If eccentricity and Britishness really do go hand in hand, nowhere is this more visible than in the hundreds of towers, temples, obelisks and curious constructions that dot the countryside. Often described as follies, most have no practical purpose and were built mostly for fun and fancy, or to commemorate significant people or occasions.

A few are just downright puzzling. As Lord Berners said of his 42.5m (140ft) folly at Faringdon in Oxfordshire: “The great point of this tower is that it will be entirely useless.”

The sheer variety of weird and wonderful buildings is impressive. Perhaps the heyday of follybuilding was in the 18th century, when it was customary for the well-to-do to return from their ‘grand tour’ of Europe and mimic classical Greek or Roman edifices in their own grounds, building elaborate temples and pavilions beside ornamental lakes and lawns.

Shugborough Park in Staffordshire contains eight different classical monuments, including the so-called Triumphal Arch, a reproduction of the massive Arch of Hadrian in Athens; and also a copy of the Lanthorn of Demosthenes, a huge pillared drum topped by an elaborate trophy.

Gothic temples

Others took the Romantic Movement as their inspiration and for a while Gothic temples were all the rage. One of the most celebrated is in the grounds of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, while another can be found at Shotover House, near Oxford. Its three delicate arches, finely castellated towers and pinnacles, all painted bright white, are in fact a false façade and it simply backs on to a rather plain old barn and the A40.

Hilltop towers have also been very popular over the years, often commemorating important national events. Jubilee Tower above Darwen in Lancashire is a 26m (86ft) octagon with a domed lantern and viewing deck and was constructed in 1898 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.

Famous battles have also been another reason to build oddlooking memorials in obscure places, perhaps typified by White Nancy on Kerridge Hill above Bollington, Cheshire. It was originally built as a summerhouse for the local Gaskell family and is believed to have marked victory at Waterloo. Variously described as a pawn from a giant chess set or a plum pudding (after some creative graffiti one Christmas in the 1980s), it was possibly named after one of the Gaskell daughters.

Meanwhile, the Hoade, above Ulverston in southern Cumbria, was built to resemble a lighthouse and remembers Sir John Barrow, who helped found the Royal Geographical Society.

Most towers were either designed to be seen or to see from – for instance, Solomon’s Temple above Buxton and Broadway Tower, a mock Saxon castle on a ridge in the Cotswolds, built for Lady Coventry in 1794. She apparently wanted to see whether a beacon lit from its tower could be seen from her home in Worcester.

Other minor edifices fulfilled similar indulgences. The 19.5m-high (64ft) tower on the wooded top of Leith Hill in Surrey is just high enough to propel the location to the 305m (1,000ft) mark and create the South East’s only mountain!

In terms of antiquity, the 16thcentury Hunting Lodge tower at Chatsworth in the Derbyshire Peak District is one of the oldest, the last surviving remnant of the original Elizabethan mansion. Four storeys high and still occupied, the slender tower remains an imposing hilltop sight high above the more familiar and newer stately home.

Ready-made ruin

Some follies look ruinous, but in fact were actually constructed that way in the first place as part of the vogue for ‘picturesque’ scenes. Mow Cop Castle sits on a low ridge separating Cheshire and Staffordshire, near Biddulph, and was built in 1754 as a summerhouse for picnics and outdoor entertaining. It’s basically a small tower with an adjoining section of deliberately broken wall that was meant to appear like a section of ruined castle.

A similar Gothic tower forms part of a sham castle in the grounds of Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, introduced when Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was in full flow and the romanticised idea of a ruined castle was all the rage. Dinton Castle in Buckinghamshire is a similar mock ruin, built in 1769 by Sir John Vanhatten, incorporating Sir John’s large collection of ammonites and other fossils in the walls.

A few of these curious buildings were designed to be lived in. The House in the Clouds is the name given to an 18m-high (60ft) water tower in Thorpeness, Suffolk. Underneath is a fivestorey house while the tank on top is concealed behind decorative wooden boarding that resembles a wooden-clad cottage.

Other developments represented more of an architectural philosophy, such as Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’s Portmeirion village in North Wales, a series of ornamental buildings and features built over 50 years to create a fantasy village.

Our heritage

According to one of the definitive guidebooks to the subject (Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings by Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp) there are over 1,600 folly sites in Britain. In 1988 a pressure group was set up to both protect and promote these distinctive if sometimes underrated buildings.

The Folly Fellowship points out that however peculiar follies may seem, they are nevertheless a part of our heritage. “We do not lose sight of the basic idea that these buildings are fun,” they say, “since they were built for pleasure before purpose. Some make us laugh, some provoke contemplative thoughts, some can frighten. Some are mere whims, others demand to be taken seriously.”

A number are certainly puzzling and stop you in your tracks. Perhaps the most celebrated of these is the Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire, built in the 1590s and now recognised as one of the first follies.

Designed by Sir Thomas Tresham (father of one of the Gunpowder Plotters), the three-cornered building reflects Tresham’s strict Catholicism and at a time of religious suppression was a thinly veiled demonstration of his faith. Symbolising the Holy Trinity, there are three of virtually everything: three floors, trefoil windows, three triangular gables on each side and so on. The building is now in the care of English Heritage and, although mostly a shell, is open to visitors.

When folly-building was popular, some landowners peppered their estates with unusual towers, obelisks and temples in a desire to out-do their neighbours. In 1730 the Earl of Strafford built a huge mock castle on his Stainborough estate in South Yorkshire, following it up with other buildings that included a Corinthian temple and a sham church called Steeple Lodge.

A few miles away on his Wentworth Woodhouse estate, Lord Rockingham decided to go one step further. Hoober Stand is a blackened and uncompromising 30.5m (100ft) triangular tower, erected to commemorate the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden. On a nearby hill is Keppel’s Column, a huge stone column of similar height and also with an internal staircase and open platform on top so that it served as a belvedere (a viewpoint). Elsewhere on the estate you can find the Needle’s Eye, an archway topped by a large stone pyramid – and supposedly built to win a wager.

For the sheer number of follies, Stowe is hard to beat. Known today for its public school, Lord Cobham’s estate contained a bewildering array of temples, grottoes, lodges and bridges. Some made strong political and philosophical statements, like the Temple of Ancient Virtue built in a classical style and matched with a purpose-built ruin, the Temple of Modern Virtue, as a comment on the moralities of the day.

Another prolific folly-builder was George Messiter of Somerset whose erections at Barwick Park, near Yeovil, include a slender, 21m-high (70ft) tower called The Cone and a wonderfullynamed building known as ‘Jack the Treacle Eater’. It consists of a smooth, coned tower perched above a rough arch. At the very top is a statue depicting Jack, who once lived in the tower and, it is said, ran all the way to London with urgent messages, fuelled only by treacle.

Altruism and personal indulgence often seemed to go hand in hand. On Fyrish Hill above Evanton, in north-east Scotland, the Gates of Negapatam is a remarkable arrangement of arches and battlements that was built for Sir Hector Munro to commemorate his capture of an Indian town after a long siege. Unemployed local men were paid a penny a day to trudge up the hill to indulge an old man’s fancy and reproduce a small part of Tamil Nadu in Highland Scotland. Sheer folly, indeed.