Bettison's Folly is a tower in

Hornsea Hornsea is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The settlement dates to at least the early medieval period. The town was expanded in the Victorian era with the coming of the Hull and Hornsea Railway in 18 ...

East Riding of Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...

, England. Also referred to as Bettisons Tower and the Forgotten Folly, it was built some time between 1829 and 1853 by William Bettison. At the time, Bettison was a Hull-based brewer who built the folly in what was then his garden. In those days communication was by sight, so his manservant would ascend the tower at the usual time his master returned from work, see him descending Southorpe hill and run down the tower to ensure "dinner was served" as the master walked into the house. It incorporates a cranked up flagpole, initially installed to convey private messages. During the Second World War the tower was an air raid look-out point and siren (Hull was the most heavily bombed UK city after London). The siren was still in use in the late 1950s when a new siren was erected on the new fire station on Southgate. The Folly is decorated with locally made "treacle" bricks, highly fired for durability and subject to misshaping. Nowadays, Bettison's Folly is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

and stands in the middle of a new housing estate off Newbegin, the main street. It is rarely open to the public. In 2011, '' Huffington Post'' included the folly in their unordered list of the "Top 10 Pieces of Folly Architecture".

References

External links

British History: Hornsea
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BBC article on the tower
Grade II listed buildings in the East Riding of Yorkshire Towers in the East Riding of Yorkshire Folly towers in England Hornsea Towers completed in the 19th century {{Yorkshire-struct-stub