In May 1747 Horace
Walpole took a lease on a small 17th-century house that was "little
more than a cottage", with 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land from a
Mrs. Chenevix. Horace was under familial and political pressure to
establish a country seat, especially a family castle, which was a
fashionable practice during the period. The following year he
purchased the house which the original owner, a coachman, had named
"Chopped Straw Hall". This was intolerable to Walpole, "his
residence ought, he thought, to possess some distinctive appellation;
of a very different character..." Finding an old lease that
described his land as "Strawberry Hill Shot", Walpole
adopted this new name for his soon to be "elegant villa".
In stages, Walpole
rebuilt the house to his own specifications, giving it a Gothic style
and expanding the property to 46 acres (190,000 m2) over the years.
As Rosemary Hill notes, "Strawberry Hill was the first house
without any existing medieval fabric to be [re]built from scratch in
the Gothic style and the first to be based on actual historic
examples, rather than an extrapolation of the Gothic vocabulary first
developed by William Kent. As such it has a claim to be the starting
point of the Gothic Revival."
Walpole and two
friends, including the connoisseur and amateur architect, John Chute
(1701–1776), and draughtsman and designer, Richard Bentley
(1708–1782), called themselves a "Committee of Taste" or
"Strawberry Committee"[which would modify the architecture
of the building. Bentley left the group abruptly after an argument in
1761. Chute had an "eclectic but rather dry style" and was
in charge of designing most of the exterior of the house and some of
the interior. To Walpole, he was an "oracle of taste".
Walpole often disagreed with Bentley on some of his wayward schemes,
but admired his talent for illustration.
William Robinson of
the Royal Office of Works contributed professional experience in
overseeing construction. They looked at many examples of architecture
in England and in other countries, adapting such works as the chapel
at Westminster Abbey built by Henry VII for inspiration for the fan
vaulting of the gallery, without any pretence at scholarship.
Chimney-pieces were improvised from engravings of tombs at
Westminster and Canterbury and Gothic stone fretwork blind details
were reproduced by painted wallpapers, while in the Round Tower added
in 1771, the chimney-piece was based on the tomb of Edward the
Confessor "improved by Mr. Adam".
He incorporated many
of the exterior details of cathedrals into the interior of the house.
Externally there seemed to be two predominant styles 'mixed'; a style
based on castles with turrets and battlements, and a style based on
Gothic cathedrals with arched windows and stained glass.
The building evolved
similarly to how a medieval cathedral often evolved over time, with
no fixed plan from the beginning. Indeed, Michael Snodin argues, "the
most striking external feature of Strawberry Hill was its irregular
plan and broken picturesque silhouette". Walpole added new
features over a thirty-year period, as he saw fit.
The first stage to
make, in Walpole's words, a 'little Gothic castle' began in 1749 and
was complete by 1753, a second stage began in 1760, and there were
other modifications such as work on the great north bedchamber in
1772, and the "Beauclerk Tower" of the third phase of
alterations, completed to designs of a professional architect, James
Essex, in 1776. The total cost came to about £20,720.
Walpole's 'little
Gothic castle' has significance as one of the most influential
individual buildings of such Rococo "Gothick" architecture
which prefigured the later developments of the nineteenth century
Gothic revival, and for increasing the use of Gothic designs for
houses. This style has variously been described as Georgian Gothic,
Strawberry Hill Gothic, or Georgian Rococo.
Walpole's eccentric
and unique style on the inside rooms of Strawberry Hill complemented
the Gothic exterior. The house is described by Walpole as "the
scene that inspired, the author of The Castle of Otranto",
though Michael Snodin has observed: "it is an interesting
comment on 18th-century sensibility that the melancholy interiors of
The Castle of Otranto were suggested by the light, elegant, even
whimsical rooms at Strawberry Hill".
The Library
The interiors of
Walpole's "little play-thing house" were intended to be
"settings of Gothic 'gloomth' for Walpole's collection".
