Volta Tower - History

History

Mackworth-Dolben built the tower to commemorate the death of his eldest son, William Digby, who drowned at sea on 1 September 1863. Digby, a naval officer serving on the Volta drowned in the mouth of the River Niger. His younger brother, the poet Digby Mackworth Dolben drowned in 1867.

The tower was circular and about 100 feet high. A gabled extension of one of the two floors had been added in keeping. The tower stood far back with a long driveway in front, along Station Road in Finedon. Not much changed in the surroundings of the Volta Tower apart from Finedon's new cemetery was built alongside the Volta Tower in 1892.

Read more about this topic:  Volta Tower

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
    —Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)