The
Nore Folly at Slindon is one of the few marked on the Ordnance map purely
as "The Folly"; most are euphemistically labelled "Tower" or "Mon". And a
truer folly never was: it looks like no other building anywhere and could
never conceivably have served any useful purpose. It has been likened to a
railway arch or tunnel entrance, but the resemblance is passing. The National
Trust are proud of this one; the quirks of its builder have been meticulously
restored with new cement and shining new flints, and it gleams in the sun
on the edge of its copse. Behind it was once a thatched luncheon room, where
the Earl and Countess of Newburgh presumably refreshed themselves and their
guests while shooting - how did they explain the rest of the building? Slindon
was the family seat of the Countess, formerly Barbara Kemp; it seems most
likely that Nore Folly was built between 1749 and 1786, while she was married
to the third Earl. The name Nore is puzzling: there is a sandbank by that
name in the Thames a little way out from Sheerness; Charles Radclyffe, the
Earl of Newburgh's roaring Jacobite father, was captured in the North Sea
by the frigate Sheerness and taken past the Nore Bank on his way to execution
in the Tower in 1746 - an extremely tenuous connection but the only one we
can make.
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:
Folly Book Offer
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London N4 4HX