Welkin's Folly represents something of a lost episode in Northwich and Horsingdon's history. Samuel Welkin was an entrepreneur, Member of Parliament, and Theosophist who, in the late 1890s, devised a scheme - under the advisement of his close friend James Boreham - to build an iron lattice structure whose height was intended to exceed that of the Eiffel Tower, at the then-largely rural region of Northwich Park. Boreham additionally agreed to partially underwrite the project with the proviso that the structure incorporate certain design features to his specification - features which, somewhat remarkably, Boreham had derived from the plans for some kind of transmitter produced (at Boreham's behest) by none other than Nikola Tesla.
Welkin died in 1901 when only the base of the tower had been completed, after which his heirs refused to continue financing the costly build. Whilst possessing considerable wealth, James Boreham was unable to support the project alone, and failed to secure the additional investment required to complete the undertaking. The base of the tower was eventually demolished in 1907 to faciltate the further urban development of the region.
The foundations of the tower were, however, found to harbour perplexing designs and glyphs of presumed occult provenance, but were nonetheless left intact and used much later as the foundations for Northwich Park Hospital - no doubt partially explaining why that particular building seems beset by many uncanny and praeternatural events.
During his time in Horsingdon, Roland Franklyn apparently managed to unearth a significant amount of additional information regarding the tower's development and purpose. Whilst Franklyn never revealed the exact nature of his findings, he does note in one of his letters that, had the tower ever been completed, it would have come to represent 'a dire threat to the continued safety and sanity of humanity and, indeed, to the very existence of the cosmos of which we form the least, most insignificant part.'
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