FOLLIES IN STONE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3006, 25 October 1911, Page 86

FOLLIES IN STONE.

[Copyright.] The desire of man to perpetuate his memory is one which manifests itself in various, and at times in very curious, ways ; but in none, perhaps., more strangely than in the erection of odd and useless building's, often positively ugly rather than beautiful. Sometimes, indeed, a building gains the name of a ''Folly" in popular parlance, which is not really deserving of the contemptuous title, owing to some failure to carry out its builder's plans, or some change in the character of the district. As a rule, however, a "Folly" is a monument of mere waste of bricks, stones, mortar, and human ingenuity and labour, and of a somewhat inexplicable form, of personal conceit. An early chronicle tells us that in 1228 a castle which Hubert de Burg had begun to build on the Welsh Marches had to be razed to the ground on account of a treaty which had been concluded with the Welsh. A good deal of popular amusement was occasioned by the recollection that Hubert had given to the building, "when he founded it, the name of ''Hubert's Folly," and it was widely observed that he had turned out a true prophet. It seems, however, more likely that the word used by Hubert was the French "follie," whose original meaning appears to have been merely "delight," or "favourite abode." In France a good many old-fashioned houses still bear the title "La Folie," and "The j? oily," probably from this derivation, was an eighteen century name for pleasure gardens and grottoes.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ECCENTRI CITIES.

It seems quit© probable that it is in this sense —and not its other on© of an unfinished "magnum opus"—that the name of "Folly" has com© to b© very generally aoplied to a pleasure house —or "Gazebo" as they are sometimes called —placed in a commanding and lofty situation. Buildings of this nature were especially popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; a writer of the latter period, in 1772 to be exact, alludes to "an object, amidst the woods, on th© e>d,g& of the hill, which, upon inquiry, they were told was 'Shenstone's Folly,' " and again, in 1801, in Coxe's tour of Monmouthshire, we find allusion to "Kemey's Folly." A curiously named specimen is that which forms so conspicuous a landmark among the Shropshire hills—a square tower visible for miles, and popularly known-as "Flounder's Folly," although whether somebody called "Flounder" really built it nobody seems to know with certainty. The wider meaning of the term "Folly," however, as a foolish and futile undertaking, usually of a somewhat freakish nature, is the one most generally accepted now, and consequently it is not wonderful that the two meanings have become to a very great extent merged into one.

PRINCE REGENT AS ARCHITECT. A building which may very well be classified as a "folly" is the amazing structure erected by the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV, at Brighton, and commonly known as the Pavilion. This building; is in a most extravagant arabesque style, and indeed, it must be owned its architecture is atrocious, but its dome dees not fall far short of the proportions of that of Sit. Paul's Cathedral. Sydney Smith's epigram on the subject is well known : "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." A more elaborate description of the edifice is that given by Cobbett, and a very good description it is: "Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a-'half, and the height a foot and a-half. Take a large Norfolk turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the crocus, and others, let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulk; put all these, pretty promiscuously but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stnnd off and look at your architecture." The Pavilion is now the property of the Brighton Corporation, and is turned to various uses of popular amusement.

THE FONTHILL FOLLY. Probably the most remarkable man who ever indulged an eccentric mind in whimsical architectwre "was the wealthy author and eccentric, William Beckford, whose most famous work is the now little read "History of the Caliph Va.th.ek." Beckford inherited his father's vast wealth and estates at the age of 10, the whole fortune being estimated at £IOO,OOO a year. After spending some time in travelling on the Continent, he returned to his father's estate on Fonthill, in Wiltshire, where he demolished the old house and began the erection of a vast mansion, which has been estimated to cost no less a sum than a quarter of a million. The mest prominent feature of this remarkable building was a tower 278 ft high. Beckford lived at Fonthill until 1822, and then, in a fit of restlessness such as he was subject to, he suddenly sold the whole building with all its contents to Colonel Farquhar for £330,C00. Unfortunately for the purchaser, however, the great octagonal towei* had not been placed upon a sufficiently strong foundation, and in 1825, three years after it had passed out of Beckford's beeping, it came down with a crash, and crushed the west wing of the building in its fall. Beckford in the meantime, nothing daunted, had commenced the erection of still another lofty tower in

the neighbourhood of Bath. This, however, was not completed, and did not attain either the proportions or the splendour of the Fonthill "Folly," perhaps the most expensive specimen of its kind. UNDERGROUND FREAKS.

Although in a sense it ought not perhaps to 'be described as a "folly," at the same time the magnificent suite of apartments built by the fifth Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey certainly come under the category of eccentric buildings. A splendid picture gallery, ballroom, and riding school are built" underground, and have, of course, to be lit up artificially both night and day. Several miles of underground passages extend from the abbey in all directions, and previous to the construction of the present drive the main approach w.as by a tunnel two miles long, which passed under the lake and was lighted by gas and by openings in the roof.

In this connection allusion may be made to the curious freak of building which was in progress on the estate of the financier, Whitaker Wright, at the time of his downfall, consisting of a billiard room and smokeroiom built under a lake in his grounds, and was so constructed that the waters of the lake and the fish swimming to and fro appeared to surround you on all sidea without the barrier being visible. Here, indeed, is an example of a "folly" from which its builder never derived much satisfaction !

The late Barney Barnato's very ornate mansion in Park lame is a case in paint als:&. The South African magnate's house was not finished at the time when he died by his own hand an mid-ocean, and the figures of abstract virtues which adorned its pediment were so little to the taste of the purchaser that they were taken down, and nobody now knows what was their final fate. LONDON AND PROVINCIAL FOLLIES.

There .are many people to be found who are ineUned to speak of London's celebrated "Monument" as a folly, and, indeed, it is nab very fax removed from belonging to that order of structure, since it is neither beautiful (in spite of having been designed by Wren) nor of any use whatever. It commemorates', of course, the great fire of London, and once bore an inscription ascribing that occurrence to the Catholics; this, however, has been long since, erased. A curious form of "folly" is described by Mrs Gaskell in her "Life of Charlotte Bronte." It was known as "Spite Hall," and bad been erected by some vindictive Yorkshire character with the deliberate intention of spoiling his enemy's view from the windows of his new mansion. The building was decorated with every conceivable form of ugly gargoyle—grinning, scowling faces, hideous monsters, and nightmare beasts, greeted the eye whenever the owner of the opposite house cast his gaze towards the coveted view. Sometimes, again, mere' silly practical joking has given rise to some freak biiildings. as in the case of a humorouslyminded Lancashire worthy near Bury, who arranged surprise grottoes in his garden where the person "not in the know" got an unexpected shower bath; or another who built looking-glass walls, which distorted anyone entering the room in a hundred ridiculous and horrifying ways. Last, but not least, must be mentioned that first of "follies" on the plain of Shina.r, which is only another example of that truest of sayings that "there is no new thing under the Sun!" They are pathetic enough, in a way, tbeise "follies," if one looks at them aright. Probably their builders hoped when they designed them, to make their name live in an enduring, if useless, monument; and now, very often, the only consequence is that the name does indeed endure, but it is coupled ignobly—and sometimes, alas, not quite justly, with the name of "Folly!"