| This 140
foot, 6 story tower was created by Humphrey Stuart in the 1700's.
It is a triangular tower of 4
floors with a further two hexagonal shaped floors on top. There is said
to be a fireplace about half way up, some say on each floor. The tower
is now hollow all its wooden floors having gone.
It was at one point in very bad
condition. At that time you could look straight up through to the sky,
but was bought by a mobile phone company, who have externally restored
it and put some aerials on the top, although most people don't spot
them.
It is said he created this when he got
old and could no longer follow the hunt, so that he could watch them.
Some accounts say it was deer hunting that he watched.
Given the slit windows on each floor,
its possible that deer were driven past and the tower used as a high
vantage point to shoot at them. Deer hunters today often use high
chairs.
Taylor's 1765 map of Dorset describes
it as an 'Observatory',
Horton Tower will be familiar to many
as the location for the cock-fighting scene in the 1966 film of Thomas
Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd". There is a legend of a "Grey
Lady" at nearby Horton Hollow and so I used this wonderful backdrop to
weave a story about lovers who, through injustice, became separated -
yet they believed that somehow the Grey Lady could re-unite them again. |
