Saturday, December 17, 2011

The swindler, the cyanide pill and the underwater ballroom

Via Jason, Belle Grove

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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