Britain's best architectural follies

Wentworth, South Yorkshire

The Needle’s Eye, Listed Grade II

Around 1746, the Needle’s Eye, a slender pyramid about 45ft high was built with a tall ogee arch and a flamboyant urn on top. The most memorable factor behind this folly, one of the finest in Britain, is the legend of how it came to be built. The story runs that, one night, the inebriated Earl Fitzwilliam accepted a wager that he could not “drive a carriage through the eye of a needle”. The following morning, sober, he realised the difficulty of completing the challenge so, in an expensive solution, he constructed a narrow arch just wide enough to allow a coach through and called it “The Needle’s Eye”. It is not known if the legend is true. There is evidence of that suggests the building was used for execution by firing squad or target practice, as one side bears several distinct musket-ball marks.