September 26, 2026
Follies are the awkward customers of the building survey world. They sit at the end of a wet track, half swallowed by laurel, with a staircase that leads nowhere and a parapet that has been quietly shedding stones since the 1840s. Almost by definition they are old, listed and unloved in the maintenance budget. A brisk walk-round with a notebook is not a survey. But the same ten checks, applied in the same order every time, turn a pleasant afternoon in the grounds into evidence you can defend in a report — and into a maintenance plan the owner might actually follow.
What follows is the sequence worth using on any masonry folly, from a two-metre garden hermitage to a hundred-foot tower.
The ten points at a glance
- Masonry, mortar and surface coatings
- Structural movement, settlement and iron ties
- Rooflines, copings, parapets and finials
- Vegetation, roots and organic growth
- Rainwater goods and drainage
- Ground levels, paths and retaining walls
- Ironwork, joinery and internal fabric
- Previous repairs and their side effects
- Safety, access and protected species
- Recording and evidence quality
Work through them in that order and the causes surface before the symptoms. Start at the skyline, finish at the ground, and only then write anything down as a conclusion.
Masonry: read the wall, not the surface
Tap stonework with the base of a knife or a small hammer. A dull thud where the surrounding wall rings means delamination or a hollow behind the face. Look for spalling, blown faces, salt bloom and dark damp patches that never dry. Receding mortar joints matter more than missing stones: if you can push a finger into the joint, the wall is losing its binder and water is getting into the rubble core.
Cement pointing on a lime-built folly is a common and serious problem. It is harder than the stone around it, so it concentrates moisture and frost action into the masonry, and you will often see the stone perishing in a neat band either side of the joint. Note it, photograph it, and flag it for a lime specialist rather than guessing at a mix.
Cracking needs interpreting, not just measuring. Stepped diagonal cracks through the mortar usually point to settlement or movement; long vertical cracks may be thermal or the result of a failing wall tie. Iron cramps and ties rust, expand and split the stone they were meant to hold. If cracks are active, recommend monitoring with tell-tales over a season rather than diagnosing from a single visit.
Rooflines, parapets and finials
Look up first. The skyline is the fastest diagnostic tool on the site. A ridge that sags, a parapet that bulges out of plumb, a coping stone slipped off its bed, a finial leaning like a drunk — all of these tell you about water, movement and neglect without moving a ladder.
Many follies were built as ruins, so part of the job is distinguishing designed decay from real collapse. Tooled edges, neat squared stumps and matching rubble throughout suggest deliberate ruin. Ragged breaks, fresh faces and debris cones below tell a different story. Where there is a roof, check flashing, valley gutters and any lead or copper that has been stolen. Binoculars are worth carrying. Fragile roofs, asbestos-containing sheets and rotten boarding are not places to test your balance; note the limitation in your report and recommend a specialist inspection.
Vegetation: the slow demolition crew
Ivy rarely pushes sound masonry over, but it holds damp against the wall and hides everything underneath, so you cannot survey through it. Buddleia and sycamore seed into joints and gutters; their roots widen cracks and block watercourses. Birch and rhododendron roots lift paving, heave steps and find their way into drains. Look for tendrils actually entering open joints — that is the point where a plant becomes a structural issue rather than a cosmetic one.
If growth is heavy, the sensible recommendation is clearance followed by re-inspection, with the caveat that clearing reveals as well as solves. Never suggest stripping a wall without warning the owner what might be behind it.
Rainwater goods and drainage
Water does most of the damage to follies, so give it a disproportionate share of your time. Check gutters for silt, moss and seedlings; check hopper heads for the tell-tale staining that shows they have been overflowing for years. A blocked hopper can soak a wall for a decade before anyone notices.
At ground level, look for soil or tarmac bridging the damp course, standing water after rain, green algae on the lower courses, and gullies that have not been cleared since the wall was built. Note where water will go, not just where it is now. Soakaways fail, French drains silt up, and a fallen branch in a ditch can redirect a winter's rain into a foundation.
Ironwork, joinery and internal fabric
Where a folly has interiors, the rules change. Iron railings set into stone stain and split it as they corrode. Timber lintels, door frames and window shutters harbour damp and beetle. Floors in towers are often missing or unsafe, and voids are easy to miss when the light is behind you. Record what is present, what is loose and what is simply absent.
Take one walk round for the whole picture, then a second with the checklist in hand. They are never the same survey.
Safety, access and legal loose ends
Your own safety comes before the report. Follies tend to have open wells, deep shafts, unstable staircases, steep drops and crumbling parapets with no guard rail. Work alone only where it is genuinely safe to do so, tell someone where you are, and do not climb anything you would not ask a client to climb.
Bats and nesting birds are protected in the UK, and follies are exactly the sort of quiet, dark structure they use. If you see droppings, staining or roosting animals, stop work in that area, note it and recommend an ecological survey. Where protected species, listed building consent or structural alterations are in play, the owner needs professional ecological, structural and conservation advice — your survey should point them towards it, not replace it.
Recording: making the checklist count
Photographs need scale and direction. Date everything, identify which elevation each image shows, and sketch the plan even if it is rough. Note the weather and, crucially, note what you could not inspect and why — the inside of a sealed tower, the wall behind the ivy, the roof you did not walk. Honest limitations protect the report's credibility.
Winter is the best season for this work: vegetation is down, damp is visible and water is moving. A second visit in summer will show you what the planting conceals.
Putting the checklist to use
Finish by giving the owner something actionable: a short table of findings sorted into urgent, soon and monitor, each with one clear next step. A slipped coping and a blocked hopper are cheap to fix and expensive to ignore. A leaning parapet is a barrier-and-quote job. That kind of prioritisation is what separates a useful survey from a list of things that are old.
Follies have usually survived two centuries of neglect, which means they have been quietly demonstrating what works. Read the building before you prescribe for it, keep the checklist consistent, and the report almost writes itself.
Photo: Marcos Felipe / Pexels
