As regular readers of this blog will know, I am interested in the value of architecture and public art to the historian, but I also have a special place reserved in my imagination for that curious outcrop of eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture – the folly. Conforming to no especial architectural style, these were often buildings that had no discernible use and were erected either for curiosity value, to display their creator’s wealth, or merely as Georgian eye candy. Many have been lost over the years, but a goodly number still remain, mostly crumbling away in the estates of country houses and paying tribute to the strength of the ‘polite’ style in Hanoverian Britain. If a chance ever presents itself to visit a folly, it is rare for me to pass it up.

So, when it transpired that a generally forgotten (and determinedly locked-up) nineteenth century example – Tarner Folly – was being opened up for the Brighton Festival, I had to take a look. Not only that, but it was also to house an innovative piece of public art called ‘Path of the Echo’, which endeavoured to exploit the unique acoustics of the folly’s inside chamber.

Tarner Folly is a small, flint-studded tower, half concealed by foliage, that sits in the corner of a children’s play area, sandwiched between Kemptown and Hanover on the east side of Brighton. It has not been opened for quite some years, which is a shame because such things get forgotten all too easily. There is a question as to whether it can genuinely be described as a folly, since it appears to have been built as a lookout tower and local myths abound that it concealed the entrance to a tunnel that led to the shore (perhaps suggestive of a smuggling operation). Frankly, I’d say that its correct categorisation is really more a matter for the folly anorak, if such people exist.

Tarner Folly.

However, an enterprising artist had managed to persuade the city’s council to open up the folly for the festival in order to house an experiment that could well be described as an attempt to forge a symbiotic relationship between public art and architectural history. Inside, I discovered, sat a rather ingenious art installation. The artist, Mark Mitchell (no relation), demonstrated that by pulling various ropes and cranks, the apparatus would play a variety of string and percussive sounds, which would echo around the chamber. The installation was almost entirely constructed from ‘found material’ – a admirable recycling effort – although I was told that, in fact, Mark had liberated his flat-mate’s wok for part of the mechanism!

The 'Path of the Echo' installation.

As an exercise attempting to draw in two distinct audiences – the historical community and the artistic one – I thought that the installation worked marvellously well. The trouble with such experiments, though, is that they can be somewhat short-lived if funds of some description are not forthcoming. Thankfully, Mark and the Friends of Tarner (a local historical society) have come together in an attempt to keep the tower open. The idea is to curate the folly as a space for other exhibits, which might be generated by other artists through workshops with local community groups and schools. To bring the tower up to standards of public safety, however, requires funds in the region of £30,000, for which a bid to the lottery heritage fund is being prepared. I can only hope that these efforts to rehabilitate the folly as a valuable piece of history and a unique art-space are successful, since even in straitened times society needs its circuses as well as its bread. Besides, there seems something curiously apt about melding together public art and social history in this fashion. The folly builders of the Georgian age had a far more limited audience in mind, but they too were often inspired to construct their idiosyncratic monuments by a desire to create a dramatic talking-point, an aspiration that seems wholly reflected in contemporary public art.

Taking it further

If the above blog has caught your imagination, you may also find the following resources from The Open University interesting:

High Street History

Explore the hidden corners of your high street and see how history is buried in the everyday environment with our interactive high street history feature.

Learning Space: Brighton Pavilion

On the other hand, if you’re interested in the history of Brighton, then the OU offers you this free Open Learn resource on the Brighton Pavilion – which perhaps could even be called a folly itself!

Related courses from The Open University:

Heritage, whose heritage?

Who decides what should be preserved from the past as our heritage? Who is this heritage for and how should it be presented and explained? How can I engage actively with my heritage and have an impact on it? This course endeavours to answer these questions and to engage with current debates on the preservation of the past.

Art of the twentieth century

If you are drawn to art history more generally, this wide-ranging course discusses developments in the recent past and includes study of all the major twentieth century artistic movements.

