Category Archives: Folly

Kindly Regarded Here


Writing about follies more than 70 years ago, illustrator and author Barbara Jones described these structures as ‘built for pleasure, and pleasure is personal, difficult to define. Follies are fashionable or frantic, built to keep up with the neighbours, or built from obsession. They are at once cheerful and morbid, both an ornament for a gentleman’s grounds and a mirror for his mind.’ When Jones’s Follies and Grottoes first appeared in 1953, little had been written about the subject but by the time a revised and enlarged edition was published in 1974, follies were much studied and appreciated. That updated work also contained a gazetteer of follies, including those in Ireland, with Jones commenting that Irish examples were ‘better preserved than they would be in England, for follies are kindly regarded here, and few heave a brick at them.’ Jones’s list was quite patchy, but since then, architect James Howley has published his invaluable The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland (1993), so now there is an abundance of information about where to find most, if not quite all, of them in this country. Herewith today, three examples of the genre. 





Coming into the coastal town of Ardglass, County Down from the south, the visitor’s eye is caught by a small gothic structure high on a hill. Now in the middle of a housing estate, this is Isabella’s Tower, a two storey construction, measuring 27 feet high and 18 feet wide. The first level is octagonal with one door and one window. A staircase, now gone, led to an upper floor which is circular with four windows. It was built in 1851 by Aubrey William Beauclerk (1801-1854) for his daughter, Isabella, who was suffering from tuberculosis, so that she could enjoy the bracing air coming from the Irish Sea. Evidently, this did the job as Isabella survived, marrying a sergeant-major from Corfu in 1867. The tower later served as a coastguard station, before the surrounding land was gradually sold off and it now stands neglected, a prey to vandalism.





The main house at Monksgrange, County Wexford was originally built in 1769 (see Monksgrange « The Irish Aesthete) but with only the north quadrant and wind completed. Towards the end of the 18th century, work began on construction of a southern wind but then the 1798 Rebellion erupted and the Richards family, who owned the property, fled to England, only returning some 20 years later. Subsequently plans for the southern wing were abandoned but the stones on the site reused to construct a folly in the gardens behind the house. Dating from 1822, this takes the form of a miniature castle, of two storeys with arched gothic doorcase and windows below a battlemented roofline.





Barbara Jones proposed that in country house gardens there is difference between temples and follies, the former being generally classical in style, the latter gothic. But she also insisted that ‘there is a difference of mood; a temple is an ornament, a folly is glass, and bones and a hank of weeds.’ Her argument fails to withstand scrutiny, since the essence of a folly lies in its name, because whatever the style of architecture employed, its purpose is essentially decorative rather than functional. This is certainly the case with one of the country’s more recent follies: the temple at Altamont, County Carlow (see Developments Awaited « The Irish Aesthete). The building was erected by Corona North in 1998, shortly before she died and constructed of local granite with six Doric columns supporting a domed roof. The temple is beautifully situated at the topmost point of a field to the rear of the house offering eastward views towards the distant Wicklow Mountains. 


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Souvenirs of a Lost Demesne


Dromoland Castle is now such a familiar part of the County Clare landscape that it is easy to overlook the fact that this was by no means the only residence ever built on the same site, being instead merely the latest of them. It appears likely that a 16th century tower house stood here before being swept away by, or incorporated into, an early 18th century house. A water colour of the latter building, painted shortly before it was swept away, shows this to have been of classical design, and of ten bays and two storeys over raised basement with a four-bay pedimented breakfront. It only stood for some 100 years because in 1813, the estate’s owner Sir Edward O’Brien, fourth baronet, decided that he needed a new house, and invited the young architect James Pain, then working at Lough Cutra, County Galway (see Domat Omnia Virtus* « The Irish Aesthete) to come up with designs. Pain’s initial proposal was for another classical residence and nothing came of the project, but then Sir Edward also looked at schemes from Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison, and from Thomas Hopper  and did not used these either (although Hopper’s Doric Temple gatelodge still greets visitors to the estate, as can be seen below). Six years later Pain, together with his brother George, came up with another scheme, this time for a large Gothic castle. The design proved acceptable and was slowly constructed over the next two decades at a cost of some £50,000. Writing in 1837, as building work concluded, Samuel Lewis described the new residence as ‘a superb edifice in the castellated style, lately erected on the site of the ancient mansion, and surrounded by an extensive and richly wooded demesne…’ 





