The Folly

The Folly is a picturesque ruin located in Saffron Walden, dating from the early 19th century. It features a red brick core and is faced with flint cobble and composition dressings that exhibit a moulded irregularity. The structure includes a round tower set into the northern side of a mound, with a wall projecting on the southwest side. It stands approximately 6.2 meters high and has two storeys.

From the northeast elevation, the tower on the left has a central doorway with a two-centre arch, framed in a square with a keystone lintel that features a bearded face. There are two lancet windows on either side of the doorway. Above the doorway, on the first floor, is a two-centre arch-headed window with a label. To the southwest, the wall is lower than the tower and features a pair of buttresses and two blind windows at ground level; one of these has a label and consists of three lights with intersecting tracery, while the other is less complete. Above the doorway, there is a fragment of embattled moulded coping.

Inside the tower, the ground floor has a composition ring base with a central depression and remains of wooden posts that once formed a colonnade around the ring. The walls were originally covered with sheets of bark, although this is now incomplete. Most of the joists to the first floor are missing, but the first-floor wall retains some remains of shell and pebble decoration.