Image: Strawberry Hill House at dusk...

As Halloween fast approaches, where better to experience the very place that inspired the genre of gothic literature and the Goth sub-culture, than Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham?

Gothic or horror fiction is often believed to have begun during a stormy night in 1816, when Lord Byron suggested a competition between Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary Shelley and Byron’s physician John Polidori to write the best ghost story. Mary famously wrote Frankenstein, while Polidori created The Vampyre, the progenitor of the vampire genre that later inspired Bram Stoker’s defining Dracula (1897).

However, more than 50 years before that remarkable night on the shores of Lake Geneva, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto was published in 1764 and is surely the precursor to our ongoing enjoyment of so-called gothic books, films, art, and music.

The novel begins with the dramatic and somewhat Monty Python-esque death of Conrad, who is killed by an enormous helmet that inexplicably falls on him before his wedding day to Isabella. This fatal episode sets Conrad’s father, Manfred, on his ill-starred journey, as he attempts to stave off the ancient prophecy, "that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it."

In a bid to keep Otranto and continue the familial line, Manfred resolves to divorce his wife, Hippolita and marry the young and beautiful Isabella. Of course, his plan does not go well…

Other aspects of the novel feature moving portraits, bleeding statues, secret passages, trapdoors and various unexplained noises and goings-on. All of which became essential elements of gothic and horror storytelling.

Such was the novel’s success that it inspired a slew of stories copying its style, including Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (1778) and MG Lewis's The Monk (1796), Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1803) also employed gothic themes for comic effect.

Walpole’s novel was inspired by a nightmare he experienced at his own ‘gothic castle’ Strawberry Hill and his fascination with medieval history. Moreover, Walpole gave the novel a subtitle ‘A Gothic Story’ and in so doing, created the literary phenomenon.  

Built in 1749, Strawberry Hill was one of the first expressions of gothic revival architecture. The exterior and interior of the house reflect how Walpole was influenced by medieval castles and cathedrals. So much so that, in true gothic style, experts believe that the designs of the chimney-places were based on tombs inside Westminster Abbey.

Horace Walpole thought of his gothic castle as a building with a personality of its own, full of relics (items associated of people from the past to give account of themselves) and the perfectly designed stage for his visitors to experience his treasures and their stories, some of them uncanny, some of them macabre. Only by coming to the house can you feel Horace’s theatrics and presence drawing you through the dramatic rooms. “From 1747 Walpole started to acquire pseudo-ancestral objects and curiosities, which gave Strawberry Hill the desired gloomy and historical atmosphere” says Strawberry Hill Curator Silvia Davoli, Curator.

Even in the daytime, the house has what Horace called ‘gloomth’ - with the interplay of light and dark, colour and shadows.
 
This Halloween (Wednesday 27 & Thursday 28 October at 6.30pm & 7pm) Strawberry Hill House invite you to take a Gothic Twilight Tour and discover the home of the Gothic. Tour Horace Walpole's castle, where their expert guides will share stories of the gothic and macabre at this most spooky time of year. strawberryhillhouse.org.uk