|
Extract from Pevsner:
The fame of Painshill was its grounds, laid out picturesquely by the Hon.
Charles Hamilton, son of the Earl of Abercorn, in the 1740s. Mason
and Horace Walpole
praised them, Whateley
illustrated them. ... Paths lead along a long lake towards an island. On
the N side of the lake the Gothic Abbey, of brick, with hexagonal angle
turrets. On a hill a little further N the Gothic Temple or Tent, an 'umbrello'
with open sides. (Walpole was very critical of this. 'The Goths never
built summer-houses or temples in a garden.'). On the island all kinds of
tufa structures ... At the extreme SW end of the grounds ... a tall Folly
Tower of c.1770, four storeys, brick, in good condition, with a big
circular stair-turret and simple Gothick tracery in the windows. ...
(Surrey by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner,
Revised by Bridget Cherry (1971),
Yale University Press, New Haven
and London) |
|