Follies, Contrasted

It turned out that lots of people are aware of The Forbidden Corner at Tupgill near Middleham, but I knew nothing of it until I came across a reference in Headley and Meulenkamp, the folly-hunter's vade mecum, and went to chase that reference down last week. The story is that Colin Armstrong and a couple of collaborators dreamt the place up as a private family joke, then decided the joke was too good not to let the public in on, and now it's open all the year round. Somewhere along the way the Council realised that not a brick of it had planning permission, which resulted in a bit of a saga, but unlike that irresponsible fellow in Surrey who had to take his castle down this year, Mr Armstrong brought in enough public support to win the day. And so The Forbidden Corner still stands. 

And it is, quite simply, indescribable, apart from being the maddest garden landscape I have ever come across or, I suspect, ever will.

You enter through a gate which is actually the mouth of some unidentifiable creature, and are then deafened by intestinal rumblings and assaulted by its uvula before being poo-ed out at the other end into a landscape there is no point describing in detail. Labyrinthine paths wander through the woods past statues and walls a door in one of which (a plaque warns you not to go through - you should ignore all such admonitions here) leads eventually to St Cuthbert's Hut, where you will find his Well, a place of spiritual calm - but not before you have been menaced and threatened by a variety of animatronic amusements.

'Cave Aquae' warns this inscription. As you venture closer to inspect the wee-ing little boy, you will discover why you should 'Beware Water', an injunction which applies to many places around the Corner.

Chambers, misleading tunnels and passageways, a temple you glimpse from a variety of viewpoints before working out how to get there (you have to tread perilously along stepping-stones) - and there's no way back through that door ...

Strange creatures, a demented family mausoleum, a mock castle, a variety of architectural jokes: there seems to be no end to this, and certainly it took me a couple of hours to negotiate my way around (most of) the four acres of the Corner. At one stage I was anxious to escape from a long period underground (and find the temple, actually), and thankfully spied a little doorway to world outside. As I approached, it quickly became clear that the passageway to the door was rapidly shrinking: an optical illusion. The gap was something over two feet high. Ah, I can make it through that, I thought boldly, and thankfully did, much to the amusement of the people outside. It is huge fun, and you must go while you still have anything of a child's heart in you.

The other folly I want to tell you about is very, very different. On the map I saw the words 'Druid's Temple', and wondered what that might be as it wasn't marked in the usual Gothic script the Ordnance Survey uses to denote ancient sites of any variety. On the Friday of my holiday I was on my way back to the Temple and thought I would just about have time to chase the place down. It turned out to be somewhere I'd seen photos of, but had no idea was anywhere near my Yorkshire base: a sort of mini-Stonehenge constructed by a landowner in the late 1700s to provide work for indigent labourers. But what a weird, dank spot it is, incongruously islanded in a wood miles from anywhere. 

It may simply have been the time of day and the dull weather, but whatever its lighthearted intentions, it certainly feels as though two centuries of some sort of nastiness have affected the Druids' Temple. The megaliths around the circle form a series of dark chambers, and there is a particularly deep one at the far end; an altar stone, a massive stone table, and a throne fit for a giant complete the picture of what could have been made as a Hammer film set. I was glad to see it, but equally very happy to leave. 

While investigating the farthest chamber, I accidentally took a flash photograph. It was only when I looked over my snaps later that I discovered the words 'YOU WILL SUFFER' scrawled over the far wall.