The Tower & Observatory (Fuller)

Another of Mad Jack Fuller’s projects, this low domed building sits on high ground near Brightling and was built as a private observatory in the early 1800s. Fuller, the local squire and a keen patron of science, fitted it with a telescope and a camera obscura — a darkened room where a lens throws a live image of the countryside outside onto a table. The observatory is a private house now, so there’s no going in, but the domed roofline is easy to pick out from the lane. It stands among a cluster of Fuller’s follies: the Brightling Needle obelisk is just up the road, the Sugar Loaf cone lies to the south, and his own pyramid tomb sits in Brightling churchyard. The gardens at Batemans, Rudyard Kipling’s old home, are a few miles north.