Strawberry Hill
Horace Walpole’s villa outside London, furnished in a playful Gothic style – the beginning of the Gothic Revival.
The writer Horace Walpole bought the house in 1747 and rebuilt it over several decades. He collected antiquities and had details from cathedrals and tombs copied for walls, ceilings and fireplaces.
Walpole called the style Gothick. It was more theatre than archaeology, but it made Gothic a style for the home and marked the beginning of the 19th-century Gothic Revival.
Materials: Plaster, wood, painted glass, papier-mâché
Manufacture: Rebuilt in stages from around 1750 by a committee of friends and architects; details were copied from medieval tombs and churches.
Pointed arches, fan vaults and tracery made in plaster and wood.
Medieval forms in new places: a tomb becomes a fireplace.
Painted glass and dark, intimate rooms.