The rather cruel epithet 'Silly Suffolk' which has oppressed the county for years is claimed by Suffolk partisans to be a linguistic corruption of 'Selig Suffolk', Selig being the German for fortunate or blessed. Why the Germans should have chosen this particular word (which also means deceased) to describe an English county is not revealed; the English appellations for places such as Wuttemburg or Baden elude us for the moment. Certainly the blessed inhabitants of the village of Tattingstone were silly enough in 1790 for the local squire, Edward White, to vow to give them something they could really gawp at.
Thus came the Tattingstone Wonder, one of the most famous follies in Britain. Its fame stems largely from its euphonic name, because it is far from being the only one of its type and indeed there are several follies in Suffolk itself which are more bizarre. Nevertheless the Wonder is a splendid example of a folly. It started life as a pair of cottages, until Squire White decided to enliven the view from Tattingstone Place. He built a third cottage on the end and topped it with a square flint church tower, omitting the southern wall because it wasn't visible from the house. The front of the cottages was replaced by a facade with two gothic windows, and the crowning touch was a large rose window on the south eastern wall. The last time we visited the cottages were uninhabited,* and work is currently in progress to flood the valley between the Wonder and the big house to make the Alton reservoir, thereby adding a touch of landscaping Squire White would surely have approved.
* The cottages have now all been combined to make one agreeable country residence.
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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