Foll- The e-Bulletin of The Folly Fellowship

The Folly Fellowship is a Registered Charity No. 1002646 and a Company Limited by Guarantee No. 2600672

Murky1 on Wikimedia Murky1

Photo: Photo: Tottenham House (rear). (rear). House Tottenham

Issue 43: June 2012 Savernake Follies

Events calendar: here are very few places By 1720 the estate had passed in Britain where it is still to Charles Bruce, later Earl of  29 June—Windsor Great T Park: A chance to visit some of possible to get completely lost and Ailesbury, who created much of the restricted areas at Frog- to wander for hours without seeing the park that we see today. By that more that are not normally another person. One of them is time its first mansion house (built open to the public, including a the Savernake Forest covering an by Jane’s Cousin Edward, 1st Earl area of about 4,500 acres to the of Hertford) lay in ruins following a grotto and ruined dairy. Details south-east of Marlborough (Wilts). fire in 1712, so Bruce asked his from [email protected] Savernake was a brother-in-law Richard Boyle, Earl  4 August—Boughton Park, long before it was recorded in the Burlington, to design a new one on Northampton: A guided tour of Domesday Book. At that time it the site of Tottenham Lodge, close the evocative Gothic landscape was administered by wardens who to the site of the old house. and its follies. Details from were appointed by the Crown, and Burlington’s plan (bottom left) was [email protected] in 1427 that responsibility was be- for a Palladian villa with corner stowed on the Seymours. After towers that were accentuated by  22-23 September—Sintra Gar- dens (Lisbon, Portugal): A visit first meeting her at Littlecote pyramidal roofs, reminiscent of a to three extraordinary gardens Manor, it was in the forest that shorter version of Inigo Jones’s and their follies. Details from King Henry VIII courted Jane Sey- scheme for Wilton House finished [email protected] mour in 1536. more than half a century before. At Savernake, work be- gan in 1721 under the direction of Henry Flitcroft, Burlington’s assistant at the time, but the house didn’t The Folly Fellowship work well so it was Articles, pictures, comments and feed- altered in the 1730s back for the e-Bulletin should be sent and extensively re- to [email protected]. All other modelled by Thomas correspondence should be sent to [email protected]. Cundy in 1823-6, five years after he had

added the stables. Much of the forest had been emparked by the seventeenth cen- tury, but in 1763 Thomas Bruce (Charles’s nephew) asked Capa- bility Brown to improve it. Over the next ten years he reshaped the park and planted the Grand Ave-

nue, which at 3.9 mile (6.3km) in

length is still the longest tree-lined avenue in Britain. The terrace to the south of the house is now a formal garden but in Burlington’s time it formed part of the Great Walk. Only part of that walk is still visible today and it ends at a reservoir 700 metres

south-west of the house, where Geograph on Marshall Robert Brian Burlington built his Banqueting

House in 1743. Disappointingly, Photo: the building was later demolished that it was again by Burlington and like the present owner (Lord Cardi- by Cundy in 1824. another casualty of Cundy’s park gan) is determined to repeat the South-east of the Banqueting improvements. folly of his ancestor but this time House is the Truffle Walk, and to In 1781 Thomas Bruce erected by charging at his trustees in the the west of that Tottenham Copse the Ionic Ailesbury Column at the High Court instead of the Russian and the Octagonal Pavilion Ride, junction of Column Ride and Army at Balaclava. The national which lead to a circular lawn. At its Three Oak Hill Drive, to the west newspapers are full of stories of centre is an Octagonal Summer- of the house. It is believed to have him suing his trustees over the house also by Burlington. Today it stood originally at Brandenburg sale of a few pictures, and the is used as a feed store for cattle, House in Hammersmith in 1760 trustees doing likewise to Lord and there appears to be some before being sold to Thomas and Cardigan over the sale of some substance to claims that it served rededicated to his uncle. The au- silverware. It all means that money as a game store for a while. thors of H+M Follies found that which should be spent restoring The north edge of Tottenham dedication sycophantic and irritat- the house is instead being wasted Copse forms the line of King ing, putting Uncle before King, and on lawyers and court fees. Harry’s Walk, where King Harry’s both before God, which may be a The situation is summed up by Summerhouse once stood about little harsh because it remains an the headline that accompanied an 150 metres south of the mansion. honest and very public thank you article in the Daily Telegraph last Little is known of the folly except for all that Thomas inherited. August where the Earl reportedly An inscription on the reverse told journalists “I am not down and side marks King George III’s re- out; I’m just down to my last covery from ill health in 1789, but stately home! according to the Eng- lish Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens it was added in hon- our of the King’s visit to Tottenham House during that year. The future of the

estate and forest is uncertain. A scheme

by the Buena Vista Hospitality Group has been granted planning Anguskirk Flickr on Anguskirk permission and, if im- plemented, would see Photo: Photo: Tottenham House converted to a luxury holiday resort and part of the park remodelled as a golf course. In Geograph on Marshall Robert Brian

