Folly and wisdom

With a hernia operation behind him and a hip job pending, Alan Bennett, now 77, was still in good form when he came to Yorkshire to celebrate the reunification of a quaint old pile.

It’s called The Folly at Settle and as he mooches about inside every sentence is peppered by a witticism, a wry observation, an amused brightening of the eyes or a bemused twist to the mouth.

Behind the amiable and familiar public persona of the man lies the shrewd and watchful presence of the writer for whom everything seen and heard is potential material. Through decades of polite eavesdropping, he has harvested phrases and fragments that reveal the foibles and quirkiness of human nature.

There ought to be good material in here if only because from an architectural point of view the Folly is quirkiness embodied. The building is a remarkable survival from 350 years ago and all of it is now being opened to the public for the first time. It has long been a favourite of Alan Bennett because he is the president of the trust which owns and governs it – and its members were here to celebrate the fact that it now owns the entire property.

“I am just brought in for ceremonial occasions,” Bennett offers modestly, sitting in one of the many inglenook arches, with a cup of tea and a biscuit, awaiting the invited guests, the friends of the Folly. He is wearing his summer-weight clothes. His familiar beige raincoat is pegged with dozens more waterproofs on a rack which is too small for a wet July day.

Home for Alan Bennett is Primrose Hill in north London. But for decades his routine has been to escape from the metropolis to a beck-side weekend retreat a few miles from Settle.

This is the house where his parents moved in 1966. His father was in the butchery department at Armley Lodge Road Co-operative, Leeds – “right in the middle of the asbestosis area,” adds the son. His parents bought the Dales cottage for their retirement. “They wanted a garden, which they’d not had in Leeds.”

He tries to visit a couple of times a month and explains that his work schedule is the reason for his rare public appearances. “If you are writing, then you don’t circulate – at least, I don’t.” The fact that he isn’t in the middle of a project just now does not make him any more inclined to put himself about.

He admits to having “no new work I can put a name on at the moment... things go through your mind... ideas come out of nowhere really”.

He does not use email and can’t remember the number of his mobile phone – he carries one in case he needs it when travelling by train to events or home to Yorkshire.

He famously left Leeds for Oxford where he took a first-class degree in history and hooked up with a generation of university wits who elevated by the new “satire boom” became household names, .

His play Forty Years On in 1968 and others for television in the 1970s and 1980s, and his Talking Heads TV monologues made him a national favourite, a title which has since mutated into national treasure. He resists the pull of stardom partly through his weekends in a remote bit of Yorkshire where he indulge two of his favourite rural pastimes, mooching around traditional shops and old buildings.

His return to Yorkshire coincided with a new interest in a disappearing architectural heritage. He signed up as a founder member of the Settle and District Civic Society. This became the North Craven Heritage Trust, which includes the North Craven Building Preservation Trust.

The trust’s heart is the Folly in Settle, built by a lawyer, Richard Preston, in the late 17th century. The landed Dawson family, which would, in time, produce a famous editor of The Times, bought the Folly in 1703 and owned it for nearly 300 years.

The last family member to live there was Philip Dawson, an engaging, philosophical bachelor with a love for old cars, who, like many gentlemen of private means, sold property off over the years to provide money to finance the life of a gentleman. Thus went the Folly into a variety of new hands. One owner split it up. The Trust bought one bit 10 years ago. Now it has the other half.

Alan Bennett recalls a Royal visit to Settle by the Duke of Gloucester when a lunch was hosted at the Folly by Philip Dawson and his sister.

“The conversation didn’t exactly flourish and in a lull I heard the sister say to one of the Royal party ‘I believe we share the same chiropodist’. I have never been able to use that line,” notes the humorist, who has, nevertheless, provided us with plenty of others to cherish.

He expands on the story, explaining how the duke was accompanied by Lord Normanby, the Lord Lieutenant of the county.

“I was astonished at the protocol.” Everything, he says, was timed to the last second – “even in Settle where time is not of the essence”. He remembers the duke as “a shy, nice man drafted in to the Royal circus. The lord lieutenant was much more daunting, about seven foot tall, in full dress uniform with a sword, striding at the head of the procession”. The unassuming duke passed by almost unnoticed.

A later visit to the Folly by Prince Charles, when he officially opened it as the Museum of North Craven Life, was much more relaxed, recalls Bennett: “He cuts through any protocol.”

Charles “faced three floors of Settle ladies – a daunting sight”, says Bennett, now in his stride. “Instead of taking the easy way out and giving a speech from the central stairs, he plunged into the crowd, accepting a Victoria sponge here, a bun there, he really worked the rooms.”

Bennett’s hip problem meant he would be unable to work the rooms on this day. So he addressed his audience from the stairs, delivering a classic monologue of witty observation.

He described the Folly as a matronly figure (laughter from the floor) and a “most distinctive if rather eccentric building” – the only Grade I Listed property in the market town. It looked as if its first owner had access to a lot of architectural books “and said, that looks nice, I think I’ll have a bit of that”. More laughter.

“Pevsner says rather unkindly that the Folly is indiscriminately eclectic,” quotes Bennett, whose preferred description is “an architectural pick and mix”.

This term is also apt for the variety of uses to which the Folly has been put in modern times – fish and chip shop, bakery, upholsterers. When Bennett came to the area in the 1960s, it was a surgery.

While its status today is protected, it lost a belvedere from its garden, knocked down in the 1960s. “That wouldn’t be allowed today,” thinks Bennett, alarmed at the way old things, old businesses, fade away.

Even so, he never expected that 10 years after getting one part of the Folly, the Trust would possess the whole building. “It is extraordinary that we have managed to do it – it makes it much more exciting and all sorts of activities possible.”

The newly acquired section has been used as a private home upstairs and a holiday let on the ground floor. In the short term, the Trust will continue to let it out. It will have a museum display (which dodges a rates burden). Beyond that the options are numerous – maybe a café to bring in money, perhaps a tourist information centre.

“It is a complicated house to understand,” admits John Miller, chief executive of the Heritage Trust for the North-West.

Alan Bennett sounds a final note. “With a proper programme of events, it will contribute to the prosperity of Settle”, and he offers a comparison with the way the development of Salts Mill transformed Saltaire.

He finished off his day at the Folly with what he bluntly calls The Pitch. With its various activities at The Folly, the Trust needs £625,000 to repay the loans for the purchase of the two parts of the building, plus another million to provide income from an endowment to keep the place running. It does not receive grants and is run by volunteers.

Why ‘The Folly’? There is no certain answer. One story says Richard Preston bankrupted himself building the house and never completed it. More likely it acquired the name because after 1708 or so, it was never used for the purpose for which it was built – an imposing gentleman’s house.

The Folly is open daily except Monday and Wednesday (small admission fee) and the current exhibition is on the house itself. 015242 51388 and www.ncbpt.org.uk