Strawberry Hill House

Strawberry Hill House was created by Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century and is recognised as one of the finest examples of Georgian Gothic revival architecture, reopened to the public in 2010. Antiquarian Horace Walpole, who created the Gothic novel with his book ‘The Castle of Otranto’, had already laid the groundwork for the Gothic Revival of Victorian times as early as the 1700s. Pre-booked tickets, at 20-minute intervals, allow you to explore the crepuscular nooks and crannies of his ‘play-thing house’, this ‘little Gothic castle’, including the study in which he wrote ‘Otranto’, which opened to the public in 2015 after major restoration work. You will at last be able to admire the lavish decor in Walpole's bedroom, the Turkish motifs on the tented ceiling over the breakfast room and the study in which Walpole effectively invented the Gothic novel. Visitors can also enjoy a rare example of an eighteenth-century theatrical shrubbery, a willow grotto and woodland trail for children, and a recreation of the exotic ‘Shell Bench’ designed by Richard Bentley.