Halifax can boast the best folly in the county, one of the finest in the whole country: Wainhouse Tower, also known as Wainhouse's Folly, The Tower of Spite or the Octagon Tower.

John Edward Wainhouse (1817-1883) was someone whose preoccupations resemble those of R. H. Watt in Knutsford, Cheshire. Both started their building activities late in life, both built a remarkable factory tower (although the Wainhouse one stands supreme) and both threw some quaintly decorated cottages into the bargain.

It all started with the Smoke Abatement Act of 1870. Wainhouse owned, together with a large fortune from an inheritance, the Washer Lane Dye Works in southern Halifax, which was run by a manager. After the Act came into force, it became necessary to build a tall chimney to carry the smoke out of the valley in which the works were built.

In 1871 plans were drawn up by the architect Isaac Booth for a chimney that would be fed with the smoke from the factory by means of a pipeline. In 1874 Wainhouse sold the works to his manager, who refused to bear the tremendous costs incurred in finishing the chimney. Wainhouse decided to keep it himself and convert it into a tower which he proposed to use as 'a general astronomical and physical observatory'.

The tower was finally completed in 1875 by the architect Richard Swarbrick Dugdale at a total cost of ?14,000, and in such an elaborate style that not even a pocket telescope could have been fitted in between the orgy of finials, pillars, buttresses and balustrades. The very slender tower rises 275 feet high, its shaft decorated with gothicisms and the ornate top in a perverted but well-proportioned neo-renaissance style. The result of the four years' work is a belvedere tower by a medieval watch tower out of Chateau Chambord.

Wainhouse's Tower is naturally linked with its owner's feud with Sir Harry Edwards, a parvenu industrialist, Freemason and Justice of the Peace. From 1873 onwards one small incident quickly provoked another and within a few months the two men were at each other's throats. After Edwards misused his position as a JP things went from bad to worse and Wainhouse became afflicted, like so many Victorians, with the pamphleteering mania. From 1876 till he died a flood of pamphlets was penned by Wainhouse, not resulting in the anticipated responses from Edwards as the JP seems to have been a weak correspondent.

It has been suggested that Wainhouse built the tower so he could always keep an eye of Edwards' activities. Apparently Edwards abhorred chimneys, so Wainhouse's somewhat noticeable structure may well have been embellished to such an extent simply to goad - but he also abhorred white cattle or white linen hanging out to dry (strange man) and there is no record of Wainhouse taunting him in this manner.

Wherever he could, Wainhouse put up mottoes referring to his row with Edwards. West Air, his eccentric house - no two windows are the same - was built in 1877, also by Dugdale, and has, amongst others, an inscription quoting the Aeneid: 'Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos' - 'Spare the lowly and make war upon the proud'. Wainhouse not only spared the lowly, he took to embellishing their humble abodes. In Scarr Bottom a row of cottages were fitted out with mottoes and ornate gothic porches. The houses in Wainhouse Terrace had their balconies renewed and supported by a colonnade like some Mediterranean stoa. The balcony can be reached by two bridges projecting from squat, machicolated towers - the houses have now been demolished, but the gallery remains.

From the original draft of Follies by Gwyn Headley & Wim Meulenkamp, published by Jonathan Cape in 1986 and 1990, now out of print

Its height is 253 feet from the doorway to the top of the cupola, and at the back the building drops away a further 24 feet to the level of the sloping ground below. Anyone who climbs to the top of the tower will find there are 403 steps.

Several times a year the tower is open to members of the public. For a modest fee you can attempt to climb the staircase. It may be hard work, but the view from the top is well worth the effort!  The tower is open most/all Bank Holidays for certain.