While the Pain brothers’ castle now dominates the Dromoland estate, traces remain of its 18th century predecessor. Set atop an artificial mound to the west of the house – and now regrettably wedged between a road and a motorway – is an elegant octagonal Belvedere. The building dates from the early 1740s and is believed to have been designed by self-trained architectural draughtsman John Aheron, a protégé of Dromoland’s then-owner Sir Edward O’Brien. Passionately interested in horses – and gambling – Sir Edward apparently commissioned the Belvedere so that he could watch racing across his land, and have views as far as Ennis, the county town some seven miles away. The building is of rubble stone with brick dressings, which may have once been rendered, and cut stone used for the cornice, string course and arches over the door and windows, three of which are glazed, the others blind. Entrance to the building is gained via a flight of stone steps on the eastern front while on the opposite side a cutting in the ground provides access to a semi-basement, presumably where servants would have prepared food and drink. The single room main floor has a vaulted ceiling and was heated by a fireplace set in the north-west wall. Having fallen into disrepair, the Belvedere was repaired some years ago.  





An estate map of c.1740 shows the gardens at Dromoland to have had an elaborate formal layout featuring a series of avenues and terraces, as well as vistas of which a Temple of Mercury formed part: located to the north-east of the house, it stands at the crossing point of two straight paths. Encircled by yew trees, the temple is composed of eight Doric columns supporting a timber dome covered in lead on which perches a bronze statue of Mercury, derived from Giambologna’s original of 1580. Seemingly, Sir Edward O’Brien had gambled the entire Dromoland estate on one of his stable, a horse called Sean Buí, winning a race at Newmarket. Fortunately the horse came in first and following the animal’s death, he was buried beneath the temple. Sir Edward’s passion for equestrian sport can be found in another souvenir of the 18th estate: an archway into the former stableyard. Now rather lost at the rear of a bedroom extension, the archway is of crisp limestone ashlar and bears a tablet set into the pediment. Dated 1736, it is inscribed with a motto derived from one of Horace’s Odes and reads ‘In Equis Patrum Virtus’ (In horses lie the father’s power). As is well known, Dromoland Castle and surrounding 330 acres were sold by the O’Brien family in 1962 and then became an hotel, as continues to be the case.


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Catching the Eye



The Volunteer Arch at Lawrencetown, County Galway has featured here before (see Accidents Happen « The Irish Aesthete) but there are a number of other buildings that survive on the former Bellevue estate, not least this Gothick eyecatcher which now stands on the side of a public road but would once have been a found along the private avenue leading to the since-demolished main house. Probably dating from the late-18th century and intended to suggest the remains of an otherwise lost building, the rubble-stone walls have a recessed central bay and flying buttresses at each end. The roofline is finished with crenellations topped with pinnacles while below a pointed arch ‘door’ is  flanked by ogee-arched openings with cut-stone sills.



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In Praise of Folly




It is unclear when this folly in the grounds of Ballycumber House, County Offaly was constructed. It may date from the mid-18th century when the property’s then-owner Warneford Armstrong carried out alterations to the main building, or perhaps from the early 19th century during the time of his grandson John Warneford Armstrong. The latter travelled extensively abroad and in her book Flights of Fancy: Follies, Families and Demesnes in Offaly, Rachel McKenna describes the folly as ‘a curious structure, circular in plan with soaring buttresses, perhaps reminiscent of great cathedrals seen on distant shores.’ Set on an artificial mound to the north-east of the house, there are tall arched openings between all the stepped and pinnacled buttresses except for one section of solid wall; this originally held a fireplace to warm the interior. Presumably there was a roof, likely domed, but this has entirely gone. The building was restored some years ago by the Follies Trust.