His collection of curious, singular, antiquarian objects was well
publicized; Walpole himself published two editions of A Description
of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill to make the
"world aware of the extent of his collection".
Speaking on
Walpole's collection, Clive Wainwright states that Walpole's
collection "constituted an essential part of the interiors of
his house". The character of the rooms at Strawberry Hill was
"created and dictated" by Walpole's taste for
antiquarianism. Though even without the collection present, the house
"retains a fairy-tale quality".
Horace Walpole's
Strawberry Hill Collection of several thousand items can still be
viewed today. The Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University now has a
database which "encompasses the entire range of art and
artifacts from Walpole's collections, including all items whose
location is currently known and those as yet untraced but known
through a variety of historical records".
The collections
For Walpole,
physical objects were doorways to the past. Most of the things at
Strawberry Hill told at least one story. Walpole put great emphasis
on the provenance of the objects he assembled and delighted in being
able to add his name to the list of famous collectors reaching back
to the 16th century.
Walpole's collection
of ceramics was the largest and most varied in England. It ranged
from ancient Greek pots and masterpieces of Renaissance maiolica and
earthenware through to modern porcelain.
Walpole believed
that his collection of enamels and miniatures was the 'largest and
finest in any country'. By his death in 1797, he owned around 130
miniatures, painted in watercolour on vellum or ivory, and nearly 40
enamels. Walpole's account of miniatures and enamels in the Anecdotes
of Painting established their reputation as a serious art form.
From the 1770s,
Strawberry Hill became famous for 'Works of Genius … by Persons of
Rank and Gentlemen not artists'. Most of these amateur artists were
women, chief among them the painter and designer Lady Diana Beauclerk
and the sculptor Anne Damer.
Horace Walpole's
Anecdotes of Painting in England, published by the Strawberry Hill
Press between 1762 and 1780, was the first history of English art.
Walpole modelled it on Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and it
still forms the basis of English art history. In its complete form
the Anecdotes included sections on sculptors, architects and
engravers, and an 'Essay on Modern Gardening'.
This content was
originally written in association with the exhibition 'Horace Walpole
& Strawberry Hill', on display at the V&A South Kensington
between 6 March and 4 July 2010.
The exhibition was
organised by the V&A, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University,
and the Yale Center for British Art.
To explore more of
Walpole's original collection, visit the Lewis Walpole Library
database of objects in their collection.
Following extensive
restoration by the Strawberry Hill Trust, the house re-opened in
2010. To find out more, visit the Friends of Strawberry Hill website.
Strawberry
Hill, Horace Walpole's fantasy castle, to open its doors again
Private
rooms in the pile that inspired the first Gothic novel in 1764, and a
whole style of architecture, have always been off-limits to the
public – until now
Strawberry Hill will
reopen to the public on 1 March.
Maev Kennedy
Wednesday 25
February 2015 17.10 GMT
The collector,
scholar and legendary gossip Horace Walpole woke one morning in June
1764 in the extraordinary fantasy home he had created near the
Thames, west of London.
Strawberry Hill had
– and now has again after years of careful restoration – roof,
battlement and mantelpieces bristling with spires and gargoyles,
stairs and bookcases copied from the tombs of medieval kings. Its
passageways and library ceilings were embellished with imagined
ancestors, and windows glitter with stained glass collected by the
crate load from across Europe.
On that summer
morning he had experienced a dream so vivid that he sat down in his
study and began to write a book which changed the course of literary
history. The Castle of Otranto is widely regarded as the first Gothic
novel, and, with its knights, villains, wronged maidens, haunted
corridors and things that go bump in the night, is the spiritual
godfather of Frankenstein and Dracula, the creaking floorboards of
Edgar Allan Poe and the shifting stairs and walking portraits of
Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. When the house reopens to the public on 1
March, visitors will be invited to sit down in Walpole’s study and
read the book for themselves.
