Clavell Tower
John Newth visits one of Purbeck’s iconic landmarks
Published in December ’18
This aspect, from the east, is less often seen but shows the entrance at the lowest level. Credit: Landmark Trust
In 1818, Rev. John Richards was living the quiet life of a country vicar, having the care of souls in the parishes of Church Knowle, Steeple and East Lulworth. However, the death of his brother, William, in that year meant that he found himself the owner of the Smedmore Estate at Kimmeridge. William had inherited from his uncle, George Clavell, whose family had owned Smedmore since 1420 – the estate has now not been transferred by sale for seven centuries. William changed his name to Clavell (pronounce it to rhyme with ‘gravel’, not with the stress on the second syllable), and John did the same when he inherited in his turn.
he classic view of Clavell Tower, across Kimmeridge Bay from the west. Credit: Landmark Trust
As far as we can tell, John Clavell continued to live a quiet, undemonstrative life, so it was perhaps a surprise when, to mark his 70th birthday in 1830, he decided to build a folly on Hen Cliff, overlooking Kimmeridge Bay. The 18th and early 19th centuries were the age of follies in Dorset: the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury started the trend with the Philosopher’s Tower, Denis Bond built Creech Arch (alias Bond’s Folly) in 1746, then came Horton Tower in 1750, the Moreton obelisk (1785) and Charborough Tower (1790). Unlike some of these, John Clavell’s folly had a practical use: it was a summer house and the presence of fireplaces shows that it was intended for use in the winter as well, perhaps as an observatory.
The kitchen is small but well-equipped. Credit: Landmark Trust
The architect was Robert Vining, who designed the equally idiosyncratic Spa House at Nottington, near Weymouth. He chose a mixture of styles, from the rather severe Tuscan columns at the bottom of the building to the vaguely French parapet with quatrefoil piercings at the top. The materials were all local, quarried on the estate or from the bay. In 1831, the Dorset County Chronicle described the tower as ‘as elegant a building as the county of Dorset can boast of’. It went on: ‘To celebrate its completion, the respected and worthy founder entertained the whole of the mechanics and labourers…, nearly fifty in number, to a dinner etc. in the true and genuine style of old English hospitality.’
Two years later, John Clavell became the third owner of Smedmore in a row to die without issue. He also died without leaving a will. His niece, Louisa, had married a Colonel Mansel, who rode hurriedly to Smedmore on hearing that his wife’s uncle was dying. He was greeted by John Clavell’s steward, who shouted to him from an upper window, ‘You’re too late!’ and slammed the window. It was no great surprise when, a few weeks later, the same steward ‘discovered’ a will that left everything to him. The family contested the will, the courts agreed with them and found the will to be a forgery, and Louisa entered into her rightful inheritance. But it is said that for generations, the sound of a slamming window sent a shiver down the spine of any member of the Mansel family.
The narrow wooden staircase that runs round the wall. Credit: Landmark Trust
Later in the 19th century, the tower was used as a lookout by coastguards, who secured the stays of their flagpole to four cannon from the Napoleonic Wars. The daughter of one of the Kimmeridge coastguards, Eliza Bright Nicholls, was Thomas Hardy’s first serious love, and Clavell Tower made such an impression on him that he used an illustration of it as the frontispiece to his Wessex Poems (1898). A later literary connection came when the tower was the inspiration for P D James’s 1975 novel, The Black Tower, and it was the obvious setting for the six-part TV series that was made of the novel in 1985.
The coastguards left in 1914 and the tower became derelict; a visitor in 1932 wrote, ‘The flooring of the different rooms is rotting away and one can only reach the top safely by keeping close to the walls.’ By the end of the last century, a greater concern was cliff erosion, and there was a real danger that the whole structure would fall into the sea. The owner of Smedmore, Philip Mansel, approached the Landmark Trust, the charity which preserves interesting old buildings by converting them into holiday homes. It would be one of their most ambitious conservation projects ever: actually a reconstruction, since the plan was to disassemble the building and re-erect it some 25 metres back from the cliff-edge. A generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund was the green light and the contractors, Carrek of Wells, set to work, numbering every one of the 16,272 stones as it was taken down. Their masons carved 298 new stones to replace those that had decayed or been stolen, and some details of Vining’s design were established by looking at similar features in the Spa House.
The completion of the work in 2008 was the latest chapter in the tower’s quirky history, which, along with its setting, ensures that it is the most popular of the Landmark Trust’s almost 200 properties – you will have to wait eighteen months for a vacancy.
Having waited patiently, what will you find? First, that there is no way by vehicle up the 250-odd feet of Hen Cliff. There is a choice of two routes: a set of steep steps or a longer, shallower permissive path which was the access road while the reconstruction was taking place and which becomes decidedly soggy in the winter. Heavy suitcases are out, therefore; if your idea of a holiday is lots of reading, be grateful for the invention of the Kindle.
The sitting room has no option but to be cosy, but is comfortably furnished. Credit: The Landmark Trust
You enter the tower at the semi-basement level, where there is a shower room and loo. A narrow staircase takes you up to the kitchen, which is cleverly designed to fit all the usual elements into a comparatively small, circular space. A door leads out onto the colonnade, while another staircase climbs the inside of the wall into the double and only bedroom. Another door here gives access to a balcony; like the colonnade, it runs uninterrupted round the whole building, so can truly be called a sun-trap at any time of day. The furnishings of both the bedroom and the sitting room above are necessarily minimal, but comfortable and tasteful, the walls hung with prints by Tristram Hillier.
Whatever was hung on the walls would pale into insignificance compared with the view through the windows or from the colonnade or balcony. To the south, the ever-changing sea, to the east Swyre Head and St Aldhelm’s Head, inland the fields and woods sweeping up to the ridge of Smedmore Hill, to the west Gad Cliff, Worbarrow Bay, the hills around Lulworth and on to White Nothe and Portland. Clavell Tower may be one of the best-known features of the Jurassic Coast, but it is also one of the best places from which to observe that coast in all its glory.
