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. 

As the festive season approached in 1970, families would have pored over the special edition of the Radio Times to see what treats the three television channels could offer. If on New Year’s Eve had they walked across the room to warm up the set, and twiddled the knob to find BBC One, they would have seen a programme called Follies of the Wise presented by Spike Milligan. The writer, actor and comedian toured Britain looking at follies: ‘strange monuments to our ancestors and their passions’. It must have reached a good audience, broadcast at 6.45pm and sandwiched between Nationwide and The Andy Williams Show.

The programme starts with Milligan on the roof of St Peter & St Paul in Ormskirk, Lancashire. Legend has it that two sisters were unable to decide whether the church should have a tower or a spire, so eventually they built both – it is complete nonsense as the tower and spire were built a century apart, but Milligan liked the tale and composed a limerick which he recited from the rooftop:

A lady in Lancs said a spire
Is what every church must require
But her sis with a glower
Said ‘A church needs a tower’
So they built one with both … and it’s dire.

Milligan then enjoys creating a glorious gallimaufry of characters, real and imagined, to tell the story of folly building, or ‘littering great lumps around the countryside for us to contemplate’, as he calls it. The programme budget must have been generous, as in England Milligan filmed follies as far apart as Somerset and Yorkshire. In Wales he acted out the history of Paxton’s Tower, and in Scotland he visited the monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, McCaig’s Tower in Oban and the Pineapple at Dunmore.

At Dunmore a Scotsman (Milligan in the style of Fyfe Robertson) interviews the Earl of Dunmore (Milligan) and asks the question in the minds of all who see the structure: ‘why a pineapple?’. After a pause the earl splutters… ‘well, why not?’.

In Somerset, Milligan became Jack the Treacle Eater, the mythical messenger who climbs down from atop his monument to fortify himself with treacle before running great distances to carry news. Milligan is seen scampering up and down the rocky base to the little turret having gorged on a mug of treacle.

At the Triangular Tower in Northamptonshire Milligan becomes the ghost of Sir Thomas Tresham, and at Dunstan Pillar in Lincolnshire and West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire he plays a troubled Sir Francis Dashwood on the psychiatrist’s couch. In Yorkshire he appears at the top of Wainhouse Tower as the eponymous builder of the huge chimney. And many more follies are visited with the creation of many more characters – the Flâneuse lost count when she reached 36 costume changes.

As one TV critic commented at the time (probably quoting a BBC press-release), ‘Spike’s explanation of why they were built may sometimes be more entertaining than plausible’. Actually, he doesn’t take too many liberties with the truth until he reaches Old John tower in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Here his imagination runs riot, and in the character of a colourful local he tells a gullible American tourist (also Milligan) that the tower is used for ‘fish squirting’, ‘knee-crushing’ and ‘owl riveting’ and also as a ‘nun refinery’. The reviewer for the Leicester Daily Mercury thought the programme ‘delightful’ even though an ‘odd explanation’ was given of the history of the Leicestershire landmark. This is something of an understatement, and in fact a look at the original shooting script reveals that Milligan ad libbed this wacky description.

Bringing things right up-to-date Milligan featured Centre Point, the new 34 storey tower on London’s New Oxford Street. Milligan felt it was a folly as it had cost a fortune, but had stood vacant for some years after completion. The developer was insistent that it should be let to a single tenant, and he could afford for it to sit empty until he achieved this goal. Campaigners thought it would be better used to provide temporary accommodation for London’s homeless: Centrepoint, the charity which supports homeless young people, was named after this cause célèbre. 

Milligan ended the broadcast outside the building dressed as what the BBC called a ‘Hippie’ and singing The Tombs they are a-changing – an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s hit with lyrics about the follies he has visited.

Follies of the Wise was repeated in 1971 and 1972 before disappearing into the BBC archives. The Folly Flâneuse was lucky enough to see the very grainy (hence no stills featured here), and very zany, film.

Follies of the Wise was written by Sandy Brown and Martin Pawley after an original idea by R.G.Payne, and was directed by Jim Franklin. The Costume Designer, Barbara Lane, is to be commended for providing Milligan with outfits for his many characters.

The Folly Flâneuse has made a donation to Centrepoint in recognition of the help she received with this post https://centrepoint.org.uk

A fellow folly fan remembers racing off to visit Jack the Treacle Eater in Somerset after seeing it in Milligan’s broadcast. Does anyone else remember watching? Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts. Thank you for reading.

In 1954 Agatha Christie wrote a novella which was intended to raise money for her local church. Upon completion she was so taken with the story that she decided to develop it into a full novel, and submitted a different story to the fundraising effort. The work she had originally written was called Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, and this work was expanded and eventually published in 1956 as Dead Man’s Folly. 

