Folly Tower

During one of the UK's weekly ten minutes of no rain, I decided to head out to the Shropshire border to photograph this cute little folly ruin. With its tower next to a smaller nave, it kinda looks like a church. Some documents have even referred to it as "the ancient church." But it was never a church, ancient or otherwise. It's just designed to resemble one, kinda like the one in the woods that I covered a while back, but a bit less cute. 

This tower was allegedly built in the 1700s, although nobody seems to know exactly when. In the Georgian and Victorian eras, follies were all the rage but they were nothing more than extravagant garden features. In fact, I did originally wonder if this has always been in a ruined condition. Some Georgian follies were designed to look like ruins, because it gave the impression that their land had a richer history than it actually did. 

But no, apparently this was a solid structure back in the day. It's said that it was initially used as a barn, but in the Victorian era a chap called Philip Chetwode used the tower to watch horse racing on the nearby field. I imagine he wasn't alone. He probably brought his friends up there too and had a beverage. What's the point in owning a tower if you aren't going to make the most of it?

Luckily there are plenty of photos of this guy online. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Allegedly in the 20th Century the tower was converted into residential accommodation for the servants of the estate, although I've not been able to clarify that. It turns out that the nearby woods and the little cluster of houses that have popped up nearby in the last couple of centuries are named after the folly, which is interesting since there are probably people in that hamlet who don't even know it exists. I like to refer to census data but it's a little hard to link anyone to this folly tower when its name can be applied to every nearby house. 

Allegedly the folly was also struck by lightning, which certainly explains the gash down the tower, but seems a little bit odd given the proximity to much taller trees. Perhaps it's this act of God that saw it relegated to a forgotten ruin. Let's hope nobody was in it at the time. 

The only real clue to the origins and use of this folly are the Chetwode family. They had property in Buckinghamshire in the 13th Century, but they also had a manor near here too.

Philips Great-great-great-great Grandfather John lived from 1666 to 1733 and allegedly had the entirety of that old manor rebuilt in 1710 when he revamped the estate. So it seems that the folly was probably built by him, in accordance to this new image he was bringing to the land. John died on the estate in 1733, as did his son Philip in 1764, and Philip's son John in 1779. Each successive Chetwode was said to have added more to the estate, so it's entirely possible that it was one of these two who had the folly built too.

John Chetwode (the one who died in 1779) is the earliest member of the lineage who I've been able to get an image of. It's a painting from 1768. 

(Painting credit: George Romney)

John and his wife Dorothy allegedly had something of a very formal and loveless marriage, brought about purely for the sake of accumulating land. They were friendly with each other but seldom affectionate, and John allegedly spent most of his time in London, and had a bunch of illegitimate children with his mistress. He died in 1779 from a head injury when his carriage flipped over in London. Dorothy actually died a year after this painting was finished. 

Check out that gash right down the side of the tower. It's completely split in two. There are still a few clues about its former appearance. There are diagonal lines at the base of the tower, which seem to indicate that there was another room facing this way, making the folly an L-shape with the tower in the corner. Kinda like that weird pointy manor I found in France, but without the supervillain lair vibe. 

Even from here we can see the diagonal lines on the tower that indicate where the roof was, and there are bleak remnants of white paint telling us that once upon a time some effort went into its decor. I wish I had some old photos of this place. I bet it looked awesome back in the day. 

John and Dorothy probably spent time here back in the day, especially if the fields were used for events like horse racing. The woods nearby were also used for fox hunting, and the folly gets a few mentions in reports from that too. There was also a pheasant coop right next to it according to Victorian maps, so I imagine the Chetwode family did make use of it for their outdoor activities. 

While the numerous Chetwodes did scatter across the country, John and Dorothy's grandson, also called John, was born here in 1788 and he died here in 1873. Photos of him exist too. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Being childless, the estate and baron lineage fell to his brother George and his offspring. George was thankfully a bit more creative with naming his children, having a daughter named Hyacinthe and a son named Augustus. 

Don't you miss the days when rich people just gave their children unconventional names and built eccentric garden features instead of nowadays, when they go to strange islands and diddle children with presidents named after flatulence? Bring back the old days. 

