A folly tower on the second-highest point of the Cotswolds, once a country bolt-hole for William Morris and his Pre-Raphaelite friends
The little battlemented tower on Broadway Hill went up in the late 1790s for the Earl of Coventry, the story being that his wife wanted to know whether a beacon lit on the hill could be seen from their house miles away. The hill is the second-highest point in the Cotswolds, and on a clear day the view reaches across a good many counties. William Morris rented the tower as a summer retreat in the 1870s and shared it with friends including Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Cotswold Way national trail passes right by, and the village of Broadway lies below the escarpment to the north-west, with its wide green and honey-stone cottages.
