Folly

Beckford's Tower, originally known as Lansdown Tower, is an architectural folly built in neo-classical style on Lansdown Hill, just outside Bath, Somerset, England.
Standing 120 feet high, the tower was completed in 1827 for local resident William Beckford .The Tower was used as both a library and a retreat, located at the end of pleasure gardens called Beckford's Ride which ran from his house in Lansdown Crescent up to the Tower at the top of Lansdown Hill.


The most striking feature of the tower is the topmost gilded lantern, based on the peripteral temple at Tivoli and the Tower of the Winds at Athens. From here, with a strong spyglass, Beckford could make out shipping in the Bristol Channel.

After Beckford's death on 2 May 1844 the Tower was sold to a local publican who turned it into a beer garden. Eventually it was re-purchased by Beckford's daughter, Susan Beckford, 10th Duchess of Hamilton, who gave the land around it to Walcot parish for consecration as a cemetery in 1848. This enabled Beckford's body to be returned from Bath Abbey Cemetery in Lyncombe Vale and re-buried near the Tower that he loved, as he had originally wished. His self-designed tomb - a massive sarcophagus of pink polished granite with bronze armorial plaques - stands on a hillock in the cemetery, the centre of an oval ditch. On one side is a quotation from Vathek: "Enjoying humbly the most precious gift of heaven to man - Hope"; and on another these lines from his poem, A Prayer: "Eternal Power! Grant me, through obvious clouds one transient gleam Of thy bright essence in my dying hour."
[Wikipedia]