Britain may play second fiddle to Italy or France when it comes to producing beautiful buildings. But when it comes to playful, quirky constructions, we are world-beaters. Britain is the global home of the folly.
And the people behind these architectural eccentricities — extravagant creations built primarily for decoration and which often appear to be something that they’re not — are frequently just as fascinating as the buildings themselves.
None more so than the man who created Witley Park in Surrey. The tale behind it involves not just a staggeringly ambitious, wildly over-the-top folly, but also a tragic Victorian morality story of speculation, corruption, disgrace and suicide.
Deep in Surrey, near Godalming, lies the village of Witley. A mile and a quarter west, in a ramshackle wood, next to a walled kitchen garden, you’ll find a holly tree wrapped around a hut with a door in it.
Go down the spiral concrete steps, and there, 40ft beneath the surface, lies a teardrop-shaped tunnel that leads to Britain’s most extraordinary folly — a ballroom, built of iron and glass, beneath a lake.
Leading off it, an aquarium-cum-smoking room was added, where guests puffed on their cigars and admired the passing carp.
Above the domed, glazed ceiling of the underwater ballroom, a yellowish natural light shines through the murky lake water. A giant statue of Neptune stands at the dome’s peak, poking above the surface, apparently walking on water.
This underwater ballroom is the last, mad, magnificent fragment of a Victorian fantasy world that made Michael Jackson’s Neverland look like a dull municipal park.
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