Perrott's Folly
Perrott's Folly is a remarkable Grade II* listed tower standing in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England, rising seven storeys and approximately 29 metres into the skyline. It is one of the most distinctive and eccentric landmarks in the city, a narrow, castellated Gothic tower that seems wildly out of place amid the surrounding Victorian and Edwardian terraced streets. The tower attracts visitors for its quirky architectural character, its connections to literary legend, and its status as one of the finest surviving examples of the British folly tradition. It forms, together with the nearby Victorian Waterworks tower on Waterworks Road, an evocative pair of towers that have long captured the imaginations of Birmingham residents and visitors alike.
The tower was built in 1758 by John Perrott, a local landowner, though the precise reason for its construction remains a subject of much speculation. The most romantic theory holds that Perrott built it so that he could gaze out across the countryside to a distant churchyard where his wife was buried, though this story, like many folly legends, may owe more to local sentiment than to historical record. Another tradition suggests he simply wanted a structure from which to survey his estate, or that it served as a hunting tower. Whatever the true motivation, it exemplifies the Georgian fashion for building dramatic, purposeless architectural statements on one's own land, and it has endured long after the estate it once overlooked has disappeared entirely into the urban fabric of Birmingham.
The tower's most celebrated association is with J.R.R. Tolkien, who grew up in nearby Edgbaston and would have been intimately familiar with the two towers of the area — Perrott's Folly and the Victorian Waterworks tower. Scholars and enthusiasts have long suggested that these two brooding structures, standing sentinel over the Birmingham skyline, may have inspired the Two Towers of his legendarium. Tolkien himself never confirmed this explicitly, but the geographical coincidence is striking: his childhood home on Duchess Road was within easy walking distance, and he spent formative years in this neighbourhood. The suggestion has become one of the most cherished pieces of Birmingham literary mythology.
In physical terms, Perrott's Folly is a slender, battlemented tower of red brick with stone detailing, tapering slightly as it rises through its seven floors. Its profile is Gothic and slightly forbidding, with narrow windows and a crenellated parapet that gives it the air of a miniature castle keep plucked out of a medieval landscape. The interior contains a spiral staircase and modest rooms at each level. Up close, the brickwork shows its centuries of weathering, and the tower has a slightly weathered, timeworn grandeur. When wind moves through the upper battlements, the structure gives off the quiet, slightly eerie atmosphere common to solitary towers, and on overcast days it can feel distinctly atmospheric.
The surrounding area is the inner suburb of Edgbaston, an affluent and leafy part of Birmingham characterised by substantial Victorian villas, the extensive grounds of Edgbaston Cricket Ground, the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and the University of Birmingham campus. The streets immediately around the folly are residential and relatively quiet, lined with terraced and semi-detached housing. The juxtaposition of the ancient-looking tower amid 19th-century streetscapes makes it feel all the more surreal and surprising when encountered on foot. The canal network of Birmingham is also within reach, adding another layer of historical texture to the wider area.
The tower has undergone restoration work and has periodically been opened to the public by volunteer groups and heritage organisations, though public opening times have historically been limited and often linked to events such as Heritage Open Days, which take place across England in September each year. Visitors planning a trip specifically to go inside are advised to check current opening arrangements in advance, as access has varied over the years. The exterior can be admired at any time from the public pavement, and the short walk from the Waterworks tower makes for a pleasant heritage stroll through an overlooked corner of Birmingham's architectural history.
One of the more unusual footnotes in the tower's history is that it was used for meteorological observations in the 19th century, when it briefly served a practical scientific function entirely at odds with its original ornamental purpose. This transformation from aristocratic whim to instrument of empirical science neatly captures something of the Victorian spirit that came to surround it. Today the tower is a cherished local landmark, celebrated both for its own eccentric beauty and for the web of stories — literary, romantic, scientific — that have accumulated around it over more than two and a half centuries.