About the author

Dr Stuart Mitchell has spent seventeen years teaching history in higher education - the last fifteen of which have been with the Open University, amongst other institutions. Currently, he is working on the new history MA, and tutors on Exploring History: Medieval to Modern (A200) and Total War and Social Change (AA312). He also serves as the university's academic consultant on the BBC television programme, Timewatch. His first book, The Brief and Turbulent Life of Modernising Conservatism, was published in 2006.

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Heritage. The word might conjure up images of plougmen working their way across fields before sunset, or dusty boxes of old artefacts, but that presents a very selective idea about what is valuable from the past. As a nation, we're made up of more than the sort of images that decorate teatowels in National Trust shops - we're as much made by the tenements of Glasgow, or the passions of The Suffragettes, or even the wild birds in our hedgerows.

Heritage is different things to different people, and as BBC Two embarks on its quest to explore how we're Saving Britain's Past, we want to hear from you about what you value. What would you save, to show the world of the future what your heritage is?

Tell us what matters to you by putting your heritage onto our map.

Saving Britain's Past is on BBC2 from Monday 24th August 2009 at 7.30pm. It will be available for a limited period on iPlayer after transmission.

We often hear about the multitude of environmental challenges facing the world: be it water, energy and/or biodiversity crises. But it is not only the earth’s physical and biological resources that are at peril, but also cultural diversity.

Kaapse Klopse Carnival in Cape Town, South Africa. Behind the diversity of performers is Table Mountain, part of the Cape floristic Region (one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots).
[image by Yoseph Araya © copyright Yoseph Araya]

Simply defined culture could mean the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only in respect of economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life. [UNESCO defintion]

The disappearance of cultural diversity can at times be even worse than that of other biological diversity. For example, Professor Sutherland in his paper, Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species, notes: "Over the past 500 years, about 4.5% of the total number of described languages have disappeared, compared with 1.3% of birds and 1.9% of mammals."

Often the factors that determine the diversity of life and culture are very much similar. For example forest cover, tropical climates, heterogeneous topography and prevalence of pathogens are known to be associated with higher cultural diversity.

This emphasises the need to address the world’s heritage of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity together - as biocultural diversity.

Why?

There are many compelling scientific reasons for conservation of biocultural diversity – some of which relate to ecosystem of goods and services vital for our very existence on earth.

Moreover, extinction is forever, as the epitaph at the death of the very last Hawaiian snail in captivity sombrely reminds:

Here lies Partulina turgida: 1.5 million years BC to January 1996”

Lastly, on a more personal level, the earth is a very complex and fascinating place to live in and appreciate. The loss of a species, or the loss of human language diminishes the beauty of the world simply by removing a little of that complexity).

What can be done?

We should combine resources from all walks of life and work together to save our biocultural diversity. There are many approaches that could be tried.

Bringing awareness, documenting and sharing diversity knowledge go a long way in alerting experts as well as the general public.

Another approach is to explore new ways of linking cultural and biological diversity conservation schemes. There is currently growing interest as such e.g. religious communities are increasingly being involved into conservation activities and activism.

See, for example, BBC News reports on Faith leaders urging climate curbs or Beyond Belief: Linking faith and conservation from the WWF.

Watch: International Union for Conservation of Nature: Live Culture - An expert speaks

Not least is getting involved when possible or otherwise supporting organizations working towards this aim. Some notable examples include Terralingua and Global Diversity Fund.

Last word:

The well-versed advertisement for Patek Philippe, the Swiss watch company goes: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation.”

Taking this analogue, it would be a great shame (if not a crime) to bequeath an impoverished earth to our future generations.

Find out more

Saving Britain’s Past

BBC News: In defence of 'lost' languages

Terralingua: Index of Biocultural Diversity

Ecological influences on human behavioural diversity: A review of recent findings
Daniel Nettle, writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2009

Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species
W J Sutherland, writing in Nature 423

Introducing Environment
Alice Peasgood and Mark Goodwin, Open University/Oxford University

OpenLearn: Diversity and difference in communication - free learning materials from the Open University.

About the author

Dr Yoseph Araya is a plant ecologist and associate lecturer at the Open University. He works on the biology and conservation of South African fynbos vegetation. Environmental education and the role of the public in research is one of his key interests.

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