A Monument to Past Follies


Follies, the name given to buildings that serve no purpose other than to delight the eye, were as popular in 18th century Ireland as they were in other parts of Europe during the same period. James Howley’s invaluable The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland (1993) notes that part of the charm of these buildings lies in their inconsistency, their failure to comply with recognisable categories of style. ‘In one sense, their designers are architecture’s greatest plagiarists, happy to quote unashamedly from anything good that is going, with a rather cavalier attitude to time and geography.’ Even reaching consensus on what qualifies as a folly is something of a challenge, although in Monumental Follies (1972) Stuart Barton rather neatly summarised them as ‘foolish monuments to greatness and great monuments to foolishness.’ In the same year as this work appeared, the late Mariga Guinness claimed that Ireland had more follies to the acre than anywhere else in the world, and while that assertion has yet to be put to the test, it is certainly true that this country has an ample supply of such buildings, although alas many of them have now fallen into a ruinous state. One such folly can be found in Nurney, County Kildare.





Curiously not mentioned by Howley, the Nurney Folly, like so many of its kind, sits on a rise so that it can be seen from some distance and also offers views over the surrounding countryside. The lower part of the structure is square and built of rubble stone, with openings at the centre of each side. The interior, a single chamber, is lined in brick, with a brick floor and a vaulted ceiling which has a small opening at its centre. To what would have been the rear of the folly, where the land drops steeply towards a tributary of the river Barrow, there is a lower floor, with two openings. Most likely this was a storage area where food and drink could be prepared by servants for those visiting the room above. On top of that space rises a great brick octagon, considerably taller than the square base on which it rests. On this level there is only one opening, facing north. From the ground, no trace of a roof can now be seen. Who was responsible for commissioning the building appears to be unknown. The nearest owners of a substantial property were the Bagot family who lived in Nurney Castle (since demolished), so perhaps the folly was constructed for them. They remained in Nurney until the mid-1830s but had departed by the time Samuel Lewis published his Topographical Survey of Ireland in 1837 when the property was occupied by one J.W. Fitzgerald Esq. It transpires that Nurney Castle’s previous resident, Captain Charles Bagot, had emigrated with his family to Australia: in Adelaide they built a new home, which in memory of their old one, they called Nurney House. 





In design, the Nurney Folly bears similarities with two others in this country, one at Waterstown, County Westmeath (see The Wings of the Dove « The Irish Aesthete), the other at Emo, County Laois (see Deep in the Woods « The Irish Aesthete). Although more elaborate in their decorative detail, both feature octagons resting on square bases, and both have been attributed to Richard Castle, suggesting they were built during the second quarter of the 18th century. Noble & Keenan’s map of Kildare, produced in 1752, shows the folly, indicating that it is of the same period as the other two. The earliest Ordnance Survey map, dating from the late 1830s, describes the building as a Pigeon House (and the surrounding area as Pigeonhouse Hill). It may be that the upper portion of the folly was used for this purpose, as was also the case at Waterstown, while the lower part served as a destination in the demesne of Nurney Castle, a place in which to pause and take tea (or something stronger). Or it could be that by the time of the survey was being undertaken, the original purpose – or lack of purpose – of the folly had been forgotten and therefore this function was given to it. Whatever the case, today it stands forlorn on the edge of the village, a monument to the follies of earlier generations. 

Acts of Folly


Follies of all varieties have featured here in the past, but one genre is especially interesting: the building designed to look older than was actually the case. In Ireland, some of the earliest examples of this style, in the form of faux-antique rusticated buildings, can be found at Tollymore Park, County Down (see Do the Wright Thing « The Irish Aesthete), the design of, or at least inspiration for, which came from Thomas Wright who visited the estate in September 1746. Wright is also credited with being responsible for the Rustic Arch at Belvedere, County Westmeath (see Very Mannered « The Irish Aesthete) which dates from around the same period as he was in this country. But the fashion for such structures lingered long after his departure, as is demonstrated by the gatelodge at Bracklyn, County Westmeath (see Refined Rusticity « The Irish Aesthete) where a shield above the bellcote arch bears the date 1821, although the building may have been constructed earlier. Nevertheless, it provides evidence that rusticity achieved nationwide popularity, with one fine example being found in County Laois.





