In 1857 an anonymous article appeared in The Builder magazine under the title Architectural “Follies”. The author used the word ‘architectural’ to distinguish from examples of folly in literature and art: he thought there were far too many books with an eccentric choice of subject, and that there were many follies ‘perpetuated on canvas’. Sadly, he failed to develop this theme, and the reader is left wondering what exactly he had in mind (the Flâneuse is making the assumption that at this date a journalist writing for a building trade magazine was almost certainly male). Happily, he was a little more forthcoming when he moved on to follies of the built variety.

The ‘Chinese bridges and temples of George III’ were confirmed as architectural follies in his mind, as was George IV’s Pavilion at Brighton.

His next two examples were recent additions to the streets of London. Today we would consider them monuments, but to the writer they were the very height of folly. The first was an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in London, which he described as ‘an undoubted architectural folly’. More than one statue of the military hero, atop his horse, Copenhagen, could be found in London, but the author is probably referring to the colossal bronze by Matthew Cotes Wyatt that was hoisted onto the Wellington Arch in 1846. Our writer was not alone in disliking the vast statue, which was thought out of proportion to the arch. When the gateway was moved in 1883 to enable road-widening, the statue was taken down and, after much debate in the House of Lords, moved to a new home in Aldershot.

The writer then makes a brief mention of the ‘never-to-be-forgotten monument once at King’s-cross’. The Flâneuse hadn’t forgotten it – she had never even heard of its fascinating history.

The building was erected in 1830 as a memorial to King George IV, and topped with a cheaply made and, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘very uncomplimentary effigy of majesty’. This shoddy statue (when seen at close range) survived only until 1842, and the whole structure was pulled down in 1845, having apparently served as both a pub and a police station, although presumably not at the same time.

Whilst conceding that many a folly is a picturesque object, the author disliked sham ruins, believing that they mislead the tourist who might sketch them ‘in the belief of their antiquity’ only to have ‘all feelings of romance or poetry’ dashed upon discovering they were follies.  He likened their disgust to that felt by Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter’s Scott’s The Antiquary of 1816. Oldbuck, a gentleman who sees a lost settlement in every bump in a field, fights hard to regain his dignity when the ‘prætorium’ he describes to his guest is announced to be the ruins of a shelter built only twenty years earlier.

Curiously, the writer doesn’t name any actual sham ruins in his tirade, so here are two of the Flâneuse’s favourites, the castles at Balcarres in Fife and Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

Our high-minded author thought money frittered on follies could be better spent on building schools or cottages, so that the ‘labourer would have felt that he was bestowing his handiwork on matters of utility’. One suspects that as long as he was being paid, the labourer wouldn’t really mind what he was constructing: it’s unlikely a workman ever downed tools in protest when offered several shillings to knock up a sham castle (and, of course, what the writer didn’t mention is that some sham ruins were erected to create jobs and an income for those in need).

The Flâneuse disagreed with many of the author’s assertions, but happily she was wholeheartedly in concordance with his conclusion that follies are ‘worthy of thought’. Indeed they are.

The mention of Oldbuck reminded the Flâneuse that The Antiquary must surely have influenced the builder of a folly tower at Horsmonden, in Kent, which was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. You can read about the folly tower here.

There’s more information on the King’s Cross monument here.

Thanks for reading. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you would like to share any thoughts or information.

High above the town of Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale stand two strange stone pillars which look like the remnants of some ancient ecclesiastical edifice. Until 1893 there was a third, and they were known as the Three Stoops, or alternatively as Yorke’s Folly after their begetter, John Yorke. They are often dated to around 1800, but they are actually some decades earlier, being constructed at the height of the Georgian vogue for mock ruins and eye-catchers.

Yorke (1733-1813) first considered building an eye-catcher on Guyscliffe, to be seen from his house at Bewerley in the valley below, in 1768*, the year in which he succeeded his father. The sham ruin’s gothic form may have been suggested by Bewerley having once housed a grange serving the monks of Fountains Abbey, which stands only a few miles away. The folly was complete by 1779 when a lady touring Nidderdale admired the ‘beautiful wooded hill crown’d with cliffs’. But she was not impressed with the folly, and complained that Mr Yorke had expended £300 on ‘a most wretched imitation of a Ruin’. Perhaps she might have felt differently if she knew that this was not just a gentleman’s whim, but a philanthropic enterprise to help the poor of the district.

Writing in Follies & Grottoes in 1953, Barbara Jones noted that unemployed men from the neighbourhood were recruited to build the folly in return for 4d a day and a loaf of bread. Jones gives no source for this story, but an account written in the early years of the 19th century, during Yorke’s lifetime, corroborates her account. On seeing the folly in 1805, Charles Fothergill was delighted to learn of Yorke’s benevolence and described him as a ‘gentleman of ancient family and very good fortune, perhaps not less than £20,000 per annum; the greater part of this sum he regularly expends in ameliorating the condition of the indigent poor and sick’.

Yorke died in 1813, and by his request was quietly buried in Hudswell churchyard, close to his other family seat in Richmond, Yorkshire, where his gravestone has a simple inscription, free from encomiums. But others praised his ‘charity and benevolence’: the Leeds Mercury reported that he was ‘universally lamented’ and the Richmond historian Clarkson wrote that ‘the poor have lost in him their most bountiful benefactor’.

In November 1893 a storm hit Pateley Bridge, and the third (and most substantial) stoop was ‘blown down’. The Pateley Bridge and Nidderldale Herald reported that it was surprising that the folly had survived so long in its exposed position, and with a nice understanding of the picturesque noted that the stoops ‘so interestingly break the monotony of the edge of Nought Moor’. The collapse of the third stoop was remembered in the Yorkshire Post in 1929, and a Yorke descendant wrote to the paper with the pessimistic premonition that ‘doubtless the last two will, in time, share the same fate’.

Happily he was wrong, and although ambitious plans to rebuild the third stoop as a millennium project came to nothing, the Two Stoops remain a dramatic landmark, and the grade II listed folly is a popular resting spot for friendly ramblers enjoying a panorama of Nidderdale.

If you plan to visit Yorke’s Folly, allow time to explore the Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge and support the volunteers who keep it flourishing  https://www.nidderdalemuseum.com

* This very useful reference is from Margaret Hadley Watersons’s From Folly to Flower Garden: The Yorkes in Nidderdale (2015) which is on sale at the museum.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome and can be shared via the comments box at the bottom of the page.