Folly At Hare Hill Park

335/0/10052 'Folly' at Hare Hill Park 03-FEB-03

GV II

Folly or grotto with pool, approximately 10 metres south-west of Hare Hills House. Circa 1900 or earlier. Gritstone boulders and rubble laid in irregular courses, cast-iron water wheel. A low single-room building set on a low mound, the building approximately 5 metres square with rounded corners and a flat 'roof'. Now approximately 2.5 metres high but probably originally taller. The most prominent feature is the small water wheel approximately 1 metre in diameter set into the southern side, and turned by a flow of water from a small pipe and stone channel on the roof. The water fell into a rectangular pool below, outside the building. In the north wall of the structure there is a low blocked doorway, left, with a deeply-set small square window to its right. On the west side, facing the drive, there is a deep niche approximately 45 cms high, and on the east side, facing the house, a shallow curved recess with a stone bench, the boulders forming the outer corners partly tumbled. An ornamental garden building in the style of an eighteenth century grotto. The room within may be a pumping house for the water supply to the wheel, and the proximity to the house suggests that this was intended as an eye-catcher for those within. The miniature size of the wheel and the doorway suggests that it may also have been intended as an educational novelty for the public park laid out in 1900-1902. Hare Hills House was the property of the Newall family and was leased to the newly-established Littleborough Urban District Council in 1900, and the public park laid out soon after.