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Flounders Folly

The views from the top are incredible. “On a clear day you can see Cader Idris, Skirrid, at Abergaveny, the Malverns, and maybe even the Pennines,” says Sula Rayska, excitedly. “So its claims of being built in order to see the ships on the Mersey may not be so far fetched!”

Sula came across the 27 metres high ‘Flounders Folly,’ that stands on the hills above Craven Arms, in 1998. And now, abandoned and inaccessible for years, it has been re-opened for the public to enjoy. But only after a six-year long project led by Sula and her fellow ramblers, who stumbled upon it, spent months finding out who owned it, and whose efforts were rewarded with a £281,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to pay for its now completed repairs.

“I had walked up to the tower a few times and one day thought ‘Why is this tower being left to fall down?’” she explains. “And the more I thought about it the more it became obvious that I had to do something about it.”

Benjamin Flounders, a Quaker from Yorkshire, built the folly in 1838. Exactly why it is not known. But Flounders had championed the development of Teeside and navigational improvements to the Tees, and somehow ‘in order to see his ships on the Mersey and Bristol Channel’ has become the fabled reply.

For years the folly was in good condition, rewarding those that made it to the top with its communal picnic box, crockery and cutlery! But in the late 1980s the top fell off and the roof collapsed, which halted enjoyment of its unrivalled views.

But finding out who owned the folly turned out to be an exercise in itself. When Sula enquired around everyone said Julie Christie, but the actress turned out to have sold it… only she couldn’t remember who to! Another trail led Sula to a company in Llanymynech, but they no longer existed.

“So I contacted the Star and asked them to do a piece on the mystery of its ownership,” she says, “and a few days later I received a letter from some Ludlow solicitors offering, on behalf of their client, to sell me the folly for one pound!”

Sula never did discover who owned it, but she jumped at the opportunity and, with the advice of the Architectural Heritage Fund, she set up The Flounders Folly Trust with herself as Chair and a few friends as the other trustees.

The purchase was completed in January 2001, after which the group immediately set to work, and called a public meeting in the Travellers Rest Inn, to tell local people of their ambitious plans to restore the folly to how it once was. And to their astonishment more than 60 people turned up, who immediately expressed unanimous support, offered practical help and pledged a starting fund of £1000.

But just when Sula and her colleagues thought they were off to a flying start, along came Foot and Mouth disease, keeping people out of the countryside.

But they put the time to good used and two years later secured a £281,000 grant from the lottery, as well as funding from the Local Heritage Initiative, the Esme Fairburn Foundation, Lord Leverhulme’s Charitable Trust and others.

The subsequent eighteen-month restoration project has involved replacing the top, which now has a glass dome, installing a new, metal staircase, and pointing and other repairs to the masonry. Some money has also been spent landscaping the site and telling the folly’s unusual story to visitors.

As well as river development, Flounders had been a leading figure in the building of the Stockton and Darlington railway. He had inherited the Culmington Estate in Shropshire from an uncle in 1807. He sold the estate in 1845, after his two wives and only child had all predeceased him, and died in Yorkshire the following year.

In accordance with his uncle’s wishes, he left money to endow the Flounders Institute, for the training of Quakers, which later became part of Ackworth School but has since been demolished.

“The folly is somewhere you have to walk to. It’s one and a half hours on a waymarked route from the Discovery Centre or 20 minutes along the lane opposite Moorwood Farm, on the road from Lower Dinchope to Westhope,” says Sula. “It will be open one Sunday every month, occasional special events, and private visits by arrangement. Bring your binoculars!”

Flounders Folly (Grid Reference 460850) is next open on 23rd October and 27th November. For more details www.floundersfolly.org.uk


Caption for photograph:

Benjamin Flounders - reproduced by kind permission of the governors of Ackworth School.

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