Strawberry Hill was the brainchild of Horace Walpole, generally reckoned to be the single most influential figure in the 18th century Gothic revival. Walpole acquired a smaller property on this site in 1747, and over a period of about 30 years employed a succession of architects to perform a fantastical transformation. At the time Walpole's creation must have seemed pretty outrageous, challenging (as it did) the convention that the design of grand houses should be inspired by Classical antiquity
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Details for the interior were borrowed from all manner of medieval sources, with little regard for their original purpose. For instance, the design of a tomb in Canterbury Cathedral was cribbed for a fire-place. Professor Pevsner's verdict: 'Even with its exact copies here and there the whole of Strawberry Hill remains make-believe.' (See Pevsner's 'The Buildings of England: Middlesex').
Not content with setting a trend in architecture, Walpole's taste for what he called 'gloomth' led him to write 'The Castle of Otranto', generally recognised to be the first Gothick novel.