Just over the river Ure from the market town of Masham is this unusual rotunda sitting on top of a rustic grotto. It was designed to take advantage of the view over the river to the church and the attractive little town. An engraved stone near the temple tells us that in 1770 ‘Samuel Wrather built this grotto’.

Samuel Wrather (1727-1806) was a wool-stapler of Masham. In 1773 he married Miss Spence, a ‘young lady of merit and fortune’, and he died in 1806 ‘at an advanced age universally respected’. He was succeeded by his son, Samuel junior (c.1778-1854), who is best known today as the owner of Nutwith, the champion racehorse bred by his late brother, which won the St Leger in 1843. The family had a small estate at Beggars Bush, in nearby Grewelthorpe, and also owned property in Masham town.

The early history of the Grotto Temple is unclear, and apart from the stone near the building there is little to go on. Late 18th century maps show that Samuel Wrather owned the strip of land now called Grotto Plantation, but the Grotto Temple itself is not marked.

The earliest image of the Grotto Temple found to date shows it as the property of Samuel Wrather junior. An engraving after a sketch by the artist George Cuitt (1779-1854), who moved to Masham in 1821, was made in 1837. It was published a year later in a fashionable pocket diary called Le Souvenir, or Pocket Tablet and captioned ‘Temple in the Grounds of S. Wrather, Masham’.

The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1859, shows the structure as ‘Pavilion’, within woodland called ‘Grotto Plantation’. At that date there was no house nearby, suggesting that this was a detached pleasure ground (another unnamed building and bridges over a stream can be seen on the map), perhaps to be visited by the ferry which crossed the river not far away. There was certainly inspiration nearby: Hackfall, the famed woodland landscape with buildings created by William Aislabie of Studley in the 1750s and 60s, did not have a principal house attached and is only a short distance away.

A rare lithograph of the pavilion, of which only one copy has been traced, attests to its lost fame. It was published by C. M. Dydynski in around 1850 and was inserted into an extra-illustrated copy of Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s Richmondshire in the collection of Leeds Libraries. Extra-illustration, or Grangerisation, was a fashionable hobby in which prints and original sketches were interleaved into a text to enhance the content. The process took its name from the clergyman and print collector James Granger (1723-1776) who published a biographical history and encouraged readers to embellish it with engraved portraits of his subjects.

The Grotto Temple then featured on a number of picture postcards which were probably produced for the tourists who arrived after the opening of the branch line to Masham in 1875: visitors would have passed the grotto grounds on their way from the station to the town.

Sometime between 1890 and 1905, a house was built which took its name from the existing pleasure grounds: ‘The Grotto’. In the 1910s it was home to Arthur Atkinson, a haulage contractor, but by 1921 it had been renamed ‘The Greens’ and was home to the Burrill family. The engraved stone by the pavilion records that Edward Burrill restored the Grotto Temple in 1935, perhaps in preparation for the wedding of his daughter Lucy in 1936, when the reception was held at The Greens.

A fleeting mention of the ‘grotto in the plantation’ can be found in local novelist and writer Mary Elizabeth Stevenson’s guide to Masham, published in 1919. On Summer Roads in Mashamshire suggests rambles for the visitor to the area, including a walk from Masham town over the bridge towards the weir (since destroyed) to appreciate the views of the church from across the river.

Mrs Stevenson (1853-1935)  introduces the interesting idea that the grotto was a favoured viewpoint of the artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817), who settled in Masham in 1805. Stevenson wrote that Ibbetson painted ‘many fine views of the Church from this side [of the river]’, and this 1816 view certainly looks to have been taken from within the Grotto Plantation (Stevenson would have known the history of this painting, for it had hung above the fireplace in her childhood home overlooking the Market Place in Masham). The Ibbetson and Wrather families were friends, and in September 1813 they and a party of friends spent a day sketching before partaking of ‘tea and syllabub’ at Wrather’s Beggars Bush home.

Sadly the current condition gives great cause for concern: the pavilion’s pretty roof, with its wide overhanging eaves, has fallen and the grotto is overgrown. The structure is not listed and therefore has little protection, an omission that should be rectified urgently.

Grotto Plantation is private property and there is no public access, but the Grotto Temple can be seen through the trees from a public footpath.

Huge thanks to Alison Brayshaw and Gail Falkingham for their help in compiling the history of the Grotto Pavilion. There are still gaps in our knowledge – do get in touch if you can help.

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the bottom of the page to share any thoughts or comments.

In the 18th century, travellers on the Great North Road were able to enjoy a view of the ‘small neat house’ that was Leases Hall as they passed by in their carriages. Today, it’s not so easy to dawdle and appreciate ones surroundings, as the Great North Road has been superseded by the 6 lanes of the busy A1(M). But if you are quick, you can snatch a glimpse of a small mound which was once topped by a little rotunda.

Leonard Smelt (1725-1800), who inherited Leases Hall in 1755, is remembered as a man who had ‘the honour of being friend to the King’. He was greatly respected at the court of George III where he socialised with the likes of the writers Samuel Johnson and Fanny Burney, the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (who painted his portrait), and the learned ladies of the Bluestocking Society, including Mrs Delany whose description of Smelt is quoted above.