the meantime, it looks Photo: The Ailsebury Column. Column. Ailsebury The 2

Forest Hill Lodge

ike many estates Totten- building dry. The chimney has L ham Park had gate lodges been shortened and simplified but guarding its many entry points. otherwise the lodge remains as it Most are simple cottages but an appeared when Francis Frith first exception stands at the Forest Hill photographed it in 1906 entrance in the north-west corner During its time the building has of the park, next to what is now served as both a gate lodge and a the busy A4 Bath Road. tollbooth. The list description tells us that Above: The Lodge as it appears today. Photo: Alan Rosevear on Flickr. Forest Hill Lodge was built in the Below: The Lodge as it appeared in 1906. Photo: Francis Frith early nineteenth century as part of Thomas Cundy’s improvements of the estate. H+M Follies, however, correctly points out that it owes much to Batty Langley’s design for a Gothick Portico shown in his book Ancient Architecture Re- stored and Improved (1741), rein- forcing the view that the lodge is at least half a century earlier. The lodge is recognisable from the Bath Road by its quatrefoil windows at first floor level and spiked parapet where every fourth lobe terminates in an acanthus capital and twisted spike. Its walls were originally built with red- coloured rubble stone but these have been rendered to keep the

also dug into its face to create a shell-lined grotto that has recently The Seymour Grotto been expertly restored by Diana Reynell. In a reference to Pope’s grotto in Middlesex, Lady Hertford t the same time wrote a letter in June 1739 boast- A that Lord Burlington ing that ‘The grotto that we have was building the new man- made under the mount...is much sion in Savernake Forest, prettier than that at Twickenham.’ Frances, Countess of Hert- The grotto was used as a focal ford was remodelling her point in her entertaining, often as a garden at what is now place to hear readings during the Marlborough College. One summer by her ‘poet in residence’. of the features of her gar- A small group of her close friends den was an ancient barrow also met there between 1725 and that formed part of Marlbor- 1740, referring to themselves as ough Castle in the twelfth Arcadian shepherdesses worship- century, and beneath which ping at the shrine of the muse of the bones of Merlin are poetry. said to be buried according One of the poets was James to Arthurian legend. Thomson, who went on to write At some point around the words for Rule Britannia, and 1725-35, Frances Hertford whom Lady Hertford first invited to built a footpath that wound Marlborough in 1727. It was while around the mound to form he was there that he composed a Snail Mount, a feature part of his Spring poem, later dedi- Dr Duncan Pepper on Geograph on Pepper Duncan Dr that was extremely popular cating it to Lady Hertford when it

in gardens of the time. She was published in 1728. Photo: Photo: 3

The Three Shires Stone

n the other side of the Chronicle on 17 November 1858 O county from Savernake is said ‘consisted of three Stones of the town of Colerne, which local the dimensions ordinarily used for

people pronounce with a ‘cull’ in mere stones in Common field honour of the way that it is written lands; and they were in such a in the Domesday Book. To the position that travellers could not south of its airfield, between Road possibly be attracted by them; and Hill and Steway Lane (on the west that even those who knew of their side of the Roman Road) is the existence, could not at once dis- historic meeting point of , cover them.’

Gloucestershire and Somerset. To make it more prominent, a Geograph on Vaughan Dave In 1736, the landowners on Cromlech was erected over the

each side of the boundary decided site in February 1859, at a cost of Photo: to mark the spot by each placing a £34.5.8d including ‘dinner to the was dug for the Gloucestershire stone carved with the date and the workmen.’ The event was reported stone. Since then many people initial of their county. The result in the local newspaper especially have assumed this to be an an- was a small and rather meagre after three skeletons and a James cient burial mound instead of the affair, which a letter in the Bath II coin were found in the hole that Victorian folly that it is. The King’s Stane at Kingston Deverill

iltshire’s other megalith at Kingston Deverill. The Wiltshire W mystery is at Kingston Archaeological Magazine of 1877 Deverill, where two sarsen stones records that the stones were are historically said to be the gath- “brought by a farmer from King’s ering point for King Alfred’s army Court Hill, where Egbert is tradi- before the battle of Ethandun in tionally said to have held court…”, 878. In fact the actual meeting so while they may be the actual place has been the subject of de- stones they are not on the historic bate and dispute for centuries with spot. three candidates vying for the hon- So are the kissing stones folly? our. The fact that H+M Follies fails to Eleven hundred years after the mention them has to be significant event there is little clear evidence and supports the general view that to support any of the claims, but the stones are an act of folly, but the front runner is a site close to not follies in themselves. King Alfred’s Tower at Stourhead, built by Henry Flitcroft in 1765. Local folklore also favours the site of Egbert’s Stone at Maiden Bradley, es- pecially since it stands on the banks of the river Stour at the border of Wilt- shire, Somerset and Dorset, but any place Geograph on Potts John

where three roads or Photo: Photo: boundaries meet has Unless otherwise stated, all pictures in this edition of the important symbolism in folklore. Bulletin are taken by the editor or from the Folly Fellowship In her book Follies & Grottoes Picture Library. We are grateful to all of the photographers

Jürgen Matern onWikipedia Matern Jürgen for the generous use of their pictures. All views and com- (p.408), Barbara Jones suggested ments that are expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily the opinion or belief of The Folly Fellowship.

Photo: Photo: a third option—the kissing stones 4