The grotto at Ballyfin, County Laois probably dates from the third quarter of the 18th century, when the estate belonged to William Pole who lived there with his wife, Lady Sarah Moore. The couple were responsible for laying out the demesne in the newly-fashionable arcadian manner, not least by the addition of a large, man-made lake, close to which the grotto can be found. And like the lake, this structure was intended to look as though designed by nature, rather than a clever piece of artifice. The grotto lies below a mound on top of which once stood a long-since lost summer house, a suitable destination for a stroll from the main house. And while the latter would have demonstrated the civilised character of its owners, the grotto was, in parallel, intended to display their romantic sensibilities, influenced by Rousseau-esque notions of the noble savage. A roughly circular space in front of the little building is centred on a small pond, fed by a stream that trickles over stones down one side of the mound. The grotto occupies a generous portion of the circle, and takes the form of a primitive temple, with the substantial portico supported by large vertical boulders imitating columns, complete with uncut capitals. Beyond the portico are three openings, the middle one providing an entrance to the interior, one large room, the floor inlaid with pebbles around another circular pool. Above this rises the vaulted ceiling, a rustic version of that found in the Pantheon in Rome complete with central opening. In this instance, however, the view is not of open sky but of another giant stone seemingly hovering in space (although in fact it is supported by a number of other boulders not visible while inside the chamber). As already noted, the grotto at Ballyfin was envisaged to look as though nobody had been involved in its construction but instead had just happened, like a cave. But also highly popular during the same period were another kind of artificial building: the sham ruin.





The same romantic sensibility that led to the construction of Ballyfin’s grotto was also responsible for inspiring the ‘ruin’ seen at Killua Castle, County Westmeath. The castle is itself a sham, since when originally constructed by Sir Benjamin Chapman around 1784 this was a strictly classical house. It was Sir Benjamin’s brother and heir, Sir Thomas Chapman, who , after inheriting the estate in 1810 set about transforming the building into the castle seen today. However, perhaps he was inspired by work already undertaken within the demesne by his sibling. In 1800 Sir Benjamin had acquired some of the stonework from the medieval Franciscan friary at Multyfarnham, elsewhere in the same county, and used this to create a charming ‘ruin’ visible from the garden front of the house and occupying a mound overlooking the lake he had created some years earlier. He was by no means the only, or even the first, estate owner to recycle materials from another, older site. In the demesne at Heywood, County Laois Michael Frederick Trench had built an artificial ruined abbey, incorporating fine traceried windows said to be 15th century and to have been brought from the former Dominican friary at Aghaboe, some twelve miles away. The sham ruin at Killua is not intended to look like the remains of an old religious establishment (Sir Benjamin simultaneously employed other stonework to ‘embellish’ the old St. Lua’s Church, lying to the south-east of the demesne), but instead to suggest these were the surviving sections of an old castle or fortified residence. It comprises a two-storey, octagonal tower on octagonal plan with an adjacent wall constructed to look like the remains of a gable end of a building. Like the grotto at Ballyfin, it served no practical purpose other than to delight the eye and to provide a destination when residents of the main house and their guests undertook a walk. Thankfully in recent years both these follies have been restored by their respective owners so that they can continue to do the same today. 

 

Rising High



Now surrounded by suburban development but originally set within an extensive demesne overlooking the city, this is the Stillorgan Obelisk, erected in 1727 for Joshua Allen, second Viscount Allen. The obelisk is believed to have been designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and is sometimes claimed to have been inspired by Bernini’s monument in the Piazza della Minerva, Rome. However, since the latter obelisk rests on the back of an elephant, more likely inspiration came from the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, also designed by Bernini and erected in 1651 in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Constructed from cut granite, the Stillorgan obelisk rises 100 feet above a base of rough granite boulders. This holds a large vaulted chamber with double flights of steps rising up to a viewing platform from which doors provided access to a room at the base of the obelisk. This was, seemingly, intended to be a burial chamber for Lady Allen, but since she outlived her husband by 15 years, only dying in 1758, it has also been proposed that the viscount instead interred his favourite horse here.


