discoverbritainmag.com 57DISCOVER LONDONARTCOLLECTION/TRAVELIBUK/KILIANO’SULLIVAN/VIEWPICTURESLTD/ALAMYH
orace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, was a
man whose extraordinary dreams found
expression both on the page and in his
extraordinary home. “Imagination was
given to man to compensate him for what he isn’t,” he
once wrote. “A sense of humour was provided to console
him for what he is.” By his own logic, then, his richness
of imagination must have compensated for a near-total
absence of character. His letters, which number some 7,000
and chronicle the Georgian era with more colour than
any of other correspondent of that period, beg to differ.
A writer, art historian, modish man-about-town, Whig
politician and collector, Walpole’s most celebrated literary
creation was The Castle of Otranto, his gothic 1764 novel
based on a nightmare he once had at his Strawberry Hill
House. It is said to be the first English language example
of a horror story and responsible for spawning
a whole literary genre that would take in the likes of
Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and George du Maurier.
Trailblazing firsts seem to echo down the generations
of the Walpole family. Horace was the youngest son ofBritain’s inaugural Prime Minister, Robert Walpole.
It was, perhaps then, natural that Horace should enter
politics, becoming MP for two “rotten boroughs”:
Callington in Cornwall, a place he never visited, and
Castle Rising in Norfolk. In 1757, following the death
of his uncle Horatio, Walpole became MP for King’s
Lynn for the next 11 years and it was during this time
that he penned The Castle of Otranto, a novel he claimed
was “an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance,
the ancient and the modern.”
Yet it is as the creative mastermind of Strawberry
Hill, his second home in the then-fashionable London
suburb of Twickenham, that Walpole is best remembered.
This was a bricks-and-mortar extension of his obsession
with the medieval gothic and the second home aspect
is important. Walpole had a classical residence in town,
allowing Strawberry Hill to become his plaything to
which none of the usual rules applied.
Strawberry Hill was originally a modest William-and-
Mary house, a name given to a decorative style of
architecture during the Protestant couple’s joint reign
from 1689 to 1702. Its size, though vast to modern
sensibilities, was considered trifling, allowing him to
extend and play out his every fantasy.
He wrote: “As my castle is so diminutive, I give myself
a Burlington air and say that as Chiswick is a model of
Grecian architecture, Strawberry Hill is to be so of
Gothic.” (The Burlington to whom he referred was Lord
Burlington, the architect who pioneered the Neo-Palladian
style with Chiswick House.) The house didn’t stay “small”
for long; Walpole soon doubled its size, adding towers,
turrets and battlements. He decorated the interiors with
grand fireplaces, gilded ceilings and biblical scenes.
Strawberry Hill was, and remains, a fantasy. A man
possessed of great self-knowledge, Walpole pinpointed
the moment his love affair with all things gothic began:
with his first sight of King’s College, Cambridge, during
his time an undergraduate there. “Art and Palladio had
not reached the land nor methodised the Vandal builder’s
hand,” he marvelled. And indeed, for anyone who has
ever set foot inside an Oxbridge college, it stands to
reason that Walpole’s mock-castle confection should
feature a faux baronial hall, complete with coats of arms
and images of supposed ancestors dating back to the
crusaders. While Walpole was not without a distinguished
lineage, claiming, through his mother, to descend from
the early Welsh king, Cadwallader, the idea triggered a
particular interest in relics and curios beyond those of
his own family. Strawberry Hill became a repository,
and Walpole collected assiduously, from James I’s gloves
to Cardinal Wolseley’s hat. Oliver Cromwell’s nightcap,
alas, remained ever a stranger to Strawberry Hill,
after Walpole was outbid for it.
