A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott

OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

      The Normans built their castles, cathedrals and abbeys to dominate the landscape rather than to enhance it, impressing the population with their authority and the power of the Church. Building to improve the vista didn’t really start again until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the owners of deer parks began to convert verderers’ observation towers into what became commonly known as ‘follies’. Verderers’ towers were always built on the highest ground to give them a clear view of the surrounding countryside, and as a result they were visible for miles.

      Arguably the oldest folly in Britain is the six-storey, red-brick Freston Tower, just south of Ipswich, in Suffolk, in the grounds of Freston House, on a high piece of ground overlooking the River Orwell. Local folklore claims the tower was built by a ‘Lord de Freston’ in the fifteenth century for his daughter Ellen, to enable her to study a different subject on a different floor six days of the week. The first floor was dedicated to reception, the second to tapestry working, the third to music, the fourth to painting, the fifth to literature, and the sixth to astronomy, complete with instruments for taking observations. In fact, it was built in 1578 by Thomas Gooding, a wealthy Ipswich merchant, and apart from occasional usage as a place for picnicking, the only functional purpose this stunning piece of Elizabethan architecture has served was between 1772 and 1779, when smallpox patients were quarantined there.

      Freston was quickly followed by Rushton’s Lodge in Northamptonshire, which was a delightful three-sided building designed by Sir Thomas Tresham, a local landowner, and was constructed between 1593 and 1597. Built as a testament to Tresham’s staunch Roman Catholicism, the number three – symbolising the Holy Trinity – is apparent everywhere; there are three floors, three chimneys, trefoil windows and three triangular gables on each side. On the entrance front is the inscription Tres Testimonium Bant – there are three that give witness – which is a Biblical quotation from St John’s Gospel referring to the Trinity. It is also a pun on Tresham’s name; his wife called him ‘Good Tres’ in her letters.

      Sir Thomas had been imprisoned as a subversive Catholic for much of the previous two decades and it was during his prolonged captivity that he formulated the idea of making a covert declaration of his faith, having already smothered his cell walls with symbolic letters, dates, numbers and other religious scribbles. It was not uncommon for the Elizabethans and Jacobeans to incorporate ‘messages’ or allegories within their houses, but one has to admire the man who created an elaborate and complex building for no other reason than to express his religious views.

      Folly building became a craze among wealthy landowners in the seventeenth century, which escalated during the eighteenth as the Grand Tour increased in popularity. Those wealthy enough to indulge in an extended expedition on the continent, particularly to Italy and Greece, returned with a passion for Classical ruins. The ‘picturesque’ vogue led to the creation of mock-gothic ruins and ancient temples scattered with seeming random abandon about the estates of many grand houses, designed and positioned by the great landscape designers of the day. In 1734, William Kent built among many other follies the Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe in Buckinghamshire for Lord Cobbold. Giacomo Leoni designed the Cage in 1737, a three-storey square tower which glows gold in the evening sunlight, on a sandstone bluff overlooking Lyme Park in Cheshire. Henry Flintcroft built the magnificent Temple of Apollo for Sir Richard Hoare at Stourhead in 1765, which dominates the top of a hill overlooking the ornamental lake, cascades and lesser temples dotted about the grounds. He also designed the magnificent triangular King Alfred’s Tower, which, at 50 metres high, looms over the landscape and can be seen from a distance of 80 kilometres.

      FOLLY BUILDING BECAME A CRAZE AMONG WEALTHY LANDOWNERS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, WHICH ESCALATED DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AS THE GRAND TOUR INCREASED IN POPULARITY. THOSE WEALTHY ENOUGH TO INDULGE IN AN EXTENDED EXPEDITION ON THE CONTINENT, PARTICULARLY TO ITALY AND GREECE, RETURNED WITH A PASSION FOR CLASSICAL RUINS.

      Not everyone slavishly followed the fashion for continental ruins; in 1754, Randle Wilbraham of Rode Hall built an elaborate summerhouse resembling a medieval fortress and a round tower on a rocky outcrop above Mow Cap near Harriseahead, in Staffordshire. It was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, however, who won first prize for eccentricity in 1761 when he persuaded Sir William Chambers to build him an enormous 15-metre pineapple on the roof of an already substantial building in the grounds of Dunmore House, near Falkirk. It is undoubtedly one of the architectural wonders of Scotland and looks quite startling against the skyline, which can only explain why Murray had it built. John Hanbury, a wealthy ironmaster, had the hexagonal Folly Tower built on a ridge 300 metres above sea level at his estate near Pontypool, Monmouthshire, in 1776, on the site of a Roman watchtower.

      Here where the hill holds heaven in her hands, High above Monmouthshire the grey tower stands, He is weather-worn and scarred, and very wise, For rainbows, clouds and stars shine through his eyes. MYFANWY HAYCOCK (1937)

      At the time of Hanbury’s death in 1784, his family built the Shell Hermitage further along the same ridge, employing local craftsmen to decorate the interior of the sandstone and slate-roofed grotto with thousands of shells, teeth and animal bones. It is an important local landmark commanding fantastic views south towards the Severn Estuary and is considered to be the best surviving example of a grotto in Wales. In the last year of the century, the Countess of Coventry instructed James Wyatt to design a 17-metre-high mock-Saxon castle on the summit of Broadway Hill, 312 metres above sea level at the site where beacon fires had been lit since antiquity. This fantastic edifice, visible for miles on a clear day, was built for no other reason than the Countess had often wondered whether a lit beacon could be seen from her home in Worcester 35 kilometres away.

      DESIGNING THE GREAT LANDSCAPES

      The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the era of the great landscape gardeners, and as Britain became a colonial power, exotic plants from all over the world were introduced to Britain. John Tradescant the Elder and his son were both gardeners to King Charles I and early plant hunters, introducing the horse chestnut tree, scarlet runner beans, larch trees, apricots, Virginia creepers, yucca plants, tulip trees, pitcher plants, bald cypress trees, magnolias, phlox and asters to Britain.

      In the early part of the eighteenth century, geniuses such as John Claudius Loudon, William Kent, Stephen Switzer, Charles Bridgeman and Henry Wise created magnificent gardens and stunning landscaped parkland at Windsor and Kensington Palaces, St James’s Park and Hyde Park, Chelsea Hospital, Longleat, Chatsworth, Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace, Chiswick House, Cliveden, Rousham and Stowe, to name only a few. From 1719 at Rousham, in Oxfordshire, for example, Charles Bridgeman and William Kent created a vast Neoclassical landscape in a curve of the River Cherwell to recall the glories and atmosphere of ancient Rome. Paths wound through woods and little groves, where water from the Cherwell was diverted to create small rills leading to larger ponds and formal pools. Classical statuary of Roman gods and mythological creatures was cunningly positioned to catch the eye as paths led from cascades to water gardens and on to the next temple or arcade, each set in its own valley or glade, creating a string of picturesque tableaux.

      It was whilst Bridgeman and Kent were transforming the 162-hectare Baroque park at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, that Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was taken on as a pupil. Brown was arguably the most prolific and famous British landscape designer of his time, creating around 170 parks around some of the finest country houses, most of which have endured to this day and are open to the public. His style focused on perfecting nature in huge landscape parks carved out of the adjacent countryside. Formal gardens were replaced by great vistas of smooth undulating grass running straight to the house; serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers and clumps, belts, groves or scattering of trees judiciously positioned to accentuate a curvature of the ground or highlight the skyline.

      Humphrey