Looking Back At Follies with Wainhouse Tower and Conolly's Folly
I have decided to round out my exploration of follies by taking a look at a couple which are not dissimilar to my starting point for this journey, which if you remember was Triangular Lodge. I initially chose it because of a personal interest in its history and the fact that I had visited it in the past and at one point, began to regret my choice, thinking that I had picked an outdated and comparatively dull building in comparison to my classmates who had chosen feats of architecture from the modern age such as the Lloyds Building in London and the Marina Bay Sands. Over time through looking at other more modern follies I have realised that the Triangular lodge has much more in common with them that I first thought. Primarily, through conveying their intended message or statement. Two interesting twists on the theme of follies are Wainhouse Tower and Conolly's Folly, which fulfilled no proper function once completed, but their construction served a purpose at the time.
Wainhouse Tower was constructed in the late 19th century and has a humorous backstory between two estate-owning neighbours, John Wainhouse and Sir Henry Edwards. They had a fierce rivalry, and upon hearing Sir Henry boast of his estate being the most private in Halifax, Wainhouse set out to build a monumental tower with a viewing platform atop it to prove him wrong once and for all.
The tower itself is an octagonal shaft of original stonework, though the top section of the tower was recently restored and replaced in 2008 following safety concerns. Missing stone finials were replaced and cracks in the stone were repaired.
Wainhouse Tower is the tallest folly in the world at 84 metres. The reason it was this tall specifically was not only to irritate his neighbour, as one of its original functions was to be a chimney for a mill below, though this was more likely an excuse for its construction. However it never acted as a chimney as one year before completion the mill was sold and the new owner didn't want the tower, so John Wainhouse kept it for himself as an observation platform.
The above building is Conolly's Folly, another structure with a purposeful construction but limited end use, in this case to mark the rear entrance gateway to the estate it is built on. The folly itself is made up of multiple arches with a tall obelisk at its centre, with decorative stonework eagles. It was built at a time of great crisis in County Kildare, Ireland, during the famines of the mid-18th century, commissioned to give employment to the hundreds of poor workers in the nearby town or Celbridge.
I particularly like this structure for the same reason as Wainhouse Tower and my original case study: Triangular Lodge and is what makes them interesting and unconventional. Which is that the purpose the building serves is not by people using it, but by their construction achieving something. This very niche corner of architecture is one that I really do wish was more widely appreciated and was practiced more in the 21st Century.
