Deep in the woods sits this octagonal folly – with a real surprise inside. The ceiling and walls of the main room are festooned with shells, while in the basement is a cold plunge pool.

This very clever scale model of a French chateau sits on a hill above the River Trent in the middle of the Lincolnshire countryside.

A fine, two-storey Jacobean porch salvaged from a great house once beloved of the poet and playwright John Dryden but now lost.

A Georgian folly within an outstanding Picturesque garden, the Ruin was built in about 1766. On the edge of a steep wooded gorge, it was one of several buildings scattered across the gardens.

This simple and evocative cottage, from around 1840, was built to serve one of the monumental pumping engines that sprang up as the Steam Age took on the challenge of draining the Fenland.

This eighteenth-century Gothic summerhouse sits beside the River Esk near Carlisle. Remote and peaceful, the three large windows in the main room give striking views over the river.

Mill House dates from 1700 and is mainly built of stone with a thatched and slated roof. No. 1 is the slightly larger of two cottages and has a wide fireplace in the sitting room.

45a Cloth Fair is a fine Georgian house close to Smithfield Market.  It is an oasis of relative calm in central London.

The Carpenter's Shop sits in Coombe, a hamlet at the forgotten junction of two wooded valleys in North Cornwall and just half a mile from the sea at Duckpool.

A cosy timber building in the atmospheric hamlet of Coombe, Chapel Cottage arrived in Coombe in about 1860 on wheels. Enjoy fine views over idyllic orchards that lead down to a stream.

This 18th-century tower gives striking views of the historic market town of Richmond. Inside, three single octagonal rooms are decorated in an elaborate cocktail of classical and Gothic styles.

Freston Tower is a six-storey Tudor folly that looks out over the River Orwell. There is a single room on each floor with the sitting room at the top to take advantage of the unrivalled views.

The surviving cross-wing of a late-medieval timber-framed hall-house in a peaceful woodland clearing in the Kent Weald.

This 18th-century cottage was attached to one of Wales's shrines of Nonconformity, the Maesyronnen Chapel. It sits on a high shelf above the Wye looking out across the Black Mountains.

Villa dei Vescovi is a Renaissance villa nestled in the vineyards and orchards of the Euganean Hills. One of two rooftop apartments, with views of the elegant orchards.