George's grandson was the Philip Chetwode who came here to watch the horse racing. But it's likely that every generation spent time here, right back to its construction. 

Philip Chetwode was born in 1869 and he died in 1950. He fought in the second Boer War, at the siege of Ladysmith in 1899. He also fought in World War 1 at the first battle of Ypres, and the first battle of Gaza in 1917, as well as the Battle of Beersheba and the Battle of Jerusalem. In 1937 he said that Britain would not be fighting another war with Germany, and added that "as an old soldier" he knew what he was talking about. These words came back to sting when his son died in the second world war.

His family sold this estate in 1919, but he regularly came back to Shropshire to visit, and play football. 

Curiously the interior of this bit doesn't actually lead into the tower. Presumably there were stairs, and the room above led into the tower. It's actually a very intriguing layout. Given the arched doors, it's possible that this was a stable area, but the stables are beneath the living quarters. That definitely gives it a superhero vibe. I can imagine a Zorro-like character sliding down a fireman's pole and landing on his horse before shooting out through the doors. 

Presumably it was after 1919 that the folly was made into accommodation by the estates new owner. This means that if it was struck by lightning, it was sometime after 1919. But given that it's got loads of trees behind it, it seems very difficult to believe that it was hit my lightning at all. Maybe it was a fire or something. 

A few people have died in the vicinity of the folly. A plane crashed nearby in 1941, killing the pilot after he attempted to return to base with one knackered engine after bombing Mannheim. The pilot, Charles Greig, was an Australian man who had been discharged from the navy due to being medically unfit, and in the second world war had been unable to join the air force in his home country. He'd actually travelled to the UK just to join the RAF, because we were apparently less stringent with who we sent to war. It may sound insensitive, but it seems that if he really wanted to serve in the military, it's kinda nice that he died achieving that dream.

The second death occurred on the nearby road in 1944. 20-year-old Jean Powell was chatting to her husband, who was just off to work. She came across the road to speak to him in his truck, ran back across the road to her home, and got hit by a bus. Her death was the result of a laceration of the brain caused by a fractured skull. The funeral took place in the same church where they were married.

Very, very tragic. Especially at the age of twenty, when she and her husband had their entire future ahead of them. 

In the tower itself we have the bleak remnants of a fireplace. It's mad to think that maybe in the Victorian era Philip Chetwode had a fire going, heating the tower while he watched the horses race. 

But wait, there's more!

I almost missed this completely unobtrusive hole in the ground. The tower has a cellar! The stairs are covered entirely by debris, and there's maybe a two feet of doorway left, but two feet is more than enough! We're going in!

I'll get mauled by a thousand badgers before I ever consider therapy. 

The cellar is tiny, and it's going to be harder to scramble out than it was to slide in, but I don't care! This is awesome! I love that a ruin like this still has a cellar. And to think I almost missed it! If I had posted this online and someone told me that I missed the cellar, I'd be pretty miffed. I'd probably swear so much I'd invent some new swearwords as I hauled my ass back here in a blaze of profanity. 

But that's about it for the folly tower. It's not much, but I love this sort of thing. I'll always make time for a folly ruin. 

My next blog will be something quick and easy in Market Drayton. No, not the girls! And then I'll be invading Shrewsbury once again in a bleak attempt to give my blogs name some accuracy.

In the meantime, follow my social media platforms. I'm on Facebook, slowly losing my will to live, what with the perpetually miserable userbase, and I'm on Instagram too for some reason. But I absolutely love the smaller sites that give us what Instagram once was, Vero and Cara. And of course, I'm on Bluesky, which is what Twitter used to be. Find me there.

Thanks for reading!

Cider House

Check out this cute little wreck! It was nicknamed "Cider House" because of an old cider press in its yard, as well as its placement in an orchard. It's a very gorgeous house, obviously ancient, and definitely in need of saving. I can't save it, but I can preserve it with pictures and try to tell its story.  