But for everything that did make it into this suburban
Georgian gothic medieval fantasy, there is a handy guide
in the form of Walpole’s A Description of the Villa,
published in 1774, and printed at Strawberry Hill’s
own printing press. It is an invaluable document, not least
because only some of his enormous collection survives
following a 32-day sale of much of the contents in 1842. ➤Clockwise from this
image: Strawberry Hill’s
library; the white gothic
exterior; an ornate door
handle; Horace Walpolediscoverbritainmag.com 57DISCOVER LONDONART COLLECTION/TRAVELIBUK/KILIAN O’SULLIVAN/VIEW PICTURES LTD/ALAMY
H
orace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, was a
man whose extraordinary dreams found
expression both on the page and in his
extraordinary home. “Imagination was
given to man to compensate him for what he isn’t,” he
once wrote. “A sense of humour was provided to console
him for what he is.” By his own logic, then, his richness
of imagination must have compensated for a near-total
absence of character. His letters, which number some 7,000
and chronicle the Georgian era with more colour than
any of other correspondent of that period, beg to differ.
A writer, art historian, modish man-about-town, Whig
politician and collector, Walpole’s most celebrated literary
creation was The Castle of Otranto, his gothic 1764 novel
based on a nightmare he once had at his Strawberry Hill
House. It is said to be the first English language example
of a horror story and responsible for spawning
a whole literary genre that would take in the likes of
Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and George du Maurier.
Trailblazing firsts seem to echo down the generations
of the Walpole family. Horace was the youngest son ofBritain’s inaugural Prime Minister, Robert Walpole.
It was, perhaps then, natural that Horace should enter
politics, becoming MP for two “rotten boroughs”:
Callington in Cornwall, a place he never visited, and
Castle Rising in Norfolk. In 1757, following the death
of his uncle Horatio, Walpole became MP for King’s
Lynn for the next 11 years and it was during this time
that he penned The Castle of Otranto, a novel he claimed
was “an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance,
the ancient and the modern.”
Yet it is as the creative mastermind of Strawberry
Hill, his second home in the then-fashionable London
suburb of Twickenham, that Walpole is best remembered.
This was a bricks-and-mortar extension of his obsession
with the medieval gothic and the second home aspect
is important. Walpole had a classical residence in town,
allowing Strawberry Hill to become his plaything to
which none of the usual rules applied.
Strawberry Hill was originally a modest William-and-
Mary house, a name given to a decorative style of
architecture during the Protestant couple’s joint reign
from 1689 to 1702. Its size, though vast to modern
sensibilities, was considered trifling, allowing him to
extend and play out his every fantasy.
He wrote: “As my castle is so diminutive, I give myself
a Burlington air and say that as Chiswick is a model of
Grecian architecture, Strawberry Hill is to be so of
Gothic.” (The Burlington to whom he referred was Lord
Burlington, the architect who pioneered the Neo-Palladian
style with Chiswick House.) The house didn’t stay “small”
for long; Walpole soon doubled its size, adding towers,
turrets and battlements. He decorated the interiors with
grand fireplaces, gilded ceilings and biblical scenes.
Strawberry Hill was, and remains, a fantasy. A man
possessed of great self-knowledge, Walpole pinpointed
the moment his love affair with all things gothic began:
with his first sight of King’s College, Cambridge, during
his time an undergraduate there. “Art and Palladio had
not reached the land nor methodised the Vandal builder’s
hand,” he marvelled. And indeed, for anyone who has
ever set foot inside an Oxbridge college, it stands to
reason that Walpole’s mock-castle confection should
feature a faux baronial hall, complete with coats of arms
and images of supposed ancestors dating back to the
crusaders. While Walpole was not without a distinguished
lineage, claiming, through his mother, to descend from
the early Welsh king, Cadwallader, the idea triggered a
particular interest in relics and curios beyond those of
his own family. Strawberry Hill became a repository,
and Walpole collected assiduously, from James I’s gloves
to Cardinal Wolseley’s hat. Oliver Cromwell’s nightcap,
alas, remained ever a stranger to Strawberry Hill,
after Walpole was outbid for it.
But for everything that did make it into this suburban
Georgian gothic medieval fantasy, there is a handy guide
in the form of Walpole’sA Description of the Villa,
published in 1774, and printed at Strawberry Hill’s
own printing press. It is an invaluable document, not least
because only some of his enormous collection survives
following a 32-day sale of much of the contents in 1842.➤Clockwise from this
image: Strawberry Hill’s
library; the white gothic
exterior; an ornate door
handle; Horace Walpole