In short, the buildings which have become known as follies do nothing more than reflect human nature and taste and, before we judge the motives of their builders, we might be well advised to examin ethe fancies and conceits which lurk within our own minds and personalities.

Stuart Barton
Monumental Follies.

Few follies are as absolutely useless as their strict definition requires.

Of folly buildings
Eccentric Britain, published by Bradt.

A folly is in the eye of the beholder.

Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings, by Gwyn Headley and Wym Meulenkamp.

Folly

A name given to any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder,

- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

But it's much, much more than that. The folly, particularly in Britain, is an attitude, a statement, a style, a fashion, a passion, a different world. . .

Follies may be found all over the world, but the British were first to recognise their worth and importance. . .

Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp have spent over thirty years reasearching 'rogue architecture'. They are co-founders of the Folly Fellowship.

Above text taken from the blurb on the back cover of Follies Grottoes and Garden Buildings by Headley and Meulenkamp, Aurem Press, 1999

Few follies are as absolutely useless as their strict definition requires.

Page 189, Eccentric Britain.

Folly history bristles (as it should) with thorny queries. Just as no one can account for the ninteenth - century revival of interest in tilting (Sir Walter's Disease; said Mark Twain), no one really knows why a certain man will devote twenty years to surfacing he house with crockery shards and teapot lids; no one can fully share the squires impulse to retire to his own Toad Hall, or somebody's longing for a battlemented bicycle shed at the bottom of his garden, or something very nasty to gothicize his woodshed.

Page 11, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Some of us take for granted are usually monuments to human foolishness; flimsy prisons that have failed to save daughters from abduction, bosoms from asps, and sons - and heirs from vengeful witches.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

There are many 'borderline' follies, for the simple reason that no all-embracing definition of a folly exists. Follyhood has to be felt as well as seen.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.





Painting by Paul Brason
http://www.paulbrason.co.uk/index.htm

Not every foolishly - conceived building is a folly, of course, nor is every folly pointless, gemcrack or tasteless.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Almost anyone, almost anywhere is liable at any time to come upon a forgotten, nameless, but undoubtedly man-man structure with that over solemnity, raffishness, hint of menace, or glaring inappropriateness that mark it as a folly.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Let nobody please bother to ask 'What is it for?' For to that question there is only one answer. The mark of a true folly is that it was errected simply to satisfy and give pleasure to it's builder and to use Sansovino's words 'greatly surprize the stranger'. There could be not better aim or epitaph for any buildings, nor, for any publication.

Foreword, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Of Folly buildings

“What was chosen for what site in what style, depended on taste, place, money, materials and fashion; success was as capricious as fashion”
Page 33 F & G

In making the attempt to define the undefineable, many scholars have tended to overlook the element of eccentricity, which is an integral part of every folly builders personality.

Monumental Follies, Stuart Barton.

“Influence is a sufficiently difficult word to use of professionals, who, one can be reasonably certain, do see another’s work. But with follies, everything is so unsure; Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Kent built some of the very earliest follies, and then the amateurs largely took over, and who knows what they saw and worked for, with whose aid and how; it is easy to oversimplify, and follies are by no means simple but the result of many fuddled ‘influences’.”

“With good luck, the builder might be a man of great taste and imagination, and become a specialist, with bad luck, the thing fell down”

Follies fragility.
Page 2 F & G.

Follies were built with the directness and complexity of a doodle on the blotting pad!

Page 36, Follies and Grottoes, Barbara Jones.

“They are cut off from worldly contacts and loose all humanity, becoming more mineral than artefact, resolving into stones again.”

Of buildings named follies

Page 3, Follies & Grottoes, Barbara Jones.