'A platform that dignifies the views outwards into the world': Doddington Place's elegant prospect tower

Over the course of last year, a striking new prospect tower appeared in the formal gardens of Doddington Place in Kent. As well as being a delightful new creation, this is a commemorative monument to two brothers, Henry and Christopher Oldfield, who grew up here and both died tragically young. It has been commissioned by their father, Richard Oldfield, who chose the position of the tower at the end of the main garden terrace. From there, it enjoys views both over the formal gardens and the wider landscape as it falls away towards the park. Enclosed by trees on one side, it is slightly masked from the house.

The architect of the tower, Thomas Croft of Thomas Croft Architects, has a family connection with the house, which was rebuilt in its present form after 1862 for his ancestor Sir John Frederick Croft. Sir John also commissioned Markham Nesfield to design new gardens, although it is not clear how fully his surviving plans, dated 1874, were realised. The Croft family sold the estate to Gen and Mrs Douglas Jeffreys, who, in 1909, commissioned the architect J. D. Coleridge to extend both the house and the gardens. Mrs Jeffreys was Mr Oldfield’s great-aunt.

Doddington Place’s gardens are listed Grade II and open to the public. The Oldfields’ brief was that the tower should be in stylistic contrast to the other garden buildings, but visually understated so as not to intrude too aggressively. They also wanted an easy climb for visitors to enjoy the views from the upper floor, as well as a room within the structure, so it could be used as a summerhouse.

These choices suggested a steel-frame structure on a single supporting column. An initial, rejected design was for an ‘inhabited tree’ in steel and glass.

Another element of the brief was that there should be two stairs, which agreed with the demand imposed by building regulations that there should be two means of access to the tower’s viewing platform. The result was a double-helix stair around a central volume, a design that also felicitously expresses in architecture the character of the tower as a memorial for two people. It further echoes their connection as brothers that, as completed, the two stairs rise from two circles of paving, with the central column set in the area where they overlap (Fig 1).

The central column gives the design a clear visual focus and suggests a degree of structural daring as well. It also means the tower is designed to move very slightly — and safely — in strong wind or when people walk up it.

Each of the three tiers of the structure has a different architectural character. At ground level, the impression is of a gazebo embraced by the rising stairs. On the first floor, the central volume of the tower opens out to form the summerhouse. This room is polygonal in plan and enclosed by walls of glass (Fig 2). Doors lead to it from the landings on either side. It has a matching floor and ceiling pattern of panelled oak with a central roundel, the latter forming a shallow, central pendant.

The viewing platform on the top level is open to the elements, but enclosed by a skeletal structure with a pitched crown (Fig 4). This shape was inspired by the eight-sided Tower of the Winds in Athens, Greece, built in the 1st century AD. It was first made familiar to British audiences through the engravings published by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett in The Antiquities of Athens (1762) and has been widely copied in the design of garden buildings. Rising through it is a central flagpole that continues the line of the central supporting column below.

The double-helix design means the tower reads in different ways, depending on the viewpoint. After some discussion, the decision was taken to orient it so that it appears symmetrical when viewed from along the terrace (Fig 3). This arrangement also serves to reduce its visual impact. It was with the same purpose in mind that the frame of the stair rails is infilled with a fine steel mesh rather than multiple spindles. Another point of debate was the colour of the main structural members and a two-tone scheme was considered. In the end, however, the tower was painted brick red, a colour that sits comfortably with the surrounding foliage and also references the materials of the main house.

The local authority, Swale Council, enthusiastically embraced the idea of the tower. The structural engineer was Michael Coombs, who has recently retired as a managing partner at Alan Baxter Associates, and it was manufactured by Littlehampton Welding. The whole was prefabricated and shipped to the site for erection. Now it is completed, Mr Croft sees echoes of other buildings, including the astonishing Monument to the Third International of 1919–20 designed for Petrograd (St Petersburg) by Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin. This vast and unrealised building was intended to incorporate glazed rooms that rotated at different speeds.

The new tower is a magnificent addition to what is already a delightful and varied garden. It’s also a very unusual structure in that it somehow reveals its interest more from within — when enjoyed as a point of prospect — than from without. In that regard, it inverts the usual character of a memorial.

Rather than draw the visitor in and command their attention, it offers them a platform that dignifies the views outwards into the world. At Doddington Place, that is a world well worth an easy climb.

Doddington Place is open to visitors from Easter to the end of September — see their website for more details.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.