The Shell SeatStrawberry Hill

Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill

Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpo-le, was born in 1717 inheriting the title Earl of Orford towards the end of his life. He was an MP, a man of letters, a prolific collector and antiquary, author of the first Gothic Novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’, but most famously the creator of one of the most influential houses in the history of architecture, namely Strawberry Hill. Slight in build, his gentlemanly demeanour was underwritten by a sense of humour and the-atre as seen when greeting his French guests in 1769 wearing a cravat carved in lime wood by Grinling Gibbons, together with a pair of gloves embroidered up to the elbows that had once belonged to James I.

After a long search, Horace Walpole secured in 1747 one of the only remaining riverside properties in fashionable Twickenham Town, lying mid way between the Royal Palaces of Richmond and Hampton Court ‘London’s Tivoli and Baiai with the Thames as our Brenta’. He set about converting the simple cottage ‘a bauble of a small house’ on the four acre plot of land, built in 1698 by the Earl of Bradford’s coachman, into ‘My little Gothic castle’ in arcadia. Known previously as Chopp’d Straw Hall in reference to how, by repute, a coachman afforded such a prime piece of real estate by feeding substan-dard hay to the Earl’s horses and selling the good hay on for profit, the name Strawberry Hill Shot later being discovered by Walpole in the purchase deeds. Strawberry Hill, as it then became, was built, developed and gradually extended from four to forty six acres until Walpole’s death in 1797, initially with the aid of Horace Walpole’s ‘Committee of Taste’. The Com-

View of Strawberry Hill by W. Watts Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

mittee members were John Chute – designer, Richard Bentley – illustrator and a Mr Robinson, who oversaw structural and building matters. The house however, was very much Walpole’s own ‘little plaything’, ‘a confection’ and was built in his own, now famous, theatrical and atmospheric Gothic style.

The garden was most certainly influenced by Walpole’s own grand tour from 1739-41. No doubt he visited Tivoli with its monuments and cascades and the grand villa gardens of D’Este and Albobrandini, taking from them grand statements and the element of surprise and translating them into the English taste via a rustic cottage, a fashionable Chinese bridge and ‘The Shell Seat.’ A quotation from Walpole’s diaries sets the scene ‘I have got four more acres which makes my territory prodigious in a situation where land is so scarce and villas as abundant as formerly at Tivoli and Baiai. I now have 14 acres and am making a terrace the whole breadth of my garden on the brow of a natural hill, with meadow at the foot, and com-manding the river, the village, Richmond Hill and the Park and a part of Kingston...’.

Horace Walpole followed his next door neighbour Alexan-der Pope, who had died in 1745 leaving a famous garden and grotto, in his rejection of the symmetrical and, like William Kent, he ‘leapt the fence’ and found ‘all nature was a garden’. As Walpole said to Horace Mann in one of his many letters, ‘Gothic is merely architecture... so one’s garden on the con-trary is to be nothing but riant and the gaiety of nature.’

‘Set in enamelled meadows with filigree hedges this small Euphrates through the peace is rolled and little finches wave their wings of gold.’ For the garden and meadow, sheep and cattle had been chosen with colourings which would harmon-ise with the flowers and blooms. Barbary sheep were selected because of their curled horns echoing the serpentine ‘svelte walks’ in the Pleasure Gardens to the south of the Round

Tower, with cows brought to the terrace and milked to make syllabubs for the guests.

In 1750 Horace Walpole met Richard Bentley (1708-1782), who would become the designer of the Shell Seat, and invited him to form part of his Committee of Taste. As a young man Richard Bentley had, at the age of 16, been appointed Keeper of the Kings Libraries at Trinity College, Cambridge. However, he was forced to resign in his early 20’s after being blamed for a devastating fire that broke out in the Library. Prior to his arrival with his second wife, penniless and in debt, to a small cottage in Teddington close to Strawberry Hill, Bentley had been disinherited by his father for his irrespon-sible behaviour and had spent two years escaping creditors in France. Walpole found Bentley difficult but ranked his work highly comparing it to that of Poussin and Salvatore Rosa, writing in the summer of 1753 to Sir Horace Mann (enclosing drawings by Bentley) ‘to draw you as much an idea of it as the post would be persuaded to carry from Twickenham to Flor-ence’. Further examples of Bentley’s work can be seen today inside the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill, his fireplace design being complimented by a partition screen based on the now lost screen within the Cathedral at Rouen. Bentley’s real fame however, came shortly before fleeing from debt to Jersey in 1753, with his illustrations to six poems by Thomas Gray creating a new genre of book illustration in which artist and writer together composed an image for the reader.

