The Volta Tower was built in 1865 by William Harcourt Isham Mackworth-Dolben of Finedon Hall.
William Mackworth (1806—72), a younger son of Sir Digby Mackworth, the 3rd Baronet, had taken the additional surname Dolben after he married Frances, the heiress of Sir John English Dolben, the 4th Baronet.
Mackworth-Dolben built the tower to commemorate the death of his eldest son, Lieutenant Commander William Digby Dolben, who had drowned off the west coast of Africa on 1 September 1863, aged 24.
William, serving on HMS Investigator, drowned crossing the bar of Lagos[1] when the gig, a four-oar whaler was swamped.
[2][3] His younger brother, the poet Digby Mackworth Dolben, drowned aged nineteen in 1867.