The story is set at Nasse House in Devon, a ‘big white Georgian house’ overlooking a river that is home to Sir George Stubbs and his young wife. Preparations are underway for a grand garden fête which will feature a Murder Hunt with clues leading to a sham murder. But as this is Christie the death turns out to be for real: that’s not a spoiler, it is blindingly obvious what the course of events will be from the earliest chapters – but as ever the big question is… ‘whodunnit’?

Before the folly can take centre-stage in the story, Christie has to ensure that Poirot knows what a folly is. A character explains to the detective that the folly is ‘one of those little sort of temple things, white with columns’, adding that he has ‘probably seen them at Kew’.

The grounds at Nasse House are also home to a ‘picturesque thatched’ boathouse and an architect is present with a commission to build a new tennis pavilion and repair the folly. Said architect is Michael Weyman, and he is not impressed with Sir George’s choice of location for the folly, which is lost in trees and functions as neither eye-catcher nor belvedere. And having been erected hurriedly only a year earlier (Poirot notes this clue), the temple is already listing on poor foundations. ‘These things were meant to be seen’ complains Weyman, and revealing his knowledge of landscape design in the 18th century he complains that the folly should be visible on a mound: ‘situated on an eminence – that’s how they phrased it’. The architect then reveals that he has been asked to design a tennis pavilion in the form of a ‘kind of Chinese Pagoda’, and grumbles that this is a ‘crime against good taste’.

Dead Man’s Folly was turned into a film in 1986, with Peter Ustinov in the role of Poirot. West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire became Nasse House, with the Temple of Venus playing the folly, although the statue of Venus seen in the photo’ was removed for filming.

A television adaptation was shown in 2013, and it marked the end of an era: it was the last episode to be filmed in the 13 series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in which David Suchet played the detective. Dead Man’s Folly was filmed at Greenway House, Christie’s own summer retreat which she bought in 1938, and which was clearly the model for the ‘big white Georgian house’ at Nasse.

Christie’s own boathouse becomes the scene of the murder but, as Greenway has no folly, a temporary temple had to be built for the episode (a square temple rather than a rotunda). The closing scenes reveal the crucial role the folly plays in the story.

Christie first came up with idea for a murder mystery based around a folly in 1954, only a year after Barbara Jones had raised awareness of garden buildings when she published Follies & Grottoes in 1953. The Folly Flâneuse would love to know if Mrs Mallowan, as Christie then was in her private life, had seen a copy.

For more on Greenway visit https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/greenway

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts or further information: scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the comments box. Please note that your email address will not be published – only your name will appear. Thank you for reading.

In the town of Camberley a truncated tower stands on a hilltop surrounded by trees. This is the surviving remnant of an elegant tower, built by John Norris, which stood on the open country known as Bagshot Heath. It has been known since its earliest days as ‘The Obelisk’, for in the 18th century the term was sometimes used to describe any tall, tapering structure. Although only a sorry stump remains, it has the most fascinating history.

Norris (1721-1786) lived at Hawley House, just over the border into Hampshire, from where his tower would have been visible. Norris built the Obelisk in 1775 as a ‘Place of Pleasure’ and it quickly became a landmark alongside the ‘Great Road’ from London to Devon (roughly the modern A30).  It was noted by 18th century tourists as a great curiosity, for they would have seen it from many miles away, on what was then bare heath, and wondered at its purpose. One who enquired was told it was built by Norris as something to ‘look at’: an eye-catcher from his house. It quickly became known as ‘Norris’s Whim’.

As an important landmark the Obelisk was marked on road and county maps, including Thomas Milne’s survey of Hampshire, which also shows Hawley House. Milne’s map, surveyed in 1788-90 and published in 1791, included sections of the bordering counties and has a lovely little representation of the obelisk on its hilltop. Its lofty situation was such that it could be seen from Hampstead (it’s not clear if a telescope was involved), and its prominence in the landscape was noted in a decidedly dull and clunky poem of 1793:

On Bagshot Heath an obelisk you see
Much easier to be viewed than any tree.

What ‘pleasure’ Norris took at his tower is not known for sure. There are stories that the King used it when hunting on Bagshot Heath, and the Obelisk is certainly mentioned in passing in reports of the King’s days in the field in the 1790s. It would certainly have been resorted to for picnic parties where the family and their guests could dine and enjoy the panoramic views. There is also a tale that Norris used the tower to signal by heliograph to his friend Sir Francis Dashwood at West Wycombe: the two men were certainly friends, but no firm evidence for any signalling activity can be found.

The sharp-eyed will have spotted that the map above does not feature a town called Camberley. The settlement only developed after the establishment of the Royal Military Academy, now better known as Sandhurst, in the early years of the 19th century, and as the caption of the watercolour above shows it was originally known as ‘Cambridge Town’. Young students at the college were responsible for much of the graffiti on the base of the Obelisk, but setting a precedent in 1801 was one William Cobbett (not the radical and rural rider). Cobbett recorded in his diary that he had paused on the ‘desolate heath’ and spent ‘an hour cutting my name in large and deep letters’.

