Furniture from The Folly

When we lived at The Folly in Settle we got a grip of the north end's ground floor and furnished it as a self contained flat cum holiday let.   We wanted to furnish it functionally but in keeping with the scale of things down there - big.   We were steered towards the firm of Simply Dutch Ltd at Leeming Bar who could supply large pieces of furniture more suited to castles than cottages.

They had a pair of cupboards that would suit The Folly perfectly and we bought them.   We borrowed a cow trailer (yes, really) from Clapham farmer Ernest Coultherd and brought them back to Settle where we knew that access through the front door would be tricky.   Even stripping the large cupboard of everything possible it was a squeeze, with just a millimetre or so to spare.   We actually 'lubricated' the dog-leg entry walls with strong polythene sheeting.   Once inside it was reassembled, possibly to remain there for the rest of time.   Here are those pieces once installed at The Folly:

 click to enlarge

The scale of things at The Folly can be seen in this picture of the main lounge.   Just look at the size of the fireplace.   The large cupboard can just be seen on the right, hiding behind the vase of flowers:

When we sold our half of The Folly we included these magnificent solid oak items as they were so much at home where they were and we were most unlikely ever to live anywhere they could possibly fit in.   How wrong we were as it turned out.

There is no design guide on how to furnish a water tower but these two pieces would have been ideal so we lived to regret leaving them at The Folly.

The new owners of The Folly operated the downstairs suite as a holiday let for some years but recently decided to convert it to an upmarket cafeteria so they put the entire contents on sale - including the cupboards.   Everything sold, except the cupboards which had a limited market because of their sheer size and weight.

A chance meeting with the chairman of the Folly charitable Trust revealed that the cupboards needed to go - and soon.   If necessary they would have to be broken up to make space for ongoing building work to progress.

So, "Would we like the cupboards?"   You bet!

Well, they are now ours again and seem so very much at home in the water tower:

The small one is in the side entrance lobby:

 And the large one is in the main room:

Moving the large one was a doddle for the new trailer but once at the water tower there were two flights of stairs to negotiate - achieved with the aid of scaffolding board skids, a winch, and robust help from neighbours Christine and Bob Purchas: