| Welcome to the home of the Folly Fellowship.
The Folly Fellowship was founded in 1988 as a pressure group to protect, preserve, and promote follies, grottoes & garden buildings. Initially a group of enthusiasts keen to record what was at first seen as a peculiarly British aspect of architecture, it has grown into a serious conservation and consultative architectural heritage charity, while not losing sight of the basic idea that these buildings are fun - they were built for pleasure before purpose. Some make us laugh, some provoke contemplative thoughts, some can frighten. Some are mere whims, others demand to be taken seriously.
People take their pleasures seriously - why should buildings be any different? An early realisation was the international flavour of the genre although the British Isles can count more follies per square mile than any other region, there are examples to be found all over the world.
In recent years, there has been an increased awareness of the importance of these buildings to our landscapes. Many have been restored and several have been completely rebuilt with local support. Better still, some individuals with imagination and the tenacity to fight the planning process, have begun to build new follies...
There are two important related sites by Folly Fellowship members that you should also visit:
Carl Curtis's Follies & Monuments is an ever growing gazeteer of English follies with a lot of historic detail.
Hazel Jackson's Folly Fancier details exciting newly built follies in the UK and USA.
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A new book with photos by Nic Barlow and text by Caroline Holmes and Tim Knox. Now available on Garden Art Press. You can order a signed copy direct from Nic's website . (Note: the cover seems to have changed from that shown on Nic's site)
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Please buy some back issues! |
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We have lots of lovely back issues available, going right back to the dawn of the Folly Fellowship. Like follies themselves, these magazines improve with age, so complete your set now by going to the magazine page and making your selection from our range of recent issues on show, or from the index covering every article and author for the first 60 issues. We've so many to store, we might just have to roll them up into logs and build a folly out of unwanted back issues. So buy them now before that happens! (If you think I'm joking click here)
Urgent -Severndroog Castle Appeal
Help is needed to save Severndroog Castle - this neglected folly tower in South London needs your support to help secure a National Lottery grant - by September 12th! Read all about it here
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The Gothic Tower at Weston Park on the Staffs/Shrops border. This was converted to a house about seven years ago, and has had a very tasteful extension added to the base, to make an isolated but very desirable, residence. |
All articles and pictures are copyright of The Folly Fellowship (except the News page which is compiled from many disparate sources) |
