The stone archway shown below is Grange Arch (also known as Creech Folly) which sits atop Ridgeway Hill, near Steeple in Dorset. The folly is essentially a stone wall inset with archways and surmounted by battlements, which was built around 1745 by the then owner of Creech Grange, Denis Bond. It is said that Bond built this folly atop the hill so he could look up upon it from the Grange, and survey the surrounding countryside from the folly. The structure was never apparently built with any practical purpose in mind other than being an eye-catcher and demonstrating Bond's not-inconsiderable wealth.
The Grange itself dates from the second half of the 1500s, when the original house was built by Sir Oliver Lawrence (1507–1559). Lawrence was an ancestor of the first American president, George Washington, and this area of Dorset has connections to the nascent United States of America. I will explore some of these connections in a later post.
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| Creech Folly. |
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| Looking from the folly down towards Creech Grange. |
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| The Grange. |
Pictures: Dorset (May 2015).
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