FREAK BUILDINGS

Evening Star, Issue 23685, 19 September 1940, Page 3

FREAK BUILDINGS

Fabulous suras of money have been lavished by landowners and wealthy eccentrics on nonsensical buildings. They are generally known as So-and-so’s Follv, states a London journal. One Halifax manufacturer spent £IO,OOO converting one of his factory chimneys into an observation tower, so he could spy over a rival’s premises at

any time he wished. Local residents called it “ Peeping Tom’s Tower.” Mr Henry Stratton, of Little Berkhamsted, Ilerts, built a tall look-out tower in 1789, so he might keep watch I on his ships anchored in the distaxlt Thames. There is a £5,000 tower at Hadlow, near Maidstone, modelled on the famous Bruges Belfry. The builder,- , a whimsical squire, wanted to view the sea about 40 miles away. Then there was the notorious Ralph Allen, of Bath, who, to improve the

view from his house on the A T ortT Parade, built the' Sham Castle on a hill overlooking the city. From a distance this looks just like a medieval fortress, but a closer inspection proves it to ba only a long, battlemented wall with fake' doorways and window spaces. In Gunnersburv Park, —iddlesex. Lord Rothschild designed a boat-house to look like a tiny church. And over the lake in Ken Wood, Hampstead, there is a decorative “ bridge ” which consists of a single parapet.