Strawberry Hill House

Published 21 September 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

Strawberry Hill House is a white Gothic fantasy on the Thames at Twickenham, built by Horace Walpole from the 1740s onwards as a private amusement. It is open Wednesday to Sunday, tickets start at £16.50 booked online, and the same ticket covers the house, the garden and whatever exhibition is on. Walpole wrote the first Gothic novel here, which makes this the building where horror fiction begins.

It is genuinely unlike any other historic house near London. Walpole was not restoring anything; he was inventing a style, copying details from cathedral tombs and medieval prints and applying them to a suburban villa in papier mache and plaster. The result is theatrical, slightly absurd and completely original.

The house has been open to visitors for more than 250 years, because Walpole himself issued tickets to people who wanted to see it. If you like the Georgian interiors at Banqueting House or the architectural obsessiveness of Sir John Soane's Museum, this is the same instinct taken much further.

Who Horace Walpole was, and what he built

Walpole was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister, and he had money, connections and no particular job. In 1747 he took a small house by the river at Twickenham and spent the next thirty years turning it into what he called his little Gothic castle.

He worked with a committee of friends, took details from real medieval buildings, and cheerfully faked the materials: vaulting in papier mache, tracery in plaster, and chimneypieces and ceilings lifted from medieval tombs and antiquarian engravings. The battlements and pinnacles are white rendered brick. Nothing about it is archaeologically honest, and that is the point.

In 1764 he published The Castle of Otranto, a short novel of ancestral curses, supernatural apparitions and a haunted castle, which he claimed to have begun after dreaming of a giant armoured hand on a staircase in his own house. It founded the Gothic novel, and through it the whole line that runs to Frankenstein, Dracula and everything since. Strawberry Hill calls itself the castle where Gothic fiction began, and for once the claim is straightforward.

What the ticket includes, and what it costs a family

One ticket covers everything on the day: the house, the garden and any exhibition. There is no separate garden-only rate, which surprises people expecting the arrangement at a National Trust property.

Two adults and two children aged six to sixteen come to £49.50 booked online. Tickets bought on arrival cost more and depend on availability, so book, particularly at weekends and on bank holidays.

What to look for inside

The route runs through a sequence of rooms that get progressively more theatrical, which was exactly Walpole's plan for the visitors he admitted in his own lifetime.

• The entrance hall and staircase, deliberately dim and painted a stone colour, so that you step out of a suburban garden into something that behaves like a cathedral.
• The Gallery, the show-stopper: a long room with an elaborate vaulted ceiling and mirrored recesses, which looks ecclesiastical and was used for parties. It is occasionally closed for weddings, so check the day's notices.
• The Library, on the upper floor, with Walpole's bookcases and the arrangement he devised for his own collections.
• Horace Walpole's Bedchamber and the Plaid Bedchamber, also upstairs, which give a better sense of how the house worked as somewhere to live rather than to show off.

Walpole's collection was dispersed in a famous sale in the 19th century, so the rooms are not stuffed with objects. The house itself is the exhibit, and the trust has been bringing pieces back one at a time. There is a current appeal for £30,000 to recreate the Shell Seat from the garden, working with Factum Foundation and Factum Arte.

The garden and the cafe

Walpole laid out the grounds in the naturalistic English style that was then new, in deliberate contrast to the formal French garden, with winding walks and views towards the river. What survives is modest by the standards of a great estate but it is the right setting for the house, and it is where you get the best view of all those white pinnacles.

Allow about two hours for the whole visit: an hour inside, half an hour in the garden and the rest in the cafe. That is a long way to travel for two hours, which is why we would pair it with something else on the same stretch of river rather than make a special trip of it. The suggestions at the end of this page are all within half an hour.

Private guided tours can be arranged in advance and are the best way to see the house if you care about the architecture rather than the atmosphere. They are booked through the house rather than sold on the day, so ask well ahead.

The Garden Cafe sits in the Great Cloister, the arcaded passage along the base of the house, looking out over the lawn. It opens before the house does: 9.30am on Wednesday to Friday and 9am at weekends. Coming early for coffee before the 10am opening is the calmest way to start a visit.

