New Swinton Hall is a mile or so to the west of Masham, near Ilton. It was built by the owner himself, William Danby (1752 - 1833), with a little help from James Wyatt, John Foss and Robert Lugar. Building went on for a remarkable fifty years, well into the 1820s, and Swinton's central tower, by Lugar, can almost be counted as a folly in its own right. Danby was a good example of the English eccentric. From the Hall he saw several of his literary works published, mostly written in his old age. They consist of four illuminating volumes of Thoughts: Travelling Thoughts, Thoughts chiefly on Serious Subjects, Thoughts on Various Subjects and Ideas and Realities, with an additional Extracts from Young's Night Thoughts, with Observations upon them, published a year before his death. It wasn't only his literary ambitions that flowered late; by the time Danby took to crenellating his mansion his thoughts also turned on relieving the unemployment in the area.
His first project was the labour intensive work of creating another Stonehenge, with a shilling a day paid to the workers. No common or garden stone circle this; like a true Yorkshireman Mr. Danby believed that a job had to be done properly if it was to be done at all. An enormous oval of altars, menhirs, dolmens, sarsens and other phallic and neo-Druidical paraphernalia was raised on the Yorkshire moors. Several solitary standing stones lined a ceremonial avenue leading to the temple. It is well preserved in the middle of Forestry Commission land, an unnatural object unnaturally surrounded by gloomy evergreens, and popular with picnickers. Vandals come off second best against these massive monoliths, but make their presence known in other ways: to take the photograph we had to remove over forty empty cans of Kestrel lager tastefully scattered throughout the folly. A guide to the district dated 1910 repeats the old hermit story, claiming that "the builder of the temple offered to provide any individual with food, and a subsequent annuity, providing he would reside in the temple seven years, living the primitive life, speaking to no one and allowing his beard and hair to grow. It is said that one man underwent this self-imposed infliction for four-and-a-half years, at the end of which he was compelled to admit defeat. Several others made the attempt, but had to relinquish it." If this is true, then the four and a half year hermit is by far the longest tenure we have come across in any of the hermit stories. Visiting the Druid's Temple on a windy January afternoon we were astonished that anyone could have lasted four and a half minutes, let alone four and a half years there. Towards the west through the trees a view has been left open towards Leighton Reservoir, lying far below in the valley.
When writing his observations upon Young's Night Thoughts Danby undertook another enterprise: the building of Quarry Gill Bridge, south of Swinton. This is a gothic bridge, designed by Foss, forming an ensemble with the nearby rustic stone seat from where Danby could watch the deer sauntering in the lowlands, and was left to his own night thoughts when the sun set and the damp filtered through the blankets covering his body. A year later he was dead, aged eighty-one. Robert Southey, who visited him some time before his death, thought much of Danby, and so did his villagers. They lost a benevolent employer and a considerate landlord who would open his private grounds "for public inspection".
From the original draft of Follies by Gwyn Headley & Wim Meulenkamp, published by Jonathan Cape in 1986 and 1990, now out of print.
The new, expanded, fully revised and rewritten FOLLIES, GROTTOES AND GARDEN BUILDINGS by Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp, with photos on nearly every one of its 600 pages, is available from GREAT bookshops at £20 (ISBN 1-85410-625-2, published by Aurum Press, July 15 1999). Signed copies are available direct from the authors. Send a UK cheque for £23 (inc. p&p, UK only) made payable to "Gwyn Headley" to:
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