Benjamin Flounders

Benjamin Flounders (17 June 1768 – 19 April 1846) was a prominent English Quaker with business interests in key new industries and developments at the time of the Mid-Industrial Revolution, such as The (of which he was a founding Director) and new canals in his native North-East England; he operated his own family businesses very successfully with large interests in timber for shipbuilding (at the time of the War with France), also owning two linen mills and large estates in places as diverse as Egham, Surrey and Glasgow. He was it seems, for all of his life, a hard working, astute and forward thinking man of independent means. He was born at Crathorne in 1768, and educated at Ackworth School, Leeds.

His best-known achievement, ironically, was the building of a folly tower, the eponymous Flounder's Folly in South Shropshire near Craven Arms and prominent on the skyline on Callow Hill, the highest point of famous Wenlock Edge. The folly commands extensive views over the surrounding Stretton Hills, Wenlock Edge, the Long Mynd and Clee Hills and even further afield to the Brecon Beacons, Radnor Hills, Malvern Hills and Black Mountains, Wales. The folly was built to celebrate his attaining 70 years, his threescore years and ten, to commemorate his lifelong endeavours and a life well spent and to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of his daughter Mary and the coming of age of his neighbour and associate in Shropshire, Lord Clive.

Flounder's life was touched by tragedy with the loss of his first wife Mary Walker (daughter of a Quaker shipbuilder) while giving birth to a premature baby in 1801. They had only married two years previously. Benjamin was 34.

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