Today’s fascination with vampires and horror stories is nothing new. For every cast member in Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or What We Do in the Shadows, there is a predecessor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost stories. But if you want to know precisely where and when horror fiction first started, then look no further than Strawberry Hill House, near Twickenham. Why? Because Strawberry Hill was the inspiration for the first ever Gothic novel — The Castle of Otranto — penned by its owner, Horace Walpole in 1764, after he had a nightmare in one of its faux medieval chambers. Gothic fiction is all about imagination, suspension of belief and mystery, which pretty much sums up the extraordinary Strawberry Hill House. It is well worth a visit.
Horace Walpole, politician, man of letters and author, was the youngest son of prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. In need of a country residence, Horace acquired Chopp’d Straw Hall in 1749, a couple of 17th century cottages overlooking the Thames, and transformed the land into one of London’s most eccentric, influential and intriguing buildings. He hated the name, changing it to Strawberry Hill House and created “the prettiest bauble you ever saw”.