You may remember, ages ago I mentioned that my camera wasn't focusing like it should and would probably die at the worst possible moment. That moment came in Spain, which I will cover eventually on my travel blog. This was my first adventure back on British soil, reunited with my opulent entourage, and I was armed only with a Samsung. How the mighty have fallen. I'm generally opposed to using a mobile phone to take photos, mainly because I have dyspraxia and struggle to hold anything steady. I could, in theory, use the disability card every time someone tells me that my photos are terrible, and really ruin their day. But the only people who have ever done that use fake Facebook profiles so their lives must already be pretty terrible. 

My earliest blog posts were taken on a Samsung and they were pretty terrible too. But mobile phone technology has improved in the past decade, so luckily these shots aren't as terrible as I was dreading. Of course I had to download an app to give my phone camera additional abilities. And doesn't that just boil the piss a bit? The hardware can do it. The software just isn't there for it. 

Its almost as if they want the product to have its inevitable obsolescence built into it, so that they can sell the next product with minimal actual changes. Wily little bastards.

Anyway! Let's check out this house!

The house is being gradually taken over by this prickly flower. My partner is a bit more knowledgeable on this sort of thing, and has identified this as Houseleek, an appropriate name for something growing on a house that is open to the elements. I'm pretty sure it's an invasive species but I might be wrong. 

And as you can see, access to the house is a pretty easy. The entire wall has fallen away. 

Digging up any history on this place has been a bit of a challenge, but I was able to find some of the old owners through  census records, and from there everything else just fell into place.

The 1851 census lists the occupant as Ann, an eighty year old widow, and head of the household. I'm guessing the head of the household was her husband prior to this, but he passed away in 1836. Seemingly in order to keep Ann company, her carpenter son James moved in, and brought his family, consisting of his wife Hannah, and their two adorable semen demons, Elizabeth and William. Their ages were listed as three and one on the 1851 census so it's entirely possible that they were born here. The 1841 census shows James and Hannah living elsewhere, so there's a ten year gap where their move took place

. 

Despite the fact that the house is positively dinky, James and Hannah decided that it wasn't crowded enough, and little Emma was born in 1852.

Ann passed away in 1864, but James and Hannah continued living here, raising their children. 

There are a few publications from the era that make reference to the family. It's not always flattering, but it's never anything particularly evil. William was charged with trespassing in 1869, when he was nineteen, and there's a few mentions of silly transgressions like failing to keep a dog on a lead or something. The mainstream media hadn't discovered drag queens, transgender people, Meghan Markle or brown people yet, so they had to scrape the barrel for that scandal. 

This picture is peeling off the ceiling. It's a photo of a ship called Aquitania that had its maiden voyage in 1914. Why has this been stuck face-up on the ceiling?

One by one, James and Hannah's children moved away. Elizabeth married a London-based jeweller in 1871, and Emma married a labourer in 1878. William didn't stick around either, although he did learn the carpentry trade from his father. He eventually married and moved away to be a carpenter elsewhere, although he did drop off his son Charles to keep James and Hannah company. William and Jane had three other children, William Jr, Clara and John, so why Charles was sent to live here with the grandparents is anyone's guess. 

James passed away in 1896, and I presume Hannah passed away around the same time. William moved back in with his wife Jane, showing up in the census records for 1901. He's the third generation of his family to live here, at least to my knowledge. He didn't bring all of his children, mainly because most of them were adults at this point and had their own homes. But his three youngest, Alice, Frederick and Herbert moved in. Interestingly, in 1911 William and Jane's oldest child, William Jr, moved in with his wife Mary and young daughter Gwen. Perhaps they had issues with their tenancy and needed a place to stay. It's an awfully small house for this many people, but this wasn't actually uncommon for the lower class in this era. Victorian and Edwardian households were famously cramped. It wasn't hygienic and it certainly didn't help the child mortality rate.  

Speaking of which, Frederick died in 1905 at the age of fifteen. His brother, Herbert, would name his own son after him. 

Despite all of these children who had grown up here, it seems it was actually William's son John who ended up living here for a bit, despite having been an adult and living in Birmingham when his father moved in. John had married a woman named Margaret, and worked in a slaughter house. According to records, they came to live here in the 1920s after William and Jane passed away. Curiously their stay was only brief. I guess they'd built a life out in the city, so a rural cottage was something of a culture shock. 

