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

last of that generation, designing parkland and gardens for nearly fifty stately homes, most notably at Stoneleigh Abbey, Blaise Castle, Wellbeck Abbey, and Woburn Abbey, Russell Square and Endsleigh, for the Duke of Bedford. Repton specialised in creating picturesque landscapes; at Endsleigh, the Duke of Bedford’s fishing lodge on the Tamar in Devon, which I remember well from the days in the sixties when my grandparents took us fishing, Repton created a fantasy world of many secret gardens. The mansion house, a magnificent cottage orne, resembling a romantic rustic cottage, was built to designs drawn up by Sir Francis Wyatt between 1811 and 1814 on a bluff overlooking the Tamar Valley across to the thickly wooded Cornish bank. Repton ‘improved’ on the breathtaking natural beauty of the position by creating rose walks and terraces that lead to summerhouses and grottoes, hidden dells or crags with viewing seats. Acres of lawns tumble down to the river, past lily ponds, cascades, a Gothic garden and fernery, a hollow filled with giant gunnera, a miniature ice-house, an octagonal dairy, a shell grotto and a holy well. Behind the house is a stunning arboretum of exotic specimen trees, chosen to create a wonderful combination of colours: Himalayan birches, Japanese cedars, weeping beeches, Persian ironwoods, tiger-tail spruces and Douglas fir.

      Literally hundreds of follies were built in the eighteenth century, but this was nothing compared to the deluge of constructions that followed. Some, such as the Penshaw Monument, are truly magnificent. This 20-metre-high replica of the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, designed by John and Benjamin Green, was built in honour of the 1st Earl of Durham on Penshaw hill between Washington and Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, in 1844. Others, such as the Sugar Loaf near Dallington, in East Sussex, are less spectacular but equally effective in attracting the eye to a feature of the landscape.

      In the early part of the nineteenth century a splendid, hard-drinking Georgian character called Mad Jack Fuller commissioned Humphrey Repton to landscape the gardens at Rosehill, his estate at Brightling, and the architect Sir Robert Smirke to design a variety of different follies positioned to draw attention to areas of natural beauty, including a mock ruined tower, a beautiful Rotunda Temple, an observatory, a 20-metre-high obelisk built on the second highest hill in East Sussex, a beautiful arched summerhouse made of Coade stone, a mausoleum in the shape of a pyramid and a conical building, similar to a dunces’ hat, on a ridge in front of his mansion. Folklore insists that the Sugar Loaf was built as a result of a drunken bet made at a dinner in London, when Mad jack claimed to be able to see the spire of Dallington Church from his drawing room. Upon returning home, he discovered

      FOLKLORE INSISTS THAT THE SUGAR LOAF WAS BUILT AS A RESULT OF A DRUNKEN BET MADE AT A DINNER IN LONDON, WHEN MAD JACK CLAIMED TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE SPIRE OF DALLINGTON CHURCH FROM HIS DRAWING ROOM … THE WAGER WAS TO BE JUDGED IN A MATTER OF DAYS, AND TO WIN THE BET FULLER EMPLOYED EVERY MAN ON THE ESTATE. HE WAS ENTIRELY WRONG AND THAT A RIDGE OBSCURED HIS VIEW OF THE CHURCH. THE WAGER WAS TO BE JUDGED IN A MATTER OF DAYS, AND TO WIN THE BET FULLER EMPLOYED EVERY MAN ON THE ESTATE TO BUILD WHAT APPEARED TO BE, FROM A DISTANCE, THE CHURCH SPIRE.

      It is sad that this story is universally accepted as fact, when no Regency gentleman would have risked the social disgrace of reneging on a bet, least of all Mad Jack, who was a noted philanthropist. He was a founding member of the Royal Institution, built the Belle Touche lighthouse on the cliffs above Beachy Head and provided Eastbourne with a lifeboat, bought Bodiam Castle to save it from demolition and bestowed the nation with the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry and, a little later, the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology.

