Fonthill Abbey

For the folly in Somerset, see Beckford's Tower.
View of the west and north fronts from John Rutter's Delineations of Fonthill (1823)
Cross section of the Abbey (Rutter, 1823)
The Abbey's entrance hall (Rutter, 1823)

Fonthill Abbey—also known as Beckford's Folly—was a large Gothic Revival country house built between 1796 and 1813 at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt.[1][2]

It was built near the site of the Palladian house, later known as Fonthill Splendens, which had been constructed by 1770 by his father William Beckford.[3] This, in turn, had replaced the Elizabethan house that Beckford the Elder had purchased in 1744 and which had been destroyed by fire in 1755. The abbey's main tower collapsed several times, lastly in 1825 damaging the western wing. The abbey was later almost completely demolished.

  1. ^ For a short, comprehensive historical account see Wilton-Ely, J. (1980). "The Genesis and Evolution of Fonthill Abbey". Architectural History. 23: 40–51. doi:10.2307/1568421. JSTOR 1568421. S2CID 195035413.
  2. ^ For more in-depth accounts see Brockman, H. A. N., (1956), The Caliph of Fonthill, London: Werner Laurie, or Fothergill, B. (1979), Beckford of Fonthill, London: Faber and Faber)
  3. ^ Dakers, Caroline, ed. (2018). Fonthill Recovered – A cultural history. London: UCL Press. pp. All Chap 4, 'The Beckford Era', pp. 59–93.