Although the date for the design and creation of the Shell Seat is not known, it can be placed either between 1750 and 1753 or 1756 and June 1759, the latter being the date of a let-ter to Sir George Montagu which quoted ‘On Wednesday the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury dined there; the two latter stayed all night. There never was so pretty a sight as to see all three of them sitting in the Shell.

View of Twickenham and of Richmond Hill from the Blue Room at Strawberry Hill by J.C Barrow, 1789Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

A thousand years hence when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event... I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter, the pretty Duchess of Richmond as they were sitting in the Shell on my terrace with the Duchess of Hamilton, one of the famous Gunnings.’

The position of the Shell Seat, as shown on the map, was to the south east of the grounds close to the river and the Gothic entryway gate, whose piers were made in terracotta by Coade. Viewed across ‘an open grove through which you can see a field bounded by a serpentine wood of all trees and flowering shrubs and flowers’ it is possible that Horace Walpole meant for the Seat to be encountered in its wooded glade serendipitously, a word coined by Walpole himself. Walpole’s letter of June 1765 sets an evocative night time scene describing acacias ‘being covered in blossom and the honeysuckle dangling from every tree’ and ‘the seringas are thickets of seats, and the new cut hay in the field tempers the balmy gales with simple freshness’ and perhaps this was how Walpole had envisaged the Seat to be viewed from his Green Closet window, surrounded by clas-sical prints to further define his viewing pleasure.

It is not known what became of ‘The Shell Seat’ after Walpole’s death, one can only assume that as Strawberry Hill itself was not envisaged by Walpole to last ‘my buildings are paper like my writings, both will be blown away in 10 years after I am dead’ so the Seat was not constructed in a way that would stand the test of time.

With no clues other than two drawings and that the Seat was probably made from oak painted in a lead based white wash, the difficult process of determining how this Seat was made began. To form this large Seat from seasoned planks of oak was quickly dismissed due to the fact that the oak would split almost immediately. A second idea of layered blocks carved to the shell shape was also rejected as not practical.

Opposite:The Shell Seat at Horace Walpole’s Villa at Strawberry Hill

Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

View of the Shell Seat and Bridge at Strawberry Hill, 1758 Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Opposite:Slight sketch of the Ground – Plot of Strawberry Hill

Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The Shell SeatWorking drawings by Mr Roy Waddingham, 2010

We finally struck upon the idea of layered laminated strips of oak formed over a dome to create the basic shape of a shell. This possibly could have been its original form of manufac-ture as boat workers would have used a similar technique to form the curves required for boats on the nearby Thames, although this theory is purely hypothetical. The design for the Seat, as shown in this catalogue, is based firmly on the sketched drawing, however the side and back views are our own interpretation of what might have been. Each Seat, which has been limited to an edition of one hundred and one, is to be given its own bronze numbered medallion emblazoned with the Strawberry Hill Trust logo. The purchaser of each Shell Seat will have their name placed against their Seat edition number in a record book to be held at Strawberry Hill, by way of recognition for their kind purchase and hence contribution towards securing the long term future of the architectural gem that is Strawberry Hill.

Architectural Heritage Taddington Manor, Taddington, Nr. Cutsdean,

Gloucestershire, England gl54 5ryEmail: puddy@architectural-heritage.co.uk

Web: www.architectural-heritage.co.ukTel: +44 [0] 1386 584 414 Fax: +44 [0] 1386 584 236