Follies were built not to shelter, store, or defend, but to ornament and intrigue, often designed to look ancient, ruined, or romantically mysterious from the moment of their construction. They were a particular enthusiasm of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when wealthy landowners across Ireland and Britain reshaped their demesnes into composed landscapes, placing eye-catchers, mock towers, and artificial ruins at carefully chosen intervals to create the impression of a scene from a painting. That a folly exists at Lowville places the estate within this broader tradition of designed landscape-making, where the grounds themselves were understood as an aesthetic project rather than simply agricultural land.