In the 1980s follies played a part in promoting a new breakfast cereal: special packs of Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain contained picture cards featuring ‘Gardens to Visit’. The twenty cards were illustrated with views of gardens in Britain and Ireland, all of them open to the public, and five follies or quirky garden ornaments were among the cards to be collected. As the blurb on the box announced ‘Most of us are enchanted by the magic of a beautiful garden’.
Tag: Studley Royal
Greygarth Tower, Dallowgill, near Kirby Malzeard, North Yorkshire
Legend has it that centuries ago local ploughboys built a tower on Greygarth Hill to mark the spot where the last wolf in the region was killed. It’s a great story (but probably a myth) and the tower that stands on the spot today commemorates Queen Victoria.
Polly the Folly, Studley Royal, Ripon, North Yorkshire
Charlotte Graham Photography
The Folly Flâneuse can’t take the credit for this wonderful photograph but she can encourage you to get to Studley Royal before 4 November to see Folly!18, a collection of new follies dotted around the estate and complementing the Aislabie family’s 18th century towers, tunnels and grots. This is Polly by architect Charles Holland, a tongue-in-beak tribute to the Georgian mania for housing exotic birds within a landscape garden
Temple of Piety, Studley Royal, North Yorkshire
The National Trust has applied for Listed Building Consent to place two replica busts in the Temple of Piety at Studley Royal.
Construction of the temple overlooking the Moon Ponds took place in the 1730s, probably under the direction of the stonemason John Doe. The architect is not known although the building is identical to a Palladio drawing of the (long since destroyed) Temple of Piety in Rome. This sketch was once owned by Lord Burlington, a friend of John Aislabie who owned Studley.