The Other Spire



Located on the summit of Carrick Wood, County Laois, this is Ireland’s other – and older – Spire. A circular folly crowned with an immensely tall stone conical roof, the date of its construction is uncertain. Writing in 1801, Sir Charles Coote proposed that the spire had been erected ‘to give employment to the poor in the year of the great frost’ (namely 1740-41). On the other hand, in 1814 William Shaw Mason wrote that it had been built ‘by the late Lord Viscount Carlow, grand-father of the present Earl of Portarlington’. Since the Carlow viscountcy was only created in 1776, this suggests a later period of construction. Another notion is that the building was originally a windmill, later converted into a folly. Restored in 2005, it remains in good condition although, alas, marred by the inevitable – and inevitably unimaginative – graffiti.


A Bastard Child



Known locally as the Lacken Gazebo, this wonderful folly sits on high ground above the north coast of County Mayo, offering spectacular views over the Atlantic Ocean. Looking like a bastard child of the Conolly Folly, County Kildare, the building similarly features a series of arches and is crowned by a number of obelisks. Constructed of rubble stone, the building is thought to date from the closing decade of the 18th century when it would have been one of the demesne improvements carried out by Sir John Roger Palmer whose residence, Castle Lacken – now a ruin – stood on ground immediately below.


Son’s Love Built Me



Helen’s Tower, here I stand,
Dominant over sea and land.
Son’s love built me, and I hold
Mother’s love in letter’d gold.
Love is in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long
I should wear my crown entire
To and thro’ the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth’s recurring Paradise.

Helen’s Tower, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson




A granddaughter of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, in 1825 18-year old Helen Sheridan married the Hon Price Blackwood who, although a third son, would become fourth Baron Dufferin and Claneboye owing to the deaths of his two older brothers. The groom’s parents opposed the match, having hoped for a better, more wealthy bride than the beautiful but impoverished Helen Sheridan whose father had died when she was ten, leaving behind a widow and three daughters who lived in a grace-and-favour apartment in Hampton Court Palace. The Blackwoods had one child, a son called Frederick, and lived in London until he inherited the family title and estate in Ireland in 1839. Two years later, Price Dufferine died, having been accidentally prescribed an overdose of morphine by a pharmacist. Like her mother before her, Lady Dufferin was now left a widow, her only son Frederick then aged 15. The two remained close for the next 26 years, until her own death in 1867. Long before then, in 1848 the young Lord Dufferin had embarked on the construction of a tower on his estate at Clandeboye, near Bangor, County Down. Designed by Scottish architect William Burn, unsurprisingly the building is in the baronial style, of four storeys leading up to a flat, turreted roof that offers superlative views of the surrounding countryside. A porch at the base which provides access to the tower carries a date stone with the year 1850, along with a coronet and two opposed Ds with an ampersand between them, representing the Dufferin title. However, despite carrying this date, the building does not appear to have been finished, until the early 1860s when it was fitted with an interior stone spiral staircase giving access to the upper floors and roof. A room on the second floor has a coffered ceiling, the panels of which are painted with circular inscriptions enclosing coronets and crests. Above this is the oak-panelled library with a ribbed groin vaulted ceiling, the centre of which concludes in a pendant. When completed, the building was named Helen’s Tower, in honour of Lord Dufferin’s mother, who was herself a talented writer and poet. As a result, her son invited a number of the most famous poets of the period – among them Tennyson and Browning – to write verses about Helen Dufferin and her tower: many of these were then engraved on metal plates which can still be seen on the walls of the library. 




Who hears of Helen’s Tower, may dream perchance
How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate
Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate,
Death-doom’d because of her fair countenance.
Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,
Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate!
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless’d by every glance.
The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:
A transitory shame of long ago,
It dies into the sand from which it sprang;
But thine, Love’s rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:
God’s self laid stable earth’s foundations so,
When all the morning-stars together sang.

Helen’s Tower, by Robert Browning. 



Helen’s Tower is now managed by the Irish Landmark Trust and offered for short-term lets, see: Helen’s Tower | Self Catering Accommodation in Bangor, Co Down (irishlandmark.com)