The area through which the driveway up to the Triumphal Arch passes is parkland, and has never succumbed to the farmer’s plough. That parkland is largely free of trees away from the drive and boundaries, save for a small coppice of beech trees which surround the “Round Building”. I have used parentheses because it is a listed building and is termed a “Shelter, possibly feeding shelter for deer… ”, in the listing. I have a problem with that description as for the life of me I cannot see that to be its purpose, the four open archways all have raised stone thresholds, an unusual characteristic if it were for deer or other animals, which suggests that at some time it may have had a floor.
Today some two hundred years since its construction for Sir Thomas Gascoigne it is a relic of its original self. Originally it had a thatched roof, which was finished at the perimeter wall with a York stone slate. The walls comprised coursed local stone, constructed in the ashlar smooth faced style. It has twelve arches, four which are openings in the wall and eight which have inset stone panels, blank arches. The stones which form the arches might be termed pilasters as they are raised from the surface. The openings are opposite each other in a cross shape and between each opening are two of the blank panels. When first built, around 1805, more or less based on a design by the Doncaster architect William Lindley, it sported a central stone column and the roof structure was of a king post pattern, although no doubt modified to accommodate the circular construction. At the summit of the conical roof was a weather vane, Lindley’s drawings show a fox in full tilt as the actual directional device.
The estimates for the building, two are still in existence, are dissimilar in the description of the work to be performed, but are plainly for the same thing. They offered on a workmanship only basis from £51-10-3 to £54-12-6. [Imperial £ s d] Sir Thomas would no doubt have provided the stone, timber and roof thatch. The sad thing is, in living memory no-one has ever seen the roof, today the walls are exposed to the weather, and in January 2010 part of it collapsed, the wall and archway on the south side fell down and have never been re-instated.