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Strawberry Hill House
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Strawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is a Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, built by Horace Walpole from 1749 onward. It is the prototypical example of the "Strawberry Hill Gothic" style of architecture, and it prefigured the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.
Walpole rebuilt the existing house in stages starting in 1749, 1760, 1772 and 1776. These additions introduced Gothic features such as towers and battlements outside and elaborate decoration inside to create "gloomth" to suit Walpole's collection of antiquarian objects, contrasting with the more cheerful or "riant " (lit. 'laughing') garden. The interior included gilded ceilings and intentionally grand fireplaces—with one by Robert Adam, along with small details like enamelled door handles, carved wooden screens, and ancestral-looking coats of arms; parts of the exterior were designed by James Essex. The garden contained a large seat shaped like a Rococo sea shell, which was recreated during the garden's 2012 restoration, one of the many examples of historic garden conservation in the UK.
Later owners included Anne Seymour Damer and John Waldegrave and his descendants, followed by Hermann de Stern. In 1923 it was bought by the Roman Catholic St Mary's University College.
The Strawberry Hill Gothic architectural style became briefly popular, though its definition is disputed. Examples include Priory Hospital in Roehampton.
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. 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". Walpole was under familial and political pressure to establish a country seat, especially a family castle, which was a fashionable practice during the period.
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 of Kent. As such it has a claim to be the starting point of the Gothic Revival."
Walpole and two friends, 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" formed to 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.
The building, inspired by Walpole's Grand Tour journeys to France and Italy, evolved with no fixed plan from the beginning; Walpole added features as and when he saw fit. Externally, these included an assortment of battlements, towers, and turrets. Indeed, Michael Snodin argues, "the most striking external feature of Strawberry Hill was its irregular plan and broken picturesque silhouette".
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Strawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is a Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, built by Horace Walpole from 1749 onward. It is the prototypical example of the "Strawberry Hill Gothic" style of architecture, and it prefigured the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.
Walpole rebuilt the existing house in stages starting in 1749, 1760, 1772 and 1776. These additions introduced Gothic features such as towers and battlements outside and elaborate decoration inside to create "gloomth" to suit Walpole's collection of antiquarian objects, contrasting with the more cheerful or "riant " (lit. 'laughing') garden. The interior included gilded ceilings and intentionally grand fireplaces—with one by Robert Adam, along with small details like enamelled door handles, carved wooden screens, and ancestral-looking coats of arms; parts of the exterior were designed by James Essex. The garden contained a large seat shaped like a Rococo sea shell, which was recreated during the garden's 2012 restoration, one of the many examples of historic garden conservation in the UK.
Later owners included Anne Seymour Damer and John Waldegrave and his descendants, followed by Hermann de Stern. In 1923 it was bought by the Roman Catholic St Mary's University College.
The Strawberry Hill Gothic architectural style became briefly popular, though its definition is disputed. Examples include Priory Hospital in Roehampton.
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. 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". Walpole was under familial and political pressure to establish a country seat, especially a family castle, which was a fashionable practice during the period.
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 of Kent. As such it has a claim to be the starting point of the Gothic Revival."
Walpole and two friends, 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" formed to 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.
The building, inspired by Walpole's Grand Tour journeys to France and Italy, evolved with no fixed plan from the beginning; Walpole added features as and when he saw fit. Externally, these included an assortment of battlements, towers, and turrets. Indeed, Michael Snodin argues, "the most striking external feature of Strawberry Hill was its irregular plan and broken picturesque silhouette".
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