Pyramids for piggies and Gothic privies

Adrian Tinniswood

GLANCE AT THE CONTENTS PAGE of Roger White’s magisterial survey of Georgian landscape buildings and you will see that Chapter 15 is titled “Ruins, Eyecatchers and Follies”. Go much further into the book, and it becomes apparent that this would do as a title for any one of the other 19 chapters. Because wherever you turn in Georgian Arcadia, you’re confronted with ruins, follies and eyecatchers — the richest, most varied collection of beautiful and bizarre structures that you’re ever likely to meet, all proof that while “a man might make a pretty landskip out of his own possessions”, when it came to populating that landscape with buildings, excess and eccentricity were the order of the day. You want somewhere to keep the ducks? Let’s put a three-storey cast-iron pagoda…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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