The Folly Fellowship is a not for profit organisation set up in 1988 as a pressure group to protect, preserve and promote awareness of Britain’s follies, grottoes and garden buildings. It organises trips throughout the year to follies and holds an annual garden party at a follied garden where the highlight is the cutting of a cake formed in the shape of one of the follies in the garden. Members also receive an annual Journal, three Magazines a year and a monthly e-Bulletin, each giving information about follies in different depths. Folly Fellowship members include architects, people who live in follies, people who build follies and other interested persons.
The Folly Fellowship has recorded around 1,800 follies and grottoes. It maintains a small library of books and papers, a slide collection, and a collection of measured surveys of many follies. The Folly Fellowship claims it is impossible to clearly define the line between architectural extravagance and "true folly". The group states that usually a builder does not intend to craft a folly, but that this is not always true. For example, Lord Berner commented of his folly at Faringdon (Oxford): "The great point of this tower, is that it will be entirely useless."
The Fellowship is regarded as an authority on follies. They are also the caretakers of some notable follies.
Famous quotes containing the words folly and/or fellowship:
“Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek,
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow’s foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)