More about Follies

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More about Follies

Don't miss the local follies at the end of the page. Scroll down now.

Follies in the landscape and garden are quintessentially English. Their heyday was in the mid 18th to the early 19th century, when a business man after making his fortune in industry would retire to the country and build his Folly. Most were built by people with plenty of time and money, although a touch of eccentricity was helpful. Some people lavished enormous sums of money on an obsessive idea and built to an incredibly high standard of work. When finished they could astonish their friends and the folly would act as a symbol of their wealth. As estates became bigger around the mid 18th century a folly would provide an exotic point of interest to take a short walk to on a summer evening. By no means, however, are follies restricted to this paradigm. There are examples of follies throughout the world and history but the classic era of folly building is sadly in the past.

In the strict sense a folly is a great useless structure or monument occasionally left unfinished. They were pretentious and ridiculously expensive. The great era of Folly building lasted 100 years from about 1725-1825. The owners or Builders intention would be to evoke emotions ranging from wonder to despair. Many were humorous and full of fun.

Arbours, ruins, gazebos, towers and grottoes could all loosely be classified as follies. Sham ruins were particularly popular in the 18th century as an expression of Romanticism. Today home owners are still building follies of a sort. The big problem is being able to fit them in to the confined spaces of a modern garden. The modern idea of a folly is now much more likely to be some sort of a statue pergola or arch ready made from the local garden centre. The true folly is now a rare thing.

If you have a folly or are building one please e-mail me. The Creator.