I have photos of most of thefamily, but I feel like this one of Margaret surrounded by her children is probably the most relevant. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

John had trouble with the law in 1913 when he stole some bacon from his boss and gave it to the landlady of his local pub. His boss said that he was usually of good character but prone to drinking. What's really interesting and kinda funny is that the newspaper headline said "Woman fined for receiving bacon," villainising the woman he gave the bacon to rather than the man who actually stole the bacon. 

This definitely seems to be the most interesting of the downstairs rooms. 

There's no graffiti or any other kind of vandalism. It was just left to nature, and that is awesome.

There's a woman's shoe here. 

Check out this old stove!

Weird to think the owners once used this to make a cup of tea for the last time, put it down and never picked it up again. 

It's fairly obvious, what with the house being derelict in an active orchard, that the house was mainly intended for the occupancy of a farm employee rather than the landowner themselves. This led me to researching the past occupants of nearby farms in the hope of identifying the past landowners. And while it was ultimately futile, I did find some interesting stories. There was a chap called Albert living in a nearby farm in 1910, and his ancestor George was still living there before he died in 1996. 

Albert seems to get into a lot of trouble with his housekeeper, Mrs Horton. In 1910 they were both charged with being drunk and disorderly, and in another case, Mrs Horton burst into the local school to beat up a school teacher for caning her child, and encouraged Albert to get gobby with the same teacher when they saw him in public. Mrs Horton and Albert were both fined, but I do kinda see Mrs Horton's point. Her daughter had apparently been caned several times a day for five weeks, often for silly things like struggling at maths, and that should be enough to make any parent snap. 

But, as recent events will also prove, nobody in power cares about children's welfare, especially if they're little girls.

The Hortons actually lost another child in 1911. Their twelve-year-old daughter passed away due to heart failure attributed to some surgery she'd had a couple of years ago.

These people didn't live in this house, but they live in close proximity, and these events absolutely had to be known to the family here. 

In 1939 and throughout the 1940s a chap named William lived here. He had been born in Wales in 1909 but moved to Shropshire and married a woman named Mary in 1932. William worked as a farm labourer, which seems to indicate that he was living here on an employee basis in exchange for his work on the farm. 

William's father, Henry, also came to live with them in the 1930s. William's mother Martha had passed away in 1934, so perhaps that was why. I happen to have a photo of Henry and Martha. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Henry also had a few media mentions for silly things, having quite a few run-ins with the law for trespassing, hunting animals on private land, and in 1909 he was fined for allowing his donkey to run amok in Ludlow, a story that made the paper with the headline "a straying ass."

In 1881, Martha was discharged from a battered women's refuge, with notable descriptive features being a scar on her forehead and one front tooth missing. It doesn't really look good for Henry's reputation here, but I soon discovered that there was more than one Martha living in the Ludlow area around this time, with the same surname, so I don't know for sure if it was the same Martha. The name pops up a few more times for different misadventures too. One of these mentions tells of how Martha was done for theft. Another story tells of how she was charged with abusive language, and in another story she was fined for not sending her children to school. Given the there was more than one woman in the area with the same name, any one of these could be attributed to Henry's wife, or none of them could be. For all we know there could be a whole gang of Martha's. Ludlow's very own Marthia. 

It's time to move on upstairs! 

In the 1950s two women lived here, a mother and daughter named Rose and Hannah. Rose was born in 1867 and widowed in 1929, whereas Hannah was born in 1892 and widowed in 1948. I have a photo of Hannah's husband Charles, but none of her. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

It is nice that Rose and Hannah, both widowed, were able to live together and keep each other company in their final years. Rose passed away in 1957, and Hannah continued living here until her death in 1979. I'm guessing the shoes dotted around were hers. Just think, one day she wore those for the last time, and they're still here unclaimed long after her death.

From what I can tell, the house has been vacant ever since. 

There are two bedrooms, which makes the size of the previous occupant families pretty terrifying, but for Hannah and Rose it looks like it was quite cosy. It's up here in the bedrooms that things start to feel like a home. It's here that Rose and Hannah become real people, when we can picture them going about the mundane to's and fro's of human existence. And as surprising as it might be to hear from a globe-trotting adventurer whose long-term survival in this world is all down to luck, the mundane stuff matters. It's human. Rose and Hannah were ordinary people who had dreams and aspirations, and had endured real hardship. 

