Barwick Park boasts four follies. Bought by South Somerset District Council for a nominal ã5 when the estate was sold in the early 1990s, these extraordinary follies are something of a mystery. Locals say they were built to give the estate labourers work during a time of depression during the 1820s. They were possibly commissioned by George Messiter of Barwick to mark the park boundaries at the four cardinal points: Jack the Treacle Eater (a stone arch topped by a round tower) to the east,[6] the Fish Tower in the north,[7] Messiter's Cone (also known as the Rose Tower), which is 75 feet (23 m) high,[8] at the west[9] end and the Needle to the south.[10] However, paintings of Barwick House in the 1780s, forty years earlier, include two of the follies.
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