Folly In Grounds Of Beane River View (Beane River View Not Included)

This building is a folly located in the grounds of Beane River View, constructed around 1848. It is made of yellow stock brick with stone and artificial stone dressings and is designed in a Neo-Romanesque style, resembling an ornamental ruin. The structure features a three-storey circular tower topped with a machicolated design and a projecting Lombard frieze. It has slit windows with artificial stone heads, quoins, and sills, and includes buttresses that give the appearance of 'ruined' walls.

The ground floor showcases a semicircular-headed Norman style doorway, which is adorned with cushion capitals on colonnettes and a rope-moulded head. To the west, there is a single-storey extension made of rubble and artificial stone, featuring an external staircase leading to the first floor. This staircase runs over an elaborate Norman style semicircular archway that has triple colonnette reveals, cushion capitals, a moulded impost band, and decorative bands including twine and ball, dog tooth, and bird beak moulding below the outer drip mould.

Historically, this folly was built in the extended garden area of No. 2 North Road, which was acquired by Thomas Smith in the 1840s. This area included five acres of picturesque gardens and the island between the river and the Sele Mill stream. After 1945, ownership of the property was divided, and the folly is now situated within the grounds of a recently developed sheltered housing and nursing home for the elderly.