The origins of The Folly, near
Newmarket, lie in its magnificent windmill. Restored in
the 1980s, it is dated 1764 but was moved in 1846 to make
way for a railway line. Disinclined to walk a further
half mile or so to work, its owner decided to build a
new home for himself in its grounds. The mill must have
been a successful one, for the miller was well travelled
and modelled his new property on the tented pavilions
and colonial houses he had seen in the Far East and in
India. Thus each of the main rooms is almost a separate
structure, complete with its own elegantly concavely sloping
roof, tiled with slates cut by hand into oval shapes,
giving a similar effect to that seen on some eastern suits
of medieval armour. With tall windows and a terrace with
an open aspect to his mill, the miller was clearly looking
forward to a touch of colonial grandeur in deepest Suffolk.
Almost 120 years later, the interior designer Dudley Poplak,
best known for his work on Highgrove House and the apartment
of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace,
saw The Folly and identified with the miller’s penchant
for the exotic. He bought the house, made it his weekend
residence and lavished it with oriental detail. Walls
and fittings were covered with paintings of exotic birds,
de Gournay hand-painted
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Chinese wallpaper decorated the drawing room and Carrara
marble was laid in the hall. Poplak’s weekend guests
(whose small suite he placed on the other side of the
drawing room to his “to avoid bumping into them on
their way to and from the bathroom”) must have felt
as if their journey to the countryside had taken them
much further than they had imagined.
Today, a sizable annexe, as large again as The Folly,
sits beside it, as do a set of fine stables, complete
with groom accommodation. The place as a whole –
Folly, Annexe, Stables, Mill and their surrounding six
acres – work beautifully together in a way of which
the original miller would doubtless have approved. Sadly
for him, he is unlikely ever to have enjoyed his own vision.
Just before the mill was moved he was tried for embezzling
the sum of £1 7s 7d. His sentence was transportation
to northern Australia for seven years.
The Folly is currently being offered by the Newmarket
office at a guide price of £1.95 million. |
