WALPOLE, Horace

In the 1740s, Horace Walpole bought a small country seat in Twickenham near London, beside the Thames, which over some 30 years he converted into his “little Gothic castle.” Over the period, it developed into an asymmetrical, charming architectural cluster that put into effect the principles of the picturesque for the first time. The richly articulated exterior, with its projections and recessions, gables, towers and pinnacles and pointed arches, quatrefoil windows and battlements, was intended to imitate the evolved layout of a medieval structure.

Horace Walpole and his friends, who formed a “committee of taste,” provided the original house (to the right in the picture) with polygonal bay windows, and built an adjoining two-storey wing with buttresses, which contains “cloisters” downstairs and a gallery upstairs. As a terminal feature, they added a large round tower. The wing on the left dates from the 19th century.

In the 1740s, Horace Walpole bought a small country seat in Twickenham near London, beside the Thames, which over some 30 years he converted into his “little Gothic castle.” Over the period, it developed into an asymmetrical, charming architectural cluster that put into effect the principles of the picturesque for the first time. The richly articulated exterior, with its projections and recessions, gables, towers and pinnacles and pointed arches, quatrefoil windows and battlements, was intended to imitate the evolved layout of a medieval structure.

For the interiors, which are equally variegated, Walpole and his friends took as their models the illustrations in the few publications on medieval architecture then available. Their application was done in a purely decorative way.

For the interiors, which are equally variegated, Walpole and his friends took as their models the illustrations in the few publications on medieval architecture then available. Their application was done in a purely decorative way. A Gothic tomb or rood screen could serve equally as a basis for a fireplace or bookshelves. In this way, there arose an amalgam of diverse sources from different buildings and stylistic phases of English and French Gothic, all on a reduced scale, all made of plaster, wood or papier mâch�, and brightly painted and enlivened with mirrors. It was an artificial, playful world that still had much to do with the Rococo and was concerned little with the archeological seriousness that would subsequently overtake the Gothic Revival and Neoclassicism alike later on during the 18th century.

For the interiors, which are equally variegated, Walpole and his friends took as their models the illustrations in the few publications on medieval architecture then available. Their application was done in a purely decorative way. A Gothic tomb or rood screen could serve equally as a basis for a fireplace or bookshelves. In the library, the bookshelves are based on the choir screen of Old St. Paul’s, London.