Many of the newly
restored rooms have never been open to the public, including his
bedroom and the room in which he died. Although Walpole entertained
lavishly and also admitted paying visitors – sometimes retreating
to a cottage across the road when overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of
his public, and once evicted from his own breakfast room when a
particularly grand visitor called unexpectedly – his own private
rooms were always off-limits. They have now been dazzlingly restored
through detective work involving scraps of original paint colour and
shreds of wallpaper found on the edges of doors and fireplaces or
hidden in the depths of cupboards.
Walpole himself
prophesied that “my buildings, like my writings are of paper, and
will blow away ten years after I am dead”, but, more than two
centuries later, his house has survived – though by 2004 it
appeared on the World Monument Fund’s list of the most important
and endangered historic buildings in the world. It is now now leased
and run by the Strawberry Hill trust and has been restored over the
past decade, room by painstaking room, using grants from the Heritage
Lottery Fund, charities and public donations.
His house was a
spectacular conjuring trick, as entertaining as its owner. It was a
miniature medieval castle wrapped around a modest little country
house, with papier-mache, wood and plaster moulded and painted to
look like ancient carved stone.
Despite its many
eccentricities, including a royal bedchamber where nobody ever slept,
and hallways that were deliberately kept dark to create an atmosphere
of medieval “gloomth” (Walpole’s word), the house has proved as
influential as his book, setting the trend for Gothic revival
architecture and giving the name Strawberry Hill still used for the
style.
The décor of his
own apartments cost a fortune, as has their recreation. Visitors will
find his own rooms covered in brilliantly coloured wallpaper as
startlingly heavily patterned as any Victorian parlour. Recreating
them meant having the paper hand-made in northern Ireland, hand-dyed
in the United States, and hand-flocked in England. In the grandest
bedroom, a team of needleworkers is hand-quilting bed covers for the
recreation of the grandest bed, inherited by Walpole from the father
he worshipped – Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime
minister whose town house was No 10 Downing Street.
Michael Snodin,
chair of the trust, steps out on the landing directly outside
Walpole’s bedroom door. Its features include a recreated medieval
painting of jousting knights, and a wall decoration of a pyramid of
arms and armour including a modern replica of a Scottish broadsword,
and a genuine antique Indian shield covered with rhinoceros hide. In
Walpole’s day there was also a full suit of heavily decorated and
gilded armour, which he believed had once belonged to a French king,
standing in an arched niche – the first recorded use of that cliché
of every haunted house movie.
“Walpole said his
dream was of a mailed hand on the uppermost bannister of a great
staircase,” Snodin says, “and this is undoubtedly the scene of
his dream. Walpole created this house, and this house created that
book.”
Walpole invited the
public to share the house he described as his “little plaything …
the prettiest bauble you ever saw”, but the rules were strict: a
surviving admission ticket warns it “will admit four persons and no
more … NB The House and Garden are never shown in an Evening; and
Persons are desired not to bring Children with them.”
Strawberry Hill House: blast from a Gothic past
Strawberry
Hill, Horace Walpole's wondrous house, has reopened. Nigel Richardson
explores it.
By Nigel
Richardson8:00AM BST 09 Oct 2010
Like a heroine in a
Gothic novel, a piece of architectural exotica in south-west London
is in the process of awakening from a long slumber.
Strawberry Hill
House in Twickenham is the glorious figment of Horace Walpole's
imagination made manifest, and as a £9 million restoration reaches
the end of its first phase it is from this month once again greeting
visitors, as it did when Walpole lived here in the second half of the
18th century.
Last month, workmen
found a collection of visiting cards and letters that had slipped
down the back of a chimney piece in the house. They include a note
from a Mr Roffey of Kingston who "begs the favour to know if
Himself and 3 more may be permitted to see Mr Warpoles [sic] House on
next Wednesday at 12 o Clock…" He and many others, from
royalty to clerks, came to marvel at a building that Michael Snodin,
the man who has kissed Strawberry Hill back to life, describes as
pioneering.