The estate at Leases was not large (in 1792 it was described as being 139 acres), but Smelt created a small pleasure ground which was much admired by his great friend Elizabeth Montagu, another member of the bluestocking circle. Writing to her husband during a visit in 1767, Mrs Montagu described the ‘neatness & elegance’ of Leases. She noted that there was no ornamental garden, but rather that a grass terrace, edged with a ha-ha, carried a walk around the fields. The walk was ‘nicely kept, & fringed with plantations’ and had a ‘very rich prospect of well cultivated country bounded by distant mountains’. Above all, she admired the ingenuity of the design, which combined the beauty of the perimeter walks with the utility of the lands they enclosed. Smelt himself referred to his estate as his ‘farm’.

The writer Arthur Young visited Leases Hall (which he called The Leases) in 1768 as part of his six months tour of the north of England. Young visited estates to investigate and promulgate improvements in agriculture, and along the way he often recorded his thoughts on mansions and pleasure grounds. After praising Smelt’s farming methods, he described The Leases as ‘a very beautiful ferme ornée’ and admired the situation and prospect, concluding that ‘Mr Smelt has ornamented it with much taste’.

The history of Bedale was recorded in a curious manner by Robert Hird (1768-1841). Hird was a shoemaker who spent his whole life in Bedale, not far from Leases Hall. In his later years he wrote a history of the town, The Annals of Bedale, entirely in rhyme. Writing of Lady Stapleton of Aiskew, he goes on to name Smelt as the builder of a little temple on a mound in the park at Leases:

Her Ladyship knew Leonard Smelt.
He liv’d at Leases hall,
This Squire the Rotunda built;
Which we the Mount now call.

From which there is the finest view
Of any near the road,
Mowbray vale, you may see it through,
And view where armies trode.

Although Hird wrote that the rotunda had been erected by Smelt, neither Montagu nor Young mention the temple and the first contemporary account is not until 1779, when a traveller noted that ‘upon a small eminence a pretty Rotunda stands upon Pillars’. A designer for the temple and pleasure ground is not known (Smelt himself may have been responsible), but there were plenty of local sources of inspiration: just across the Great North Road was Hornby Castle, where Smelt socialised with the family. Here landscape gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and architect John Carr, were working for the Earl of Holderness in the 1760s. Holderness was advised by his chaplain, William Mason, best known as a garden designer and author of the epic poem The English Garden. Also close by was Kirby Fleetham, sold to William Aislabie of Studley by the Smelt family early in the 18th century, where Aislabie had created a small pleasure ground.

Smelt sold Leases to Randolph Marriott in 1769 and the estate subsequently changed hands a number of times. Despite various alterations, the house (grade II) and grounds are largely as Smelt left them, although some of the perimeter walk has been lost to road-widening.

A very lovely, leafy, bridle path leads up to The Mount, but the ‘pretty Rotunda’ is no longer there. The old photograph, sadly undated, seems to be the only surviving image of the temple in situ at Leases.

But… as the opening photo hints, there is some good news, in fact some very good news. In 1933 Leases Hall was offered for sale by auction. The details described the elegant hall and gardens and the ‘elevated mound surmounted by a circular stone structure’. The estate failed to meet the reserve, but the following year it was sold by private treaty. The purchaser was Alfred Drewett Chaytor (1901-1977), whose family also owned Croft Hall, in the pretty village of Croft-on-Tees, North Yorkshire, close to the border with County Durham. Sometime around 1940 the rotunda was moved from Leases to Croft Hall, where it remains today.

By the time of the move the temple was in a poor condition. The stonework had suffered from erosion by the elements, and the JT who carved his initials into a column, as clearly seen in the old photograph, had set a precedent: the columns are now covered in graffiti, including a large caricature, dating from the early years of the 20th century (without condoning such vandalism, there is something fascinating about the social history that the graffiti records: who were the people with the time to carve intricate names, dates and figures onto the columns? Why were they there?). The roof was missing, no doubt stripped of its lead some years earlier, but happily the cast stone company Haddonstone was able to supply a modern fibreglass replacement. The little temple is a real charmer, and has a secure future at Croft Hall.

Croft Hall is strictly private but opens annually as part of the National Gardens Scheme. Watch out for a date in 2022.

For more on Hird’s Annals of Bedale see this excellent blog post by the team at the North Yorkshire County Record Office https://nycroblog.com/2020/10/28/hirds-annals/

Elizabeth Montagu’s letters are an amazing resource and this project will see them made available online https://www.elizabethmontagunetwork.co.uk

This post would not have been possible without the collaboration of Gail Falkingham and Alison Brayshaw. Thanks team.

She wrote that a folly ‘is built for pleasure, and pleasure is personal, difficult to define.’

Whilst fascinated by follies from far and wide this site has a bias towards Yorkshire, where The Folly Flâneuse has lived for more than three decades. Jones recognised the abundance of follies in the area when she wrote that ‘Yorkshire has dozens of beauties’. The Yorkshire Post reviewed Follies and Grottoes soon after publication on 6 October 1953 and took pride in the dominance of ‘God’s Own County’:

‘Follies and Grottoes… includes a gazetteer of follies listed by counties. And which do you think has the longest list? The fact that Yorkshire is credited with most is not merely because it is the biggest county but also because it was rich in men with a poetic, fanciful turn of mind, and wealth enough to indulge it.’

The paper picked out the Castle Howard follies, St David’s Ruin at Bingley and the Druid’s Temple at Masham as examples of the county’s buildings that Jones featured. Yorkshiremen have often been caricatured for their reluctance to part with their ‘brass’, so it’s good to see them being celebrated for spending it on some of Britain’s best follies.