      I am sure the Sugar Loaf was built for no other reason than Mad Jack thought a mock spire would make the ridge in front of his house stand out nicely. The unusual style of the construction is easily deduced; Fuller’s fortune was derived from iron foundries and sugar plantations. He had already constructed two massive pillars topped with cast-iron sculptures depicting cannons, flames and anchors, representing that side of his fortune; the Sugar Loaf represented the other side.

      The last of the follies was Faringdon Folly Tower, built in 1935 on Faringdon Hill in Oxfordshire on the site of an ancient hill fort. Faringdon Hill was already a historic landmark before the superbly eccentric 14th Lord Berners, famous for dyeing fan-tailed pigeons vibrant colours and keeping a pet giraffe in the house, decided to commission the architect Lord Gerald Wellesley to design a 43-metre-high brick monument. Asked why he was doing it Lord Berners replied, ‘The great point of this tower is that it will be entirely useless.’ This was the sort of double entendre for which he was famous. He was in effect saying, if the questioner was so blind to beauty he failed to appreciate that Folly Tower would become the focus of attention for miles (it can be seen from five different counties) highlighting the rolling hills above the Vale of White Horse, then it becomes a futile structure providing nothing more than a panoramic view to the minority who climb to the top.

      Lord Berners’s real feelings about the tower are revealed by the fact that he actually had it built as a birthday present for his adored companion, Robert ‘Boy’ Heber Percy. At the unveiling ceremony, ‘Boy’ appeared visibly upset and was heard muttering tearfully that all he had ever wanted for his birthday was a white pony and some pink dye.

      HISTORY IN A NAME

      The curious intimacy with the land which seems to me to be an exclusively British characteristic is expressed by the way every geographical feature, however insignificant, has over the long course of history been personalised with its own name. Every wood, copse, spinney, dell, dene, gully, knowe, field, meadow, stream, bog or pond has been christened after a person, a local or national event, the type of growth in the immediate area, an animal or an interesting landmark. Rural place names are the narrators of the countryside, giving it identity and a feeling of companionable familiarity.

      A glance at an Ordnance Survey map of the district immediately around Wingates, in Northumberland, where we owned family farms when I was a child, is a typical example; one that is replicated in similar density across the whole of Britain. Interspersed among ancient earthworks, cairns, sites of Iron Age settlements, traces of a Roman road known as the Devil’s Causeway, remnants of Cistercian monastic granges and the ruins of a sixteenth-century castle are place names which give an indication of their history. Doe Hill was presumably a piece of good, sheltered land where does calved in the spring; Heron’s Close, perhaps a wood where herons nested; Harelaw, a grassy hillock frequented by hares during the rut and Haredene, the little wood adjacent to it. Garrett Lee Wood and Geordie Bell Plantation are named after people long forgotten, but whose names live on in history; Todburnis a small stream near a fox earth; Whinney Hill, where gorse would be encouraged to grow for winter feed; Linden Hill Head, the hill above a wood of lime trees; the Birks, a birch wood; and Gallows Shaw, a wood where there was once a gallows or a hanging tree. Beggars’ Bush denotes a hawthorn spinney; a hawthorn was known as a beggars’ bush because vagrants often slept under them, the dense branches offering some weather protection. ‘Who shall never tarry with master, but trudge from post to pillar, till they take up beggars’ bush for their lodging.’ The saying ‘go to the beggars’ bush’ was subsequently usually applied to people who had brought about their own ruin. Ewesleys was a productive pasture for pregnant ewes; and Sheep Wash a field adjacent to a stream where sheep used to be washed before shearing, to remove the sulphur grease rubbed into their fleece to prevent parasites and maggot fly. The Chirm (as in charm) was a copse noted for little birdsong; Pie Hill, from its circular shape and round, flat top; and Whitham’s Hole, a bog.

      Place names are the windows that give us an insight into our most precious historic document; the landscape contains most of the evidence of our past and provides unparalleled revelations about our ancestors’ way of life, their hopes and aspirations. The intricate pattern of farmland, woods, forestry, villages, market towns, follies, sites of ancient settlement, earthworks and chalk carvings all play their part in the complex story of these islands.

      THE EVOLUTION