"It was the
first building to be Gothic inside and outside, and to be a real
house," says Snodin, who is chairman of the Strawberry Hill
Trust, the body that is overseeing the restoration. "So it
launched the Gothic Revival and led to buildings such as the Houses
of Parliament."
Its other cultural
significance is that it was here, inspired by his surroundings, that
Walpole wrote what is arguably the first Gothic novel, The Castle of
Otranto, which became the progenitor of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
the works of Bram Stoker and so on.
From the moment he
moved here in 1747, Horace Walpole – politician, writer, collector
and visionary – loved the house and its locale. "Pope's ghost
is just now skimming under my window in a most poetical moonlight,"
he wrote, in reference to the poet Alexander Pope, who had died three
years before, having lived just down the road on the west bank of the
Thames.
Twickenham in the
18th century was a rural retreat for London's wealthy, fashionable
and artistic types. Walpole spent the winters in Arlington Street,
off Piccadilly, and in the summer decamped to Strawberry Hill where,
over 45 years, he created a glorious Gothic fantasy both inside and
out, calling it whimsically "the castle I am building of my
ancestors".
From the structure
of the original, conventional country house grew pinnacles, finials,
"Tudor" chimneys and "medieval" battlements,
while windows sprouted Gothic arches. The exterior was painted a
dazzling white, in keeping with the other grand houses of the Thames
Valley such as Marble Hill House, so that it looked like a piece of
confectionery.
One of the triumphs
of the restoration is that after enduring years clad in a drab
"cementitious render" Strawberry Hill is once again the
slice of wedding cake that Walpole dreamed into being.
Inside, Snodin
explains, Walpole wished to create the sense of "a picturesque
journey from dark to light", from the "gloomth" of the
castle-like entrance hall and stairway, down dark corridors, to the
dazzling brightness of the Gallery, "his great showroom",
with its ceiling of gold and white plaster and papier mâché, and
walls of red damask.
Aided by his friend
Robert Adam, Walpole used details from Gothic monuments and buildings
– a rose window from old St Paul's, the tomb of Edward the
Confessor – as inspiration for chimneypieces and ceilings, and
animated the house with his own vast collection of books, paintings,
furniture, artworks and objects.
The one aspect of
Strawberry Hill that is beyond the scope of the restoration is this
collection. Following his death in 1797, Walpole's belongings were
sold at auction in 1842 and dispersed to the four winds, though the
trust is trying to locate as many as possible with a view to
borrowing them or even buying them back.
Walpole left
Strawberry Hill to the Waldegrave family and it was sold in 1923 to
St Mary's University College, a Catholic teacher training college,
from which the Strawberry Hill Trust now leases the house. By the
turn of the 21st century it had fallen into a state of extreme
disrepair and was listed by the World Monuments Fund as one of the
world's 100 most endangered heritage sites.
Once the funds had
been raised to restore it – the chief benefactor being the Heritage
Lottery Fund, which gave £4.9 million – recreating the original
proved remarkably easy. Not only was much of the 18th-century fabric
still in place, but no house had been as extensively documented as
was Strawberry Hill in Walpole's meticulous, room-by-room description
of 1784.
The result is that
his extraordinary vision has been brought back to life (though some
rooms and the grounds await completion next year). Visiting it is
like walking through one man's imagination, which is what Snodin
means when he describes it as a "personality house".
The reactions of Mr
Roffey of Kingston, when he visited Strawberry Hill some 250 years
ago, are not recorded. But you can be sure he was no less dumbstruck
than you will be.
Strawberry Hill
basics
Strawberry Hill
House (020 8744 3124, www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk) is at 268
Waldegrave Road, London TW1 4ST, a five-minute walk from Strawberry
Hill railway station (direct trains from Waterloo). The house opened
last Saturday and will remain open until December 22,
Saturday-Wednesday, noon until 4.30pm. Admission £8 (concessions
£7), which includes audio-guide and booklet. There will be timed
entries of 20 people at a time and booking is strongly advised. It
reopens on April 2 2011.
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