Nothing could prepare me for the moment I stepped through the gate and saw the house for the first time in 20 years.
I knew they had painted it white. But such bizarre Taj-Mahal Disney-castle white! Like a gorgeous rajah’s palace, it stood stiff and outrageous, each window reminiscent of a seraglio, on the emerald lawn a stone’s throw from where the Thames used to be.
Horace -as the house’s guides like to call the inventor of the Strawberry Hill Gothic style, Horace Walpole – bought the last cottage in smart-set Twickenham with a decent view of the Thames, from a lady who made her money in trinkets. Mrs Elizabeth Chevenix hadn’t a lot of ambition for the place.
But Horace had.
The son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, educated at Eton and Cambridge, his father’s connections brought three lucrative posts which raised a tidy annual sum. He was MP for Callington, Cornwall, though he never went there. Later he was MP for Castle Rising.
And from the moment he set eyes on Chopp’d Straw Hall in 1748, he began to work on his life’s passion: its transformation into a tiny, outrageous white piece of theatre.
Having despatched the prosaic name and chosen Strawberry Hill from old archives, he collected his ‘committee of taste’ around him: amateur architect John Chute and designer Richard Bentley.
And the three of them pilfered every possible source of original gothic style.
Around 450 pieces of stained glass were fetched from Flanders. Sketches were made in cathedrals and churches, and borne triumphantly back to Twickenham. An elaborate screen from the gothic church of St Ouen in Rouen; the tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey.
Galleries, huge round tower and cloisters sprung up where humble cottage had been.
Horace was a born curator, though his assumptions about some of the artefacts he collected were a little fanciful. He wanted a full set of mediaeval English kings, and was convinced he had tracked down the stone head of Henry III in a Northamptonshire church:but modern experts rebut the notion it is even a king..
“My buildings are paper, like my writings, and both will be blown away in ten years after I am dead…..” he wrote in his letters. “if they had not the substantial use of amusing me while I live, they would be worth little indeed.”
He was wrong. The building enjoyed a renewed heyday under the watchful eye of Lady Frances Waldegrave, the famous hostess who used the house to entertain the Prince and Princess of Wales and everyone else who was anyone.
In 1923 it became a college, and in 1992, I arrived to study. It was shabby and lived-in, a student-pad.
And now, a £9 million makeover later, it stands there, stealing breath from the lungs with its gingerbread-mansion toytown exterior, based on an ideal of what history might have been if it were a romantic poem.
I spent hours prowling the grounds in a bracing Autumn wind: the newly replanted lime groves, the kitsch shell seat which was all the rage at the time, the entrance which includes a staged grotto to an unspecfied saint.
And inside I was prepared to mock. Poor Horace, I thought. Shaky grasp of history and even less taste.
Yet: roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and prepare to be amazed. The place contains room after room of carefully regulated colour, light and pattern. It has changed utterly from the tired shabby teaching college it once was. It flabberghasts, it delights, it astonishes, with gold leaf, and scarlet, and vivid blue, with light and gloomth.
No wonder people were being shown round Horace’s house during his lifetime. It is not mediaeval: it is a creation in its own right.
It is gothic.
There are days when only a red dress or a loud tie will do. And there are places designed to flaunt it, whatever it is.
And Horace Walpole was a flaunter of unparalleled audacity.
Kate Shrewsday 
Flauntable indeed!
Larger than life, isn’t it?
This is amazing!
You should try walking round, Julie. An experience indeed.
Quite amazing. We were living in Twickenham when we decided to come to France – it was the only way to get the High St out of my mind:)
I know precisely why, Roger. I wandered down to the river: a stretch of the Thames which is supremely forgettable…
Utterly over the top, isn’t it? The Earl of Or(ful)ford. The makeover seems a bit Disney or Texas Oil Baron to me. I’d like to see it, nevertheless.
Worth a ganders, Col. If only for that amazing glass!
I think humans have always loved the theatrical, some a little too much. It’s fantastical though. 🙂
Fantastical. The perfect word.
Which proves that throwing money at a project is no substitute for taste…
…and that’s with a committee of three to steer it!
Wow! I think I might love it 🙂
Spurs fan was a student there for a year- next time we’re over I must get him to take a walk down memory lane!
Bits of it (like the student union) don’d seem to have changed much, Fiona. Well worth the revisit….
Lovely pics and a story that makes me want to delve further into its history. The white is a bit over the top, though.
It is like a wedding cake, isn’t it?
The photo of the head that looks like Mr Punch intrigues me. I saw the same design on a building in Mayfair recently. Any idea of the meaning? So good that Strawberry Hill has been restored. My father used to tell stories about it, but I’m blowed if I can remember them.
It is the head of a Sarason, Isobel. If you had a forebear who was a crusader you were entitled to use him as a sort of crest. And of course, Horace managed to trace his ancestry back to the crusades.
Naturally! Thanks. Our family crest has a knight’s helmet with what looks like a teapot on the top…
What a spectacular place! The white is stark and rather startling, but makes a compelling statement! The photos are wonderful and colors quite amazing. I am sure you were in awe. I’m also surprised to hear about lime groves. Is that unusual? Since you were so familiar with the rooms and halls from before the “redecorating” this must have been a marvelous adventure. I would love to see it myself! 🙂
If you’re ever in the area, Debra…
Your little tours are so much fun – one day you’ll have to come to California, and when you do, we can meet and go up to San Jose to explore the Winchester Mystery House. I haven’t been yet, and would really like to see it.
http://winchestermysteryhouse.com/index.cfm
Oh, Patti, I would just love that! A double bloggy visit.
Absolutely gorgeous. Oh, how I’d love to spend a night there!
If you ever do, Carrie, I shall want a blow-by-blow account!
The interiors are amazing – especially the ones with a view, and the long, beautiful hallways. But, Kate, I think the white exterior should be replaced by a smashing color. That would really spiff up the place and improve its curb appeal. 🙂
Ha! I am trying to think of what colour one might choose, Judy….
I love the white against the blue sky . . . reminds me of Camelot. 😀
I like that too, Nancy. We were blessed with a purest blue Autumn sky.
Gloomth. I love that word. Luscious photos, Kate.
Gloomth is Horace’s own, Andra. I loved it too. If you see inside, it makes sense. A sort of comfortable gloom.
Worth flaunting.
Certainly is.
That is a blinding shade of white. I almost needed to put on sunglasses to look at you images. What color was it in Walpole’s day, or I’ll make it easy on you, what color was it in 1992?
White, Lame…http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01592/strawberry-hill-ho_1592494a.jpg. But in 1992 it was a dull brown. Not much to write home about.
A childhood phrase comes to mind; if you got it, flaunt it! Audacity flaunting at its best, Kate – and some wonderful photos. Thanks.
You are welcome, Penny – apologies for taking so long to catch up! It is indeed audacious.
Why would he change the name from Chopp’d Straw Hall? I think that’s a fabulous name.
I thought so too, Tinman, but it clearly wasn’t picturesque enough for Horace. Look at what he did with the place and you’ll get an inkling of why 🙂
It is quite stunning, Kate. Another item for my must-see-before-I-die list… 😉
It is well worth the visit, Ruth, if you’re ever on this side of the pond…
Oh, I love it. It’s so gorgeous and fanciful. Audacious, but humanly scaled. It’s really … appealing.
I would like to see it once they have all the furniture in, Cameron. It was all sold off by some ignoramus in the nineteenth century, but the objects have been traced and were just compelling as a collection. I do hope they manage to reassemble some of it.
Taj Mahal indeed. Truly eye popping.
I love that expression, PT. You have hit the nail on the head.