Dinton Folly

En un regard

Le château en bref

Dinton Castle, also known as Dinton Folly, is a mock Gothic castle built in 1769 on a mound near Upton, beside the road from Aylesbury to Oxford. It is not a fortress: it is a garden folly designed as a picturesque eyecatcher seen from the park of Dinton Hall, for Sir John Vanhattem, who also wanted to display his collection of fossils and curiosities there. The octagonal rubble-stone building, flanked by two round towers to the east and west, has two storeys, and three in the towers. Its outer walls incorporate ammonites from the local limestone, the detail for which it is best known. Excavation of the foundations revealed an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with at least twelve skeletons. Left to decay after its patron's death in 1787, it became a roofless ruin often mistaken for a medieval remain. Listed Grade II* and on the Buildings at Risk register from 2006 to 2009, it was consolidated in 2009, then bought in 2016 by the architect Jaime Fernandez, who converted it into a home between 2016 and 2018; today it is offered as a holiday let.