Broadway Tower is built of limestone ashlar and is three storeys high, with three round corner turrets and battlements.[1] It stands above the village of Broadway on Broadway Hill, the second-highest point of the Cotswolds, at an elevation of 1,024 feet (312 m).[2][3] The tower itself is 65 feet (20 m) tall. Although a folly, it is a functional building with interior rooms.[3]
The tower is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. It is now the centre of Broadway Tower Country Park, which has exhibitions open to the public at a fee, as well as a gift shop and restaurant.[3]
History
The 'Saxon' tower was the brainchild of Capability Brown and designed by James Wyatt in 1794[4][5] in the form of a castle, and built for Barbara, Countess of Coventry in 1798–1799. Broadway Hill was a beacon hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered whether a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester—about 22 miles (35 km) away—and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. Indeed, the tower was clearly visible.
Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.
In the late 1950s, an underground Royal Observer Corps monitoring post was built nearby. It was decommissioned in 1991, but has been restored and is now one of the few such Cold War monitoring facilities in England still extant and accessible to visitors.[8]
^Dated drawings in the estate office at Croome Court, noted by Howard Colvin (1995). A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (3rd ed.). Yale University Press.
