VI
Follies and Fantasies
The
British have a great fondness
for the fantastical and odd
.
At
Starhead in Wiltshire is an idealized landscape of the 18th century.
Here
surrounding an artificially created
lake you can see a medieval
cross, several
grottos, an ivy-clad
gothic cottage, and no less than
3 classical temples.
The
British fondness for the ancient Greece and imperial
Rome led to a Victorian
copy of the Parthenon being built in Edinburgh and a version of the Roman
Colosseum being erected
in the Scottish town of Auburn.
In
Brighton there's what looks like
the Palace of a Maharajah.
This
is the famous Pavilion, an Anglo-Indian fantasy built for Queen Victoria's uncle
the Prince Regent.
Every
bit as exotic and yet more curious
there's a house in Scotland shaped like a pineapple
; in Dorset there's a little thatched
cottage shaped like an umbrella;
and in Suffolk there is the house in the clouds
built around a water tower.
Perhaps
the grandest and certainly one of the most delightful
of follies is Castech Coch
near Cardiff.
This
fairy-tale
castle, taken straight
from the pages of medieval romance, was built
not in the Middle Ages
but in Victorian times.
In
the great hall of the castle is a piece of pure fantasy with an elaborate mural depicting
the birds and animals of Aesop's Fables.