Mick Aston on the folly-builders

One fascinating aspect of the Whitestaunton excavations is the art of folly building. What's that all about and how did it start? Mick Aston has a few ideas:

'I think it's the most interesting thing about this site, to be honest,' he says. 'The whole ethos of folly building comes from a classical education. The Victorian gentry in particular learnt Latin and Greek, many of them went on the Grand Tour, which was principally to Italy, and they were basically soaked in classical culture. When they visited Italy they were just as impressed with the great gardens and waterfalls and architecture as they were with their own history back home. This idealised romantic landscape really appears to have struck a chord with the Victorians who tried to recreate it back here.'

'Though the folly at Whitestaunton is archaeology in itself, it was built on top of real Roman remains using recycled Roman material from a variety of sites. This gave Mick some extra thinking to do. The main job for Phil and Roman specialist David Neal has been to try to sort out what's real Roman stuff and what isn't. Though this has made the phasing of the structure a bit harder to work out, it isn't actually that difficult. The Victorian mortar is quite different from the Roman material and the folly structure isn't as well built as the original Roman building. We just had to be careful when digging it, which was hard in such wet and muddy conditions. It's been like an unpicking exercise.'

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