Qualla: Hadlow Castle

Hadlow Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Neil Clifton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walter Barton May had a problem. His wife had left him. She had moved, by some accounts, to the next village, and he could see her new home from his estate. According to the persistent local legend, May built a tower so tall he could keep watching her even from his own grounds. The historical record is more prosaic: May was an enthusiast of the Gothic Revival who inherited a fortune and built one of the great follies of Victorian England. But the story persists because the tower invites it. It rises 175 feet over the Kentish village of Hadlow, far taller than any practical purpose justifies, an octagonal Gothic spike crowned with a 40-foot lantern. The country house it was built beside is gone - demolished in 1951. The tower, locally known as May's Folly, was restored in 2013 and is now the tallest folly in Britain.

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Image: Dr Neil Clifton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hadlow Castle: A House Called a Castle

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walter May - father of the tower's builder - commissioned the original house in the late 1780s, replacing the medieval manor house of Hadlow Court Lodge. The architect, J. Dugdale, designed it in the fashionable Strawberry Hill Gothic style pioneered by Horace Walpole - the playf...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hadlow Castle: Five Owners, One Hundred Years

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Robert Rodger, a JP and High Sheriff of Kent, bought the estate in 1865. He died in 1882, his son William Wallace Rodger-Cunliffe in 1888. In 1900 the castle was sold to Benjamin Scott Foster MacGeagh, a retired trader who also became a JP and High Sheriff of Kent and died in 190...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Hadlow Castle: The Tower After the House

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PEARroots, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hadlow Tower was already a listed building when the house came down, having been listed on 17 April 1951. Without the rest of the building to anchor it, the tower became all the more conspicuous. It is built of stuccoed brick rising in eight tall storeys to the octagonal lantern;...

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Image: PEARroots | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hadlow Castle: Saved by Compulsory Purchase

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Roots, CC BY-SA 4.0. In July 2006 Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council announced its intent to issue a compulsory purchase order to save the tower. The CPO was confirmed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in March 2008. The council planned to take possession of the tower and tran...

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Image: Michael Roots | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hadlow Castle: The Tower for Sale

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Roots, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Vivat Trust subsequently collapsed financially, and in May 2016 the tower went on the market. In 2017 it was sold to a private individual for 425,000 pounds. It was relisted in 2020 with Sotheby's International Realty at 1.475 million pounds. The exhibition centre on the grou...

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Image: Michael Roots | CC BY-SA 4.0