site from the Wilbraham family, and began quarrying. Public access was once more secure when in 1937 the land and folly were given to the National Trust (although in 1945 the trust’s James Lees Milne would dismiss it as ‘the ridiculous castle folly’). https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/alderley-edge-and-cheshire-countryside/features/mow-cop

It used to be possible to climb right up to the tower, but it is now fenced off for the inevitable health and safety reasons. The wall’s rugged ruined outline has sadly been rebuilt into neat right-angles, but it remains the most perfectly designed and situated of follies, and surely the inspiration for Old John Tower in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire and St David’s Ruin in Yorkshire https://thefollyflaneuse.com/the-ruin-bingley-west-yorkshire/

Jessica Hallen (née Brooke) grew up locally and after attending art school in Burslem and London became a ceramicist. She was employed by Wade’s Pottery in 1930 and became acclaimed for her figurines, which were affordable versions of those produced by grander firms such as Doulton. Her employment terminated in around 1940, when the outbreak of war meant that the factory produced ceramics for the war effort rather than fancy goods. She continued to freelance for the major potteries and in 1957 she designed a ceramic model of the folly on Mow Cop. There’s very little information on Jessie (who styled herself ‘Jessie van Hallen’ for reasons unknown), but this was perhaps in celebration of 150 years of the Primitive Methodist movement. The Dilford Pottery produced further issues from her moulds after her death. Jessie died in 1983 and was buried at St Luke’s, on the hillside below Mow Cop.

The Ruin, as it is called on the earliest OS maps, was built by Benjamin Ferrand and is inscribed with his initials and the year 1796. Also known as Ferrand’s Folly, or Harden Grange Folly, there is no explanation for why it later became known as St David’s Ruin. 

The Ferrand family had two properties: St Ives, a house below Harden, and Harden Grange, an estate higher up across the valley, although confusingly they exchanged names in the middle of the 19th century. The Ruin was built as an eye-catcher on an outcrop of rock high up above the valley of the Harden Beck. The folly is now engulfed in woodland; but whilst it has lost its role as a distant object it is now very romantically situated in a small glade amongst pines.

‘The fast lock’d tower where ivy loves to creep,
Seems like the remains of some old Castle Keep’

So wrote the little-known Yorkshire poet Robert Carrick Wildon, in ‘Lines suggested while sitting at the Ruins’ in around 1850.

Old photos show the top of the tower with a rough sham-ruined finish  and that is how it still looked in c.1950 when it was sketched by Barbara Jones for her book Follies and Grottoes. The top was rebuilt for safety reasons soon after her visit, as shown in the photo’ above. Thanks to Neil Jennings Fine Art for this image of her original sketch.

The ruin is one of a group of three very similar folly structures across Britain, the others being Mow Cop in Cheshire and Old John in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

The folly inspired librarian John Braine when he was writing Room at the Top, published in 1957. In the novel the hero climbs up to see the St Clair folly, which Braine described in 1969 as being created in his imagination as a mixture of St David’s Ruin and the monumental Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland.

Sadly, although an earlier version of this post stated that the folly could be accessed via a permissive footpath, this is not the case and the owner of the woods made contact to ask that it was made clear that they are strictly private.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to share any thoughts please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page.