The country's leading folly-hunter takes us to the most terrifying tower in Britain, at which his love for pointless buildings nearly terminated... Essex has a number of folly towers of a more traditional sort: all are eclipsed by Bull’s Tower in Pentlow, a rather attractive, unostentatious Victorian brick tower in a ... Read More...
Follies
Gwyn's speed folly-hunting trip around Scotland takes him to Ross & Cromarty... Sir Hector Munro's folly was built to commemorate his own heroism: a replica of the Gates of Negapatam, an Indian stronghold he had captured from the Dutch on November 12th 1781 after a four week seige. After twenty years ... Read More...
Gwyn has been on a speed trip folly-hunting round Scotland. The itinerary was carefully scheduled and every minute was accounted for. Here's the first of two Scottish folly posts: a visit to Banffshire... This sophisticated, rigidly classical monopteros is said to have been designed by William Playfair in 1788, although it ... Read More...
Gwyn visits 'the Taj Mahal of Wales' and recalls a remarkable impromptu lunch cooked by none other than the late, great Fanny Cradock... We slouched into a pub last week, the Clytha Arms on the old Abergavenny to Raglan road. There were more dogs than people in the stone-flagged bar, and I ... Read More...
Gwyn Headley visits a magnificent folly 'built by the ghost of Sir Christopher Wren', where he was once marooned as an infant by his wicked siblings... Hampshire’s finest folly — the biggest, the most impressive, the oddest — is unquestionably Peterson’s tower at Sway. Andrew Thomas Turton Peterson was born in ... Read More...
Gwyn Headley, the foremost authority on English follies and co-author of the magnificent new ebook series Follies of England, looks at one of Britains most horrible listed buildings... “Folly!” cry the locals. “Masterpiece!” cry the conservation societies. “Sod off!” cry the vandals. The Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, County Durham, has today ... Read More...
Gwyn Headley, the foremost authority on English follies and co-author of the magnificent new ebook series Follies of England, takes us into a strange subterranean world... Imagine you are standing beside a tall wall. It encloses a kitchen garden, eight acres of kitchen garden, the sort of self -sufficiency that would ... Read More...
