Strawberry Hill House

Strawberry Hill House is one of England's most influential buildings, and one of its most peculiar. Horace Walpole — writer, politician, art historian, and tireless self-promoter — built this mock-medieval confection between the 1750s and the 1790s, inventing the Gothic Revival style in the process. The house is all pointed arches, fan vaulting, heraldic glass, and intricate plasterwork ceilings modelled on medieval chapels. It looks like a stage set — which, in a sense, it was.

The house was carefully restored between 2007 and 2010 and is now open to the public with an excellent interpretive programme. The interior is more colourful and more theatrical than most English historic houses. The collection has been partially reassembled: many original pieces were auctioned off in 1842 (the sale lasted 32 days), but some have been returned or reproduced. At 268 Waldegrave Road, about 15 minutes' walk from central Twickenham.

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When Horace Walpole bought the original cottage in 1747, he described it as "a little plaything house." Over the next 50 years he transformed it into a Gothic fantasy, inventing a style — Strawberry Hill Gothic — that directly influenced the Gothic Revival movement of the 19th century and ultimately every haunted-house film ever made. He also wrote *The Castle of Otranto* here in 1764, the novel that invented the Gothic horror genre.

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