The Folly Flâneuse is beginning to feel festive after a visit to Harlow Carr in Harrogate. The Royal Horticultural Society’s Yorkshire garden is bathed in colour on selected evenings until the end of the year, and of course a highlight for this particular visitor was the beautifully lit Folly.

Harrogate’s Royal Spa Concert Rooms, which had been ‘sinking into dereliction for many years’,  were demolished in 1939-40, just a little more than a century after they were built. Originally known as the Cheltenham Rooms, capitalising on that town’s reputation as a chic spa resort, the building was later renamed the Royal Spa Rooms. Harrogate Corporation did at least have the foresight to put the fine Doric columns and pediment that made up the building’s portico into storage, but it was some years before an alternative use was found. In 1961, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, keen to preserve the masonry, presented it to the Northern Horticultural Society for incorporation into the expanding gardens which had been opened at Harlow Carr on the edge of Harrogate a decade earlier.

The directors of the garden initially intended that the entire portico would be rebuilt as a ‘Grecian Temple’. ‘After all’, the society’s magazine reported, ‘no ornamental garden of any pretensions should be without one.’ Seats were to be placed under the pediment ‘to give rest to the weary and joy to the lover of the classic Attic line embowered in a woodland setting’. After delays caused by minor issues such as planning permission, the columns were eventually set in place as an eye catcher at the end of a long vista in 1964, ‘and a beastly inconvenience it was to the staff trying to create a garden’ wrote a former Honorary Director of the gardens, in slightly less poetic mode.

Unfortunately putting up the columns proved more expensive and arduous than expected and a combination of lack of funds, and worries about the safety of erecting the pediment, meant that it was never added. But whilst there is no shelter, the colonnade perfectly fulfils its role as a garden feature. The masonry from the pediment seems eventually to have been used to build the retaining wall behind the columns.

In the late 1990s plans were announced to build a new Exhibition Centre in Harrogate and, controversially, it was suggested that the Harlow Carr columns be returned to the central Harrogate site to support a modern glass pediment. Cutting a long story short, replica columns were used and Harlow Carr got to keep its folly.

Harlow Carr is not the only garden to make use of recycled columns. To pick just two of many potential examples – the feature known locally as ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’ in Barnsley’s Locke Park (above) began life as part of the Post Office and was moved to Locke Park in 1879.

And in Manchester’s Heaton Park a considerably more ambitious relocation of part of the redundant early 19th century Town Hall was erected in 1912. Sadly it is now in need of stabilisation and has been fenced off for a number of years.

Glow at Harlow Carr can be seen on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays until 28 December 2019. The Folly can be viewed across the gardens, but for health and safety reasons can not be visited during the illuminations. It is however freely accessible during normal opening hours. Full details here https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/harlow-carr/whats-on/glow-winter-illuminations

Locke Park and Heaton Park are public parks and can be visited during daylight hours.

Thanks to the Curious Confidante (and beautifully coiffed daughter) for alerting me to this event, and for their cheerful company. And to Bettys for the excellent, and very welcome on a chilly evening, coffee.

“It is a pleasant delusion to think that this is the last fragment of a noble baronial pile” wrote the author of a guide to Roundhay Park in 1872. It was, he explained, simply ‘an object of interest’, the creation of a gentleman of ‘good taste’: in short, a folly.

That gentleman was Thomas Nicholson. In 1803 he had bought a large part of the ancient Roundhay hunting park in partnership with fellow Quaker Samuel Elam. Whilst Elam hoped to profit by developing homes for the burgeoning professional class in Leeds, Nicholson intended to build his country seat on the northern portion of the estate.

By 1806 Nicholson gave his address as Roundhay Park, although it is not clear exactly when his new mansion house was complete. A plan of the park made at the time of the purchase in 1803 shows that Nicholson worked with the existing topography, and retained the plantations already in situ when developing the new pleasure ground. By 1807 it was said that Nicholson was ’embellishing’ estate at ‘no small expense’, and the sham castle, top lake, and a haha had been created by 1811 when they are mentioned in a newspaper report of trespass within the grounds.

The castle was constructed as an eye-catcher from the mansion, and also functioned as a belvedere and summerhouse. It is an elaborate construction with squat towers, a central arch, and a cross passage within. Above is a room that was used for shooting lunches and picnic parties, and the battlemented roof offered views of the woodland and lakes (a second, the Waterloo Lake, was added by damming a beck in 1815). The construction is attributed to George Nettleton, stonemason, of Roundhay, but the name of the designer is yet to be discovered.

By 1871 the family no longer wished to reside at Roundhay and the park was offered for sale. The Mayor of Leeds, John Barran, was determined that the people of his city should have access to a park, and he began the process of purchasing the estate for this purpose. It was a complicated process, not without major obstacles and some acrimony, but that has been covered in detail elsewhere*. The process even involved the Leeds artist Atkinson Grimshaw being commissioned to paint views to help the cause.

