Strawberry Hill, Twickenham
Carrie Schmitz
Places in History is an ongoing project, involving local history societies. It uses placemarks in Google Maps to identify the exact position of a building, street or other feature, with a satellite view of the location. The maps link to pages in HistoryWorld for historical details and images, and to timelines in TimeSearch for a broader range of data.
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HistoryWorld's
Places in History
Twickenham – Strawberry Hill
1747 - Horace Walpole rents a small house, know locally as Chopp'd Straw Hall, with 5 acres of land.
1749-3 - Walpole buys the house and grounds which the deeds call Strawberry Hill. He begins to enlarge the house and add to the estate.
1750-97 - Walpole forms a 'Committee of Taste' with friends John Chute and Richard Bentley, and creates his 'little Gothic castle' over the next 50 years, giving rise to the style 'Strawberry Hill Gothic'.
1753 - Walpole adds the library and refectory or great parlour to Strawberry Hill.
1757 - Walpole founds a printing press, the Strawberry Hill Press.
1760-61 - Walpole adds the Gallery, round tower, great cloister and cabinet
1770 - Walpole adds the Great North Bedchamber.
1776 - Walpole adds the Beauclerk Tower and hexagonal closet.
1797 - Horace Walpole dies and the estate is left to his niece, Anne Seymour Damer, a well-known sculptress, for her lifetime.
1810 - Mrs Daymer finds Strawberry Hill too expensive to keep up and relinquishes the estate to the eventual heir, Laura Countess of Waldegrave, the grand-daughter of Walpole's brother Edward.
1840 - Strawberry Hill passes through the Waldegrave family to John, who marries Frances Braham in 1839, and on his early death to his brother George, the 7th Earl, who marries his brother's widow.
1842 - The 7th Earl is heavily in debt and sells off the contents of Strawberry Hill. 'The Great Sale' starts on 25 April 1842 and last for 32 days raising over £33,000.
1847 - Frances, Lady Waldegrave, inherits Strawberry Hill on her husband's death in 1846, marries George Granville Harcourt, an elderly Liberal MP, and establishes herself as a leading Liberal hostess.
1855-61 - Frances restores and enlarges Strawberry Hill including the addition of the Waldegrave Drawing Room, spending in excess of £100,000.
1883 - Following Lady Waldegrave's death in 1879, the Strawberry Hill estate is sold first to an Americal hotel company and then on, in 1883 to Baron de Stern.
1925 - Strawberry Hill is sold to the Catholic Education Council and becomes known as St Mary's College, later St Mary's University College.
2007 - A lease on Strawberry Hill house is granted to the Strawberry Hill Trust and restoration of the house begins.
Map
List of places already entered
Twickenham and Whitton timeline
External links
Strawberry Hill Twickenham Museum
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