Resumen de Thomas Wright's designs for Gothic garden buildings
One of the most finished of Thomas Wright's sketches in the Avery Sketchbook is that for his own observatory, Westerton Tower in County Durham, close by the house at Byer's Green to which he retired in 1762. He had been preparing designs for it for many years, but it was incomplete at his death in 1786 and has never been completed to his intentions as shown in the elevation produced here, since it lacks the upper storey and battlements. This accounts for its recent description as: 'A dull, dumpy little tower...the dullest, most uninspired and uninspiring curio in the British Isles, its chief claim to the title of folly being that is has never been pulled down'. The Avery sketch makes it clear that Wright had hoped to raise it 10 ft higher than the existing structure and to crown it with bold battlements at 3 ft intervals.
