Close to the border between Wales and England stands a simple, but elegant, stone tower. It was built in the early nineteenth century, but was later abandoned and left to decay. It was renovated in the 1980s, and again more recently, and is now a lofty holiday let.
The tower is actually in Herefordshire, but its postal address is Hay-on-Wye which is just over the border in Wales. It was built in the park of an estate called ‘The Moor’, which in the 1820s was home to the extravagantly-named Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre – the family name being extended in 1824 as a condition of an inheritance.
Architect George Phillips Manners (1789-1866) remodelled the house at The Moor in the 1820s, and is thought also to have designed the tower. The original purpose is unknown: the Historic England listing suggests it was a water tower, but if so it must have doubled as an eye-catcher and belvedere. It is marked simply as ‘Tower’ on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 1880s.
The house at The Moor was let to tenants in the later nineteenth century, and occupied by the United States Army during the Second World War. In peace time it was considered too large to be used as a family home and, when an institutional use could not be found, it was demolished in the 1950s. The tower was not maintained, and by 1964, as the photo’ above shows, it had fallen into desuetude.
Some years later the Penoyre family offered it to John Nankivell, an artist and friend, for the sum of one pound a year, subject to him renovating the ‘gutted’ structure. Work was described as ‘almost complete’ in 1989 after Nankivell had fitted out the tower with architectural salvage, including ironwork from a hotel in Ilfracombe and doors from a convent in Wantage.
Early this century the tower reverted to the family, and in 2018 work began to restore the tower as a holiday let. The London-based practice MICA was commissioned to create completely new interior spaces, and even ‘squeezed in an extra floor’ to give more space. Jenkinson Builders of Brecon carried out the work, which was completed in 2021.
A little distance from the tower stands an obelisk which would have been visible from the tower, but is now masked by mature trees. This was once one of a pair, but as a photograph taken in 1964 shows one column had fared better than the other, and that in the foreground collapsed soon after this picture was taken. The story is told that the obelisks were built to create employment at a time of need, with the stone being collected from nearby fields.
In the 1950s Barbara Jones noted ‘fragments of a tablet’ inscribed ‘B.S. Penoyre’ and dated 1826 at the foot of one of the obelisks, and concluded that they were built by Anna Maria Brodbelt in memory of her father, Francis Rigby Brodbelt Stallard Penoyre. However her father was still alive, if failing in health, in 1826 (he died in January 1827) so either Jones misread the date or another explanation is still to be found.
The tower and surviving obelisk are both listed at Grade II.
The Moor Tower is available to book via this link. There is no general public access to the tower or obelisk.
You can read more about the restoration project by clicking here.
There’s a short illustrated article on John Nankivell’s time at the tower in an early edition of Follies, the magazine of the Folly Fellowship. Thanks to a superb digitisation project you can read it here.
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