Harden Grange Folly (aka St David’s Ruin) – Bradford, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 – September 2020

🏚️ The Ruin, as it is called on the earliest OS maps, was built by Benjamin Ferrand of St Ives Estate and is inscribed with his initials and the year 1796. Also known as Ferrand’s Folly, or Harden Grange Folly, there is no explanation for why it later became known as St David’s Ruin. It was built as an eye-catcher on an outcrop of rock high up above the valley of the Harden Beck.

The Ferrand family had two properties: St Ives, a house below Harden, and Harden Grange, an estate higher up across the valley, although confusingly they exchanged names in the middle of the 19th century. Benjamin Ferrand died in 1803, and the folly was rarely used or maintained thereafter.

In around 1850, little known Yorkshire poet Robert Carrick Wildon wrote his poem ‘Lines suggested while sitting at the Ruins’ during a visit to Harden Grange Folly:
‘The fast lock’d tower where ivy loves to creep,
Seems like the remains of some old Castle Keep’.

The folly is now engulfed in woodland; but whilst it has lost its role as a distant object it is now very romantically situated in a small glade amongst pines.

🕵🏻‍♂️ I definitely have a thing for mysterious ruins hidden in the woods!

This one took a fair bit of treking through dense woodland before I finally stumbled across what I’d been searching for after spotting it through the trees.

I was immediately angered by the fact that the historic ruin has been caked in graffiti, which really does ruin the ambiance of the whole setting, unfortunately.

I feel that this place, if cleaned up, could be absolutely magical!