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Fyrish MonumentPhoto Suzanne Rushton / Unsplash
Towers, pyramids and sham ruins built for the view or the whim. 44 in the Albion Guide.
EnglandEast MidlandsEast of EnglandNorth East EnglandNorth West EnglandSouth East EnglandWest MidlandsYorkshire and the HumberElsewhere
ScotlandScotland
WalesWales
The stubby 18th-century tower crowning the high point of Bradgate Park, a landmark for miles around.
Leicestershire
Three-sided lodge built in the 1590s by the Catholic Sir Thomas Tresham, with walls, windows and gables all worked around the number three.
Northamptonshire
Victorian fortified tower on Grin Low above Buxton, built as a folly on a Bronze Age burial mound with wide-ranging views.
Derbyshire
Granite column of 1832 rising above the Ashridge beeches near Aldbury, climbable in summer for a thirty-mile view across the Chilterns.
Hertfordshire
A slender six-storey Tudor brick folly above the Orwell, arguably the oldest folly in England.
Suffolk
The northernmost of the coast's Napoleonic Martello towers, a quatrefoil-plan drum on the shingle south of Aldeburgh.
The largest shell grotto in the country, six flint-and-shell chambers dug into a Ware hillside by the poet John Scott in the 1760s.
A ten-acre garden planted between the wars in the outline of a cathedral, with grass avenues for nave and transepts and 'walls' of trees, a memorial to the fallen.
Bedfordshire
An 80-foot Gothick belvedere of 1781 in Alnwick's Hulne Park, raised by the 1st Duke of Northumberland.
Alnwick
A little Victorian house perched on the headland below Howick Hall, built by Earl Grey for his children's sea-bathing.
Craster
A lone gallows replica on the open moor above Elsdon, a grisly relic marking an 18th-century murder.
Elsdon
Grand Edwardian domed folly rising over Williamson Park in Lancaster, dubbed the 'Taj Mahal of the North'.
Lancashire
A stone shelter of 1846 on the limestone top above Grange, with a rooftop viewing platform sweeping from the Langdales to Morecambe Bay.
Cumbria
A 100-foot lighthouse-shaped tower to explorer Sir John Barrow on Hoad Hill above Ulverston, with big views over Morecambe Bay.
Tall Victorian monument to Sir Robert Peel crowning Holcombe Hill above Ramsbottom, with wide Pennine views.
Greater Manchester
Slender three-storey folly tower on the Rivington Terraced Gardens ridge, a landmark of the West Pennine Moors.
Whitewashed sugar-loaf folly on Kerridge Hill above Bollington, built to mark Waterloo, with wide views over plain, Pennines and Wales.
Cheshire
A slender stone obelisk on one of East Sussex's highest ridges, part of Fuller's cluster of local follies.
East Sussex
Wooded knoll south of Guildford topped by a 1930s stone tower folly, a short climb to a view over the Wey valley.
Surrey
Hexagonal flint-walled roofless mausoleum crowning West Wycombe Hill beside St Lawrence's golden ball, built for the Dashwood family.
Buckinghamshire
A 100-foot brick-and-stone tower in a hilltop wood, England's last great folly, built for Lord Berners in 1935.
Oxfordshire
Fuller's pyramid mausoleum stands in St Thomas a Becket churchyard at Brightling, a landmark among his scattered follies.
Gothic folly of 1765 crowning Leith Hill, its turret taking the hill past 1,000 feet for a view said to reach the sea.
A flint and brick archway on the Slindon Estate, raised as an eyecatcher above the village with wide downland views.
West Sussex
A gaunt triangular tower ruin on a hill above Chichester Harbour, its brick shell now open to the sky.
218ft concrete folly, the tallest of its kind.
Hampshire
A cone-shaped folly Mad Jack Fuller reputedly built overnight to win a wager about seeing Dallington church spire.
Fuller's domed observatory near Brightling, once fitted with a camera obscura, now a private house seen from the lane.
An octagonal stone turret on Codmore Hill, raised as a memorial and standing as a landmark above the Arun valley.
Tall Victorian clock tower of 1884 standing above the Teme Valley, a landmark on the Worcestershire Way.
Worcestershire
Slim Victorian stone tower on Callow Hill near Craven Arms, opened on clear days for a four-county panorama.
Shropshire
Sham ruined tower folly perched on a gritstone summit on the Cheshire border, a National Trust landmark with vast Cheshire Plain views.
Staffordshire
The original Norman chancel arches of Shobdon church, re-erected as a weathered hilltop folly in 1756.
Herefordshire
A Georgian squire's private Stonehenge, built in woodland above Masham to give local men work — a full stone circle with altar, avenue and a sealed inner chamber.
Masham
A labyrinth of tunnels, follies and surprises in a walled Coverdale garden near Middleham, built for pure fun.
West Witton
Two ruined stone pillars on Guise Cliff above Nidderdale, an 18th-century folly raised to give local men work in hard times.
Pateley Bridge
A 160-foot triangular brick folly of 1772 on the Stourhead estate near Brewham, marking where Alfred is said to have rallied his men.
Somerset
The triangular Georgian tower folly on Shooter's Hill, its viewing platform looking out over London and, on a clear day, seven counties.
London
A tall triangular obelisk on the Blackdown Hills escarpment above Wellington, the world's tallest such column, honouring the Duke of Wellington.
Eleven Victorian memorial cairns in the woods above Balmoral, crowned by Prince Albert's great granite pyramid, raised by his 'broken-hearted widow' in 1862.
Aberdeenshire
Hilltop folly of 1782 built for General Sir Hector Munro to copy a gate at Negapatam in India, looking out over the Cromarty Firth.
Highland
Restored walled gardens and terraces of the demolished Dunraven Castle above Southerndown.
Vale of Glamorgan
Neo-Gothic folly on a hill near Llanarthney, built in memory of Nelson, with wide Tywi-valley views.
Carmarthenshire
Rebuilt 18th-century tower on Pen-y-Wain hill above Pontypool with sweeping valley views.
Torfaen