All that's left of them now is this house, slowly rotting away, and holding only the faintest reminders that they were ever here.

I think on some level nobody wants to be forgotten, and yet it is inevitable that someday we all will be. There's a few among us who achieve a longer spat of fame or notoriety, but time is infinite and in 10,000 years they'll be forgotten to. But I really love digging up the history of those ordinary folks who now only exist as names on paper and in graveyards. 

The truth is that being able to tell the story of the deceased is both a privilege and a responsibility. Some urbexers grasp that while others will just try to convince you that they met the owners ghost for Youtube clicks. And that is the difference between a good urbexer and, well, trash. 

This dressing table was a sad sight. Decades ago, this would have been where Hannah sat to do her makeup. 

There's a glass ash tray nearby. 

Onto the next bedroom...

As with the other room, all that's left are the wardrobe, dressing table, drawers and a bed. All of which tells us that this was lived in, but doesn't give us any personality. All the personal stuff is long gone. 

Similarly long gone is the bedroom wall!

It's weird to think that either Hannah or Rose slept in this bed, and would be mortified to see this room as it is now. 

That's about it for the house itself. Let's check out the out-buildings. 

Over there is a wash copper, which is basically a retro washing machine. 

And here's an old mangle for squeezing water out of wet laundry. 

And over here are hundreds of old crates. 

It seems that the orchard was providing fruit for various retailers. One of these crates is labelled "Frank Idiens & Sons, Evesham." This was a fruit and vegetable retailer that has long since disappeared. 

C E Dipper likely refers to Charles Eric Dipper, a resident of Tenbury who lived from 1913 to 1989. With a little more digging I was able to find a news article that pictured a "Eric Dipper" that referred to him as a greengrocer, so evidently he also got some of his stock from this orchard too.

(Image not mine)

Peeking out behind Eric is his brother "Austin," although I have it on good authority that the media (surprising nobody) got his name wrong. His wife is related to Hannah, which adds a family twist to the entire arrangement that's quite wholesome.

Of course, when multiple families co-exist in the same rural area for centuries, I'm more surprised when their DNA doesn't end up sloshed together at multiple points. The Dippers ancestors were also related to the carpenter family that lived here a century or so earlier. It's not surprising at all. 

And really, to me these crates and these family business arrangments just add another layer of sadness to the place. We're not just seeing the remnants of someone's home. We're also seeing the remnants of someone's community. This orchard provided food for some local businesses and some less-local ones. The local ones are remembered fondly by the generation that came before the massive supermarkets,  before the weekly food shop involved trying to wave down a grumpy old bat and interrupting their valuable conversation because the self-help thing says "Unexpected item in bagging area" for no reason. 

This is all a remnant of the old world. These crates were ready to deliver stock to business owners who died some forty-ish years ago. I bet if you'd gone into Dippers for your fruit he would have greeted you with a smile. 

There's an old cider press here, which is what inspired the title of the blog. This thing is pretty cool. 

The orchard itself is suffering from mistletoe. I've never seen this growing in the wild before, and I didn't know it was a parasite. It's typically associated with Christmas and smooching, having its roots in Norse and Celtic mythology as a symbol of love and fertility, but it actually leaches off other trees and steals their nutrients, and can eventually kill them. Which does sound like a lot of relationships, now that I think about it. I totally see the correlation. 

That's all I've got. 

I actually really like this house. It's beautiful in its decay, entirely natural with no vandalism. And despite being little more than a ruin, the house still has enough left behind to show us that is was once someone's home. Places like this are sad and intriguing, but ultimately worthy of more respect than any other kind of urbex spot.

Alas, they seldom get it.

My next few blogs will be a few small local things. The broken camera era will be short lived, somehow. In the meantime, if you like my blogs, the best way to stay updated is with my social media, despite my absolute hatred for it. I really want to promote the usage of apps like Vero and Cara, perfectly good Instagram alternatives for artists and photographers, and I'm also on Bluesky. But since most of us are still addicted to algorithmic bullshit, I can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for reading!