Amongst those who left their mark was Gentleman Cadet B37, Edward Henry Clode Braddon (1844-1907) from Liskeard in Cornwall. He was admitted to the college on 1st February 1861 aged 17 years and 10 months and passed out on 31 December 1862.

John Palmer Brabazon (1843-1922), also a Gentleman Cadet, arrived at the college from Swinford in Co. Mayo in August 1860 and passed out on 31 December 1861. He went on to have a ‘distinguished military career’ and served as Aide de Camp to Queen Victoria. He spent his later years in London, where he was remembered as ‘the last of the Victorian dandies’. In 1913 Tatler magazine said he was ‘one of the best known men in the paddock and the shires, and is not unknown in the boudoir’.

By the later 19th century Camberley had spread and the Obelisk stood in the grounds of a house called The Knoll. Sometime around 1880 there was a fire in the tower which caused damage to the upper stories, and when a new owner bought The Knoll in 1882 he ordered the ‘removal of the defective part’. Mr Allcock of Camberley successfully tendered for the work, and with great enterprise recorded the process in photographs which were then sold locally: the bad news is that they don’t seem to survive.

In 1889 the owner tried to sell off a parcel of land which included the Obelisk and, as evidence that estate agent hyperbole is nothing new, the site was described as ‘the healthiest spot in the world’. But it doesn’t appear that anyone wanted this ‘most choice residential retreat’, as the land remained undeveloped.

In the early 20th century The Knoll became a school. By 1965 it was home to St Tarcisius’s Roman Catholic school, and in 1965 the headmaster, Mr Aiden Mackey, began to push for the ‘dangerous’ obelisk to be pulled down. ‘I would like to see it gone’, he declared, adding that he would like the site to be an open space where children could have outdoor lessons.

George Poulter, Curator of the town’s museum, disagreed, and thought it would be a ‘very sad moment’ if the obelisk, the town’s most ancient building, was lost. All of this was reported in the Evening News which repeated the story that the tower was used to signal to West Wycombe in the 18th century. However the newspaper anachronistically suggested that the communication was by Morse code, which prompted a letter to the editor from the writer and art critic F. Gordon Roe pointing out the mistake. The News Editor accepted this was an error, assuring Mr Roe that the ‘reporter concerned has been taken to task’.

But the article had got people talking, and happily for the Obelisk public opinion was in favour of retaining the landmark. In 1966 Sir Francis Dashwood’s descendant Mr Francis Dashwood wrote to Surrey Heath Council suggesting that the tower be rebuilt, but whilst the idea was welcomed, the project was never going to meet the planning committee’s proviso that it must not ‘cost the taxpayer a lot of money’. Instead, the brickwork was repaired and the council took custodianship of the Obelisk. In 2002 the Surrey Heath Local History Club pointed out that the town’s Local Plan of 2000 committed the council to felling a small number of trees to ‘create important views both to and and from the obelisk’, which was by then totally hidden by the surrounding wood. The Council voted against four trees being removed to open up the vista.

Today The Knoll/St Tarcisius’s School is gone: the site has been redeveloped for housing, and the remains of the Obelisk are lost in trees on the edge of Camberley Park, which was created in 2000 with the Obelisk on its mount as the main feature. Sadly the grade II listed Obelisk is currently inaccessible behind a sturdy security fence because of problems with vandals (who by the standards of their ‘work’, did not commit an hour of their lives as William Cobbet once did). This is a great shame as the Obelisk is the oldest building in Camberley and the graffiti makes it a rather unusual monument/museum to generations of young cadets at Sandhurst. Hopefully Surrey Heath Council can soon find a way to manage access and allow locals and visitors once again to enjoy the very attractive walk up to Mr Norris’s Whim.

Special thanks to Steve Harris of Surrey Heath Council and Nick Clifton of Surrey Heath Museum, and to Dr Sebastian Puncher of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who identified two of the cadets who left their mark.

If you can add any further information, or would like to share any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box (only your name will appear online, your email address remains private). Thank you for reading.

The Folly Flâneuse is away (in search of follies of course), so until next week here is a brief look at the very pretty Music Temple at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, the seat of the Dashwood family.

The temple, also known as the Theatre, was designed by Nicholas Revett in the late 1770s, and sits on the largest of the three islands on the lake. Sir Francis Dashwood’s guests would have been rowed over to the island for fêtes champêtres of food, wine and music.

The Music Temple is just one of the many garden features added to the West Wycombe landscape in the eighteenth century. Some are lost, but others have been restored, or indeed rebuilt, by later generations of the family.

In 1943 Sir John Dashwood gifted West Wycombe to the National Trust, but the house remains home to the Dashwood family. The house and grounds reopen in the spring https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/west-wycombe-park-village-and-hill

There will be no lounging around for the Folly Flâneuse, who will be back next week.

APOLOGIES that there has been a glitch in the system and regular readers will receive two posts this week. If you have missed the other it is here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/bonds-folly-or-creech-grange-arch-dorset/