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Beckford's Tower, originally known as Lansdown Tower, is an architectural folly built in neo-classical style on Lansdown Hill, just outside Bath, Somerset, England. ==History== Standing high, the tower was completed in 1827 for local resident William Beckford to a design by Henry Goodridge. Beckford wished that he had built the tower forty feet higher and admitted: "such as it is, it is a famous landmark for drunken farmers on their way home from market".〔Quoted in Lewis Saul Benjamin, ''The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill'' 1910:324.〕 Located at the end of pleasure gardens called ''Beckford's Ride'' which ran from his house in Lansdown Crescent up to the tower at the top of Lansdown Hill, Beckford used the tower as both a library and a retreat. He also made it his habit to ride up to the tower to view the progress of gardens and works then walk down to breakfast. Beckford's own choice of the best of works of art, ''virtu'', books and prints as well as the rich furnishings from Fonthill Abbey, which he had sold in 1822, were rehoused in his double adjoining houses in Lansdown Crescent, Bath and at the tower. One long narrow room was fitted out as an "oratory", where the paintings were all of devotional subjects and a marble ''Virgin and Child'' stood bathed in light from a hidden skylight. The most striking feature of the tower is the topmost gilded lantern (or belvedere), based on the peripteral temple at Tivoli and the Tower of the Winds at Athens. From here, with a strong spyglass, Beckford could make out shipping in the Bristol Channel.〔Benjamin 1910:324.〕 After Beckford's death on 2 May 1844 the Tower was sold to a local publican who turned it into a beer garden. Eventually it was re-purchased by Beckford's daughter, Susan Beckford, 10th Duchess of Hamilton, who gave the surrounding land to Walcot parish for consecration as a cemetery in 1848. This enabled the return of Beckford's body from Bath Abbey Cemetery in Lyncombe Vale for reburial near the tower as per his original wishes. His self-designed tomb — a massive sarcophagus of pink polished granite with bronze armorial plaques - stands on a hillock in the cemetery at the centre of an oval ditch. On one side is a quotation from his own Gothic novel ''Vathek'': "Enjoying humbly the most precious gift of heaven to man — Hope"; and on another these lines from his poem, ''A Prayer'': "Eternal Power! Grant me, through obvious clouds one transient gleam Of thy bright essence in my dying hour." The cemetery was declared redundant and sold in 1971, with the then rector of Lansdown remarking that the tower was of little architectural interest. The tower was restored in 1995. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Beckford's Tower」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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