Barran and his supporters within the Leeds Corporation eventually achieved their goal, and George Corson was commissioned to design the new public park with all the necessary accoutrements: boathouse, bandstands and shelters. With work barely underway Prince Arthur, 3rd son of Queen Victoria, visited the city to declare the park open on 19 September 1872.

To commemorate his visit Mr William Joseph Booer, of the Leeds glass merchants and stained glass manufacturers Booer &Co., presented painted glass to be installed in The Castle’s window. Booer had made the ‘art of Glass Staining his life-study’ and his work was much in demand in the Leeds and Bradford area. For The Castle he designed and painted a three light window (the shape visible in old photos) in the centre of which was a ‘bust of Prince Arthur in appropriate attire’ which was ‘charmingly represented in medallion form’. Booer also designed and installed stained glass windows in a number of local churches and in private homes as far afield as Africa**.

A commemorative handbook was published which included lines by the Yorkshire dialect poet Joseph Eccles, although perhaps in honour of the royal visitor he stuck to the Queen’s English. Previously known simply as The Castle, the folly was now romantically renamed ‘The Ivy Castle’, and Eccles’ ode included the lines

Yet what a rich and charming view
From off its towering walls,
Of woodland, lake, and village spire,
That to the mind recalls
Some ancient tower in bygone times,
When watchers gazed below,
Ready to mark the first approach
Of some advancing foe.

The 1872 handbook noted that the upstairs room was in a ‘dilapidated’ condition, although public access to the roof was possible, if one avoided the ‘rush of tourists’ clogging the spiral stair. Sadly, this treat is denied to today’s visitors, and The Folly Flâneuse and her Curious Confidante had to be content to appreciate the view from ground level.

By the 1960s the Castle had deteriorated and the section of wall above the arch had collapsed, destroying the window. The folly was restored to its present appearance later in the 20th century and remains a popular attraction within the park.

Roundhay Park remains a hugely popular visitor attraction in Leeds and the Friends of Roundhay Park work with Leeds Parks to maintain it for future generations.

* For a full history of the park see Steven Burt’s volume online at http://www.thoresby.org.uk/content/townships/roundhay/illhist/rp01i.php

** Sadly largely lost or forgotten but Booer’s career deserves further research. His quirkiest production was a window (now lost) in Grove House, Pudsey, depicting the story of the Pudsey Pudding, a giant confection which was created to celebrate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. There’s more on this great event here http://www.pudsey.com/clanvis/loc/pudpud.htm

Thomas Lister (1752-1826) of Gisburne Park, in the West Riding of Yorkshire (but now Lancashire), inherited the Malham shooting lodge from his father in 1761. The centrepiece of its surrounding estate was Malham Tarn, a natural lake said to be the largest in Yorkshire. The water had been criticised by travellers in search of the picturesque: ‘The Tarn has nothing beautiful in its shape or borders, being bare of trees, and everything else to ornament it’, wrote William Bray in a work published in 1783. Although surrounded by crags the rocks were deemed too distant from the waters edge, and the tarn tame, especially in comparison with the sublime limestone masses of Malham Cove and Gordale scar, just a short ride away, which tourists saw on the same day. 

It was perhaps to counter this criticism that Lister created new plantations and, in 1789, sketched a design for an octagonal tower on ‘Hawke Scar’ overlooking Malham Tarn. The tower does not appear to have been built and Hawke Scar is not marked on any maps, so one is left to guess where the folly was intended to stand. It’s a bit like the ‘Spot the Ball’ competitions that used to feature in regional newspapers in the ’60s and ’70s where the ball was excised from a photo of a local game, and readers had to mark where they thought it should be with a cross. Helping their father puzzle it out was a big treat for the Folly Flâneuse and her little sister, so armed with this extensive experience the Folly Flâneuse is gambling on a spot on the scar down the eastern side of the tarn which would have been visible from the house.*

Lister (created 1st Baron Ribblesdale in 1797) was known as an accomplished amateur architect and the ‘handsome and substantial Stone Edifice’ that he rebuilt overlooking the tarn was acknowledged as the work of ‘its hospitable Possessor’. As well as the house Lister also built two stone boat houses, presumably also to his own design. That at the southern end of the lake had the ‘luxurious appendage’ of a ‘neat Banqueting-room’. These boat houses don’t survive but a later, and very pretty, gothic boathouse can be seen on the north shore. Lister is also credited with the design of buildings on his Gisburne estate, which will feature in a forthcoming post.

The view from the lodge is lovely but Folly Flâneuse chose the wrong day for her first recce..

The Malham Tarn estate was given to the National Trust in 1946. The house is now a field centre run by the Field Studies Council and the tarn and surrounding lands are managed as a nature reserve. There is a public footpath around the east shore of the lake and behind the house. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/malham-tarn-estate

* Caveat: the Folly Flâneuse doesn’t remember her family ever winning.