Access, and the rooms a wheelchair cannot reach

The garden and the cafe are wheelchair accessible by a smooth path with no steps, though crossing the lawn is uneven underfoot. Inside the house there is a lift, but it does not reach the second floor, which means three rooms are inaccessible to wheelchair users: the Library, Horace Walpole's Bedchamber and the Plaid Bedchamber.

There are five blue badge spaces in the car park, and carers are admitted free on general admission tickets. Blue badge holders also get a discount. Our guide to accessible London covers travel to this part of the city.

Halloween, which is the obvious time to come

Given that the building is where the horror novel was invented, a candlelit tour at the end of October is the visit that makes most sense. Our guide to London in October covers what else is on that week, and ghost tours in London lists the central alternatives if you cannot get out to Twickenham.

Getting there from central London

Trains to Strawberry Hill run on a circular route from London Waterloo, four an hour Monday to Saturday and two an hour on Sundays. The station is five to ten minutes' walk from the house, and the route is signposted from the end of each platform. Our guide to London's main railway stations explains how Waterloo's suburban services work.

Allow about an hour door to door from central London. By foot, the house is fifteen minutes from Twickenham town centre, fifty minutes from Richmond, and two hours from Hampton Court along the Thames Path. That last walk is one of the best riverside routes in London: see our guide to the Thames Path.

The car park is free for visitors but small, and you must register your vehicle in the gift shop when you arrive. Nearby streets fill up quickly at weekends.

What else to do in the same trip

Twickenham is not a place most visitors reach, and if you are making the journey it is worth building a day around it. Our guide to Twickenham and the Richmond riverside covers the area, and rugby at Twickenham explains the stadium a mile to the north.

The obvious pairing is Ham House and Marble Hill, two riverside houses on opposite banks a short way downstream, linked in summer by a small passenger ferry. Marble Hill is free. Further upstream, Hampton Court Palace is the big set-piece, and reaching it by boat turns the journey itself into the day out.

For another house built by a rich man with strong architectural opinions, Chiswick House is thirty minutes away and its gardens are free. For the same Gothic appetite applied to a Victorian burial ground, see Highgate Cemetery, and for a house frozen as a work of theatre, Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields. Somerset House shows what the establishment was building while Walpole played.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Strawberry Hill House cost?

Adult tickets start at £16.50 booked online, with children aged six to sixteen at £8.25, under-fives free, students £10 and over-65s £14.50 (September 2026). The ticket covers the house, the garden and any exhibition. Tickets bought on arrival cost more and depend on availability.

When is Strawberry Hill House open?

The house and shop open Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm, with last entry at 4pm. The garden and cafe open earlier: 9.30am on Wednesday to Friday and 9am at weekends. The house opens seven days a week during the summer school holidays.

Why is Strawberry Hill important?

Horace Walpole built it from 1747 onwards as the first substantial house in the Gothic revival style, inventing a look that shaped British architecture for the next century. He also wrote The Castle of Otranto here in 1764, the novel that founded Gothic fiction and, through it, the modern horror story.

Is Strawberry Hill House wheelchair accessible?

Partly. The garden and cafe have level access, and a lift serves most of the house, but it does not reach the second floor. That leaves the Library, Horace Walpole's Bedchamber and the Plaid Bedchamber inaccessible to wheelchair users. Carers enter free and there are five blue badge parking spaces.

How do you get to Strawberry Hill House by train?

Take a train from London Waterloo to Strawberry Hill, on a circular route with four trains an hour from Monday to Saturday and two an hour on Sundays. The house is a five to ten minute walk, signposted from the end of each platform. Allow about an hour from central London.

Sources

• Strawberry Hill House & Garden - Visit Us (checked September 2026)
• Strawberry Hill House - General Admission ticket prices (checked September 2026)
• Strawberry Hill House - Halloween programme (checked September 2026)
• Strawberry Hill House - Accessibility (checked September 2026)