Wellington Monument, follies and folly towers at follytowers.com (original) (raw)
W e l l i n g t o n
M o n u m e n tBackground
If you head down to Cornwall on the M5, shortly after passing Taunton, you will notice the Wellington Monument on your left hand side.
An alternative name for this rather odd looking structure could I suppose be Arthur's Monument, but fortunately Arthur Wellesley ended up with the title of the Duke of Wellington, which certainly has more panaché about it.After Lieutenant-General Arthur Wellesley gave the French a thrashing at Talavera in the Peninsula War, it was decided to make him a Duke in recognition of his services, and therefore he had to select a title.
Wellesley, who was abroad at the time, gave this task to his brother, who duly selected Wellington from the name of the town in Somerset, - it is situated just to the North of the monument. However despite buying land in the area with the £100,000 that came with the Dukedom, it is thought that the Duke only felt obliged to visited the town once, in 1819.The Monument
The monument is a curious triangular affair sat on a large plinth [ also triangular], there is a spiral staircase inside to a small viewing chamber at the top, which consists of three small windows.
It's building history is rather complicated, as it was initially started in 1817, to a design by Thomas Lee of nearby Barnstable. It was proposed to be 95 foot tall with a statue of the Duke at the top. The curious shaped plinth by the way, was originally to have incorporated three small dwellings for habitation by three ex-soldiers. After only a year or so though, the monument was only 50 foot tall, and money was starting to run out [ originally £1500 had been raised ].In 1820 a further appeal was started but raising extra money proved more difficult this time, so it ended up at only 120 foot tall, and plans for the statue and the old soldiers homes were then dropped.
It stayed like this for some 32 years, including being struck by lightning in the 1840's, so consequentially it was in a poor state of repair when the Duke finally died in 1852.Part of the reason for it's decline may have been the Duke's un-popularity in some area's of the country during the 1830's, after his opposition to Parliamentary reform. Although this part of the country was then, and still is, safe conservative ground, a general feeling against the Duke was evident in the non-land owning population.
Further Building Work
After the Duke died it was decided to repair the monument, but by then it was in a poor state of repair, so a lot of the existing monument had to be re-built under the supervision of a Mr. C. Giles a local Taunton architect.
This time it rose to 170 feet, with the addition of that small viewing chamber mentioned above, being added to the top.The story did not end there though, for nearly 40 years later in 1890, further restoration work was needed, and the monument finally ended at 175 feet tall in 1892, after a total building period spanning 75 years.
Visiting:-
It is now owned by the National Trust, and it is possible to climb it on certain days.
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