Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Philosopher's Tower


Follies are not perfect shedworking environments but they are lovely and often quite shedlike. Here's the Philosopher's Tower, built in the early 1700s on the road between Wimborne and Cranborne by the famous philosopher the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper. It has two stories and a basement and is apparently starting to lean a bit. The photo and information comes from the exhaustive and excellent Follytowers.com, a gazetteer of follies and monuments and folly temples around the UK put together by Carl Curtis.It's a truly marvellous site, detailing follies by name as well as county by county with excellent maps to pinpoint each one and I'd heartily recommend a good browse. It also has some useful links to other sites of folly interest, a cracking screensaver and a good FAQ if you're wondering what the darn a folly is.

2 comments:

  1. Well, the definition of "follies" from follytowers.com is: "Put simply, Follies are buildings that were erected for no real purpose, sometimes on a whim." Another dictionary explanation of a folly (perhaps a mainly U.S. definition?) is: "A lack of good sense, understanding, or foresight." Using this second definition, it seems to me that there are plenty of follies among the buildings that are constructed for all kinds of good purposes as well.

    Cheers.....Bill Kratz

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  2. One man's folly is another man's masterpiece!
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