The Folly, Settle

I went to Settle recently, to see an exhibition in The Folly. It's a wonderful old building, dating back to the 1670s. Originally built as a home and offices for wealthy Settle lawyer and landowner Richard Preston, it has a chequered history. When it was sold to the Dawsons in around 1702, after Richard's death, they leased The Folly to a succession of tenants and its uses included a farmhouse, bakery, warehouse, furniture shop, refreshment rooms, fish & chip shop, bank, salvage business and antique shop. Nineteenth-century census records show that The Folly was occupied by two or three different families and their lodgers. In 1871, there were 21 people living in the house. Recently, it has been restored and the whole building brought back into use as a museum (with a nice café).  

You initially enter the hall, a grand room that would have been the main reception room for Richard Preston's visitors and clients. It has beams, panelling and a massive fireplace, with unusual stones forming the arch - called, apparently 'joggled voussoirs'. 

A magnificent oak staircase connects this room to the rest of the house. It has clearly been bashed about a bit over the years. There's evidence of woodworm and its timbers are twisted. The rounded finials on the newel posts looked to me like two people hugging! 

Upstairs the light through the mullioned windows was casting bright bands across the polished wood floor. 

The exhibitions change from time to time, but there are displays describing some of Settle's history, with some interesting local artefacts and furniture. There is an oak seat made in the workshop of Robert 'Mouseman' Thompson, so named because of his trademark mice carved into every piece.