WALPOLE’S ‘ LITTLE GOTHIC CASTLE’

Influenced by his Grand Tour, Walpole "lled Strawberry Hill with echoes from his travels

At the time that Horace Walpole bought Strawberry Hill, it was little more than a cottage set in five acres next to the Thames, named ‘Chopped Straw Hall’.

Between 1747, when Walpole bought his ‘rural bijoux’ (his words), and its completion in 1776, it became a wedding cake of gothic revival architecture with a further 41 acres. He renamed it ‘Strawberry Hill’ – a title he had spotted on property deeds – and referred to it as his ‘little gothic castle’.

Though not Britain’s first house to have gothic revival elements, it was the most complete and the first to directly reference the artistry of its antecedents. The balustrade of the staircase outside Walpole’s bedroom (which features in

The Castle of Otranto), for example, was copied from Rouen Cathedral.

‘For Walpole, gothic was decoration, not structure, and the results were dramatic and theatrical but superficial,’ says Antiques Roadshow specialist Paul Atterbury. ‘He was pursuing a broader vision of history outside the constraints of the classical style.’ In 2015 Strawberry Hill was fully reopened to the public after a £10m award-winning restoration.