Bettison's Dinner Time Tower
Information
Mr W. Bettison of Hornsea was a gentleman who liked to arrive home after a hard day at the Victorian office, and find his dinner on the table. In an age before mobile phones, or the marvellous internet on which I believe you are reading these words now, this was not such an easy task.
So Mr W. Bettison, possibly after one too many dinner-time fiascos, decided on drastic measures to solve the Problem of The Unready Supper; and so it came to pass in 1844 that Mr. W Bettison built Bettison’s Tower. This fifty-foot folly was a look-out tower in which a well-placed servant could watch for his master’s carriage and send word to the kitchen that the his lordship’s steak and chips was to be prepared with good haste.
Many of the buildings I recount in this tour are of little practical use, some indeed are clearly the work of the mentally unsound. But on occasional nights when my good lady wife has served up another cold steak and kidney pudding - or on those other evenings when, upon coming in late, I find my dinner in the labrador - I sometimes wonder whether Mr W. Bettison of Hornsea wasn’t in fact amongst the cleverest of men, and his Dinner Time Tower a most enviable and wonderful invention.
Location
Bettison's Dinner Time Tower can be seen in Hornsea on Willow Drive.