georgian | Author, Jane Lark's stories

Stourhead house and landscaped garden was built between 1717 and 1725 by Henry Hoare, whose father, Sir Richard Hoare, had made his fortune in establishing Hoare’s Bank.

Henry Hoare obviously had a passion for the folly as the garden ornament. There are several in the garden including smaller temples, a large Pantheon like building, a tall tower, a grotto and a small Gothic Cottage. He clearly did not wish to be out done in anything.

Keira Knightley, as Elizabeth Bennett, stands in the Apollo Temple at Stourhead when she is rejecting Mr Darcy in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice and runs across the Palladian bridge over the lake.

I think why I love follies is for their romance, they romance the eye and the imagination, positioned in places where you can hide away and allow indiscretions or secret observation. Or in a place high up for the view, where you feel like a king, inspired, looking down on your creation and ordering the world.

Henry Hoare’s King Alfred’s tower, a crenulated, castle like tower, has 205 steps to reach the top, and stands away from the house, looking over the acres he owns. The little rustic Gothic Cottage is believed to have been built after Henry Hoare ‘the magnificent’ was inspired by a visit to Horace Walpole’s Gothick house at Strawberry Hill, in 1763. However Henry Hoare left the cottage hidden, tucked away, behind vegetation, until his grandson Richard Colt Hoare made the cottage more of a feature by adding a porch and a Gothic bow window with a seat in 1806. Now it overlooks the lake the Palladian Bridge and the Temple of Flora.

The Grotto, which you descend to surrounded by rustic jagged edges, is a tribute to the river God, with statues sunken in caves, surrounded by running water. One statue, lying on a plinth is Ariadne and before her is engraved a poem by Alexander Pope.

Nymph of the Grot these sacred springs I keep,

And to the murmur of these waters sleep;

Ah! Spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave,

And drink in silence, or in silence lave.

Whenever I walk around the garden at Stourhead I imagine how Henry Hoare’s and his later family’s guests may have used these various hideaways and vantage points. Laughing, talking and whispering as they process for an afternoons walk, or entertainment, picnic or even dinner in the Pantheon perhaps.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

See the side bar for details of Jane’s books, and Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

”There is a good deal to be said for frivolity. Frivolous people, when all is said and done, do less harm in the world than some of our philanthropisers and reformers.

Mistrust a man who never has an occasional flash of silliness.’ Lord Berners

It is no wonder that I am fascinated and inspired by follies as I grew up in the shadow of the one Lord Berners built.

The Folly at Faringdon in Oxfordshire, England, dominates the horizon, standing proud and tall on a hill looking down on the market town.

It is the end of an era, the last Folly Tower to have been built in Britain.

Lord Berners, commissioned it as a birthday present for his friend, Robert Heber-Percy, of course it had to be ‘utterly useless’ in true folly fashion.

Life can be very mundane if there is no frivolity and Lord Berners was obviously a believer in a bit of folly as I am. He once wrote, ‘There is a legend that Our Lord said “Blessed are the Frivolous, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” and that it was suppressed by St Paul’.

Lord Berners was witty. He seems to me the epitome of the folly builder, although they lived more in previous generations, in the glamour of the Regency and Georgian periods, when the wealthy wished to flaunt their money in excesses.

I just love the hedonism of the folly builder, building for the sake of building, for beauty or view, or just for pleasure. And now this out of fashion art remains for us to admire and enjoy.

Folly hill was well known even before Lord Berners built the folly there. Its was a prominent post for historic battles. King Charles stayed in Faringon in the Civil War and the hill became Cromwell’s camp, and in the 1100’s it played a part in the war between King Stephen and Queen Matilda. A couple of years ago the ruins of the castle built in the medieval civil war were discovered beneath the ground at the bottom of the hill by the river Thames.

In 1774 it became famous for its views when the Poet Laureate, Henry Pye, wrote, ‘Faringdon Hill’.

‘Here lofty mountains lift their azure heads,

There in green lap the grassy meadows spread;

Enclosures here the sylvan scene divide,

There plains extended spread their harvests wide’.

I have included some photographs so you may enjoy the view as Henry Pye did. To find out more on Faringdon folly go to http://www.faringdonfolly.org.uk/