It is so seldom that we see snow in our part of the UK that I couldn't let the opportunity of showing the folly on a snowy Sunday morning in April pass.

The image above is of our beautiful mimosa laden with snow

We have finally completed the folly. The inner courtyard has been paved and the outer courtyard has a small pathway that fades into a gravelled area.

My wife 'V' has spent the last year making a mosaic in the form of a section of the floor of a Roman villa and this we have laid in a corner of the inner courtyard.

We finished by building a low broken-down section of wall that defines the entrance to the outer courtyard and forms a barrier to keep the gravel in.

The back wall of the folly is South facing and has the sun on it much of the day. Consequently it is a reall sun trap and we have started the planting with a vine by the arch and a climbing rose by the entrance to the tower.

With the building finished I shall be getting back to the metal bashing!

It's officially Spring - the clocks have gone forward an hour and it's British Summer Time. We wanted to get the building finished before the weather improved and the garden started bursting into life. So we've really pushed on over the last few days. The newel post, banister rail and spindles are in place at the top of the staircase -


- and the tower has been built up to it's finished height.

Now we need to tidy things up and lay the paving in the courtyard ready for the planting for which the folly will act as a focal point.

March 2007 and we have started work building up the tower. The first thing to do was build the wooden viewing platform at the top of the staircase. The image here shows the finished platform with a short wooden block acting as a temporary newel post.

The top of the tower is to have an uneven 'tumbledown' rim and building it is very much a case of making it up as we go along. We are almost finished now - we need to build up high enough in front of the platform to incorporate a banister rail and spindles.

We've been so busy over the last couple of months that there has been no time to start the latest proposed armour project. Things are getting back to a normal routine now and the new armour construction is under way. As with all the other armours, images depicting the construction will appear in a section on the site as it progresses - so check out the 'Project 4' pages from time to time.

This is to be a late 16th. C armour and is to some extent a re-working of a previous armour. Only the cuirass and tassets of the original armour remain - all the rest will be new construction.

The cuirass for this armour

30th. September 2006

Work on the latest project, a 15th. Century cap-à-pie armour, started in May 2005 and, as with the other projects, pages chronicling the construction were posted as it progressed. This armour was the most detailed of the three and has taken the longest time to make. The armour was finally completed in January 2006 and images of the finished suit are posted on the last page of this project.

We started work on a building project constructing a 'folly' in the form of a small ruined castle early in the year and this has occupied most of my spare time. Consequently there have been no more armour projects until now. Below is an image of the folly at this point in its construction.

I am just about to start on the next armour project which will be a re-working of an older armour I made some years ago. Some of the original pieces, such as the cuirass and tassets, will be retained but much of the rest will be re-made. This is the armour before renovation and I'll be posting progress images as usual in a separate section on the site.