The Boughton Park follies and Jeyes Fluid

In the 18th century the Boughton Park estate was owned by the Earls of Strafford. William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, built six follies there.

The photograph above shows The Spectacle, a castellated archway built to be seen on the horizon from Boughton Hall.

Near it stands a large house in similarly romantic style. this is not one of Wentworth's follies but Holly Lodge, which was built for the Jeyes family (as in Jeyes Fluid) in the following century.

Another of the Boughton Park follies is the Hawking Tower, which I have been looking for on the main road between Market Harborough and Northampton for decades without knowing what it was.

And The Obelisk, which was built by Wentworth as a memorial to his friend William Cavendish, the fourth Duke of Devonshire, loomed up in the distance as I walked around Boughton on Saturday.

One day I will go back and photograph it close up, though I have the feeling that it is one of those buildings that will move around the landscape if you try too hard to pin it down.

There is more about the Boughton Park follies on Painted Pixels and in an old newspaper article about Simon Scott, who has written a book about them.