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Historic Strawberry Hill
While Strawberry Hill Conferences & Banqueting can cater for all your conference and event needs with our wide range of modern venues and facilities, we also offer the unique 'stately home experience' of our historic Waldegrave Suite, an adjoining wing of Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill House.
The Suite's atmospheric setting – offering spectacular views of Strawberry Hill House and grounds – also makes it ideal for weddings and other special occasions.
Local historian Michael Murnane explores the history of Strawberry Hill House and the Waldegrave Suite in the following article:
• Download 'Historic Strawberry Hill' article as a printable PDF file
Strawberry Hill is best known because of its creator, Horace Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister. However, in the long history of the house from the mid eighteenth century onward, there was one other period when the fame of Strawberry Hill was unsurpassed.
After Walpole's death the house passed initially to his cousin, Anne Damer. However, as the upkeep of the property was beyond her financial resources, she in turn ceded the house to Walpole's grandniece, Laura Elizabeth Waldegrave, a widow. Thus began the connection between the Waldegrave family and Strawberry Hill which was to culminate in the 'second flowering' of Walpole's 'gothick villa' in the person of one remarkable lady - Frances, Countess Waldegrave.
Countess Waldegrave
Frances, the daughter of John Braham, the most famous operatic tenor of his day, was not born into the aristocracy. Braham was a Jew, whose family name was Abraham, but realising that this could adversely affect his musical career, he converted to Christianity and dropped the initial 'A' of his name and became simply - Braham. Because of his unsurpassed renown in the world of opera, Braham was frequently invited to important social functions.
One of these was a dinner party at Strawberry Hill, hosted in 1838 by Anne, Countess Waldegrave. Formerly, as Anne King, daughter of an army chaplain, she had met the sixth Earl, John James, son of Walpole's grandniece, when he was serving as an officer in Wellington's army in Paris, where they had an illegitimate son, John. Two years later, when they were expecting a second child, they returned to Strawberry Hill, having first married in order to ensure his legitimacy.
On June 11th 1815 the child was christened George in Twickenham parish church. The very next day, in the same church, John James and Anne underwent a second marriage ceremony, so determined were they that their place in local society should be untainted. At the time of Braham's visit to Strawberry Hill, with daughter Frances in attendance, the two Waldegrave brothers were present. On seeing Frances, who was wandering by herself about the house, both were immediately attracted to her. John lost no time in making her acquaintance and, in May 1839, they were married in Holy Trinity Church, Brompton.
On the death of their father, John inherited the family estates at Navestock in Essex, the title of 7th Earl going to the legitimate heir, George. Although Frances and John had their own house in Essex, they spent an increasing amount of time at Strawberry Hill with George. These extended visits appeared to have fostered a fairly carefree existence, but the brothers were a very dissolute pair and John also suffered severely from epilepsy. His illness developed rapidly and, after just one year of marriage, he died. It was almost inevitable that, after a suitable period of mourning, Frances would next turn to the younger brother.
On one of his riotous outings in the company of a few similarly minded and drunken young companions, George Waldegrave was involved in an affray whilst returning from Kingston Fair. The story goes that a policeman was severely beaten outside the Swan Inn in Hampton Wick. A hat was found at the scene and it was traced back to George Waldegrave.
Much to his indignation his case was referred by the Twickenham magistrates to the Court of Assize. Before the case came to be heard, George proposed to Frances. However, there was a major impediment to her marrying her brother-in-law. The eventual solution to this dilemma was to have the marriage celebrated in Scotland, where the restrictions of the1835 Marriage Act did not apply. So, on September 28th 1840, Frances, not yet twenty, became Countess Waldegrave.
When George was subsequently fined for Breach of the Peace and sent to Newgate prison for six months, Frances promptly joined him. Prison for the aristocracy was a very different experience from that endured by common folk and, whilst in prison, he and Frances entertained on a fairly lavish scale, receiving a large number of visitors.
On his release from Newgate, George was still incensed at his treatment by the local magistrates and vowed to sell off the precious contents of Strawberry Hill, which included the collection of artworks and artefacts that Walpole had so assiduously collected over his time in the villa. The house itself was to be left to decay, as a lasting reminder to all of his perceived ill treatment at the hands of the local law.
The Great Sale of 1842
The Great Sale of 1842 attracted thousands to the Strawberry Hill estate, where large marquees were erected on the lawns to accommodate the throng. George and Frances left for the continent before the sale (which eventually realised well in excess of £33,000) was completed. Whilst abroad, the couple took part in a second marriage ceremony in order to remove any possible doubt over the legitimacy of their union.
When, in 1844, they returned to live in Somerset, George's dissolute lifestyle was having a marked effect on his health. On September 28th 1846, their sixth wedding anniversary, he died of acute liver disease, leaving Frances, still only twenty-five, a widow for the second time in seven years.
Her next husband was to be George Granville Harcourt, a widower already in his sixties, the eldest son of the Archbishop of York. Frances had actually known him since childhood and, in 1847, she married Harcourt and went to live in his Oxfordshire home. It was here that Frances began to hone her skills as a society hostess, which were to come to full fruition some time later.
Under Harcourt's tutelage, and possibly as a result of some chiding and criticism on his part, she developed great social acumen, and their home at Nuneham in Oxfordshire rapidly became a focus of many a fine social gathering. Frances, however, never forgot her abandoned property near Twickenham and gradually conceived a major plan to restore and extend Strawberry Hill.
This was with Harcourt's approval, though the lavish scale of her eventual expenditure may have been the cause of the many quarrels the couple were reported to have had. It was rumoured that, when her expenditure had reached £100,000, Frances merely assumed that there had been an accounting error!
The major part of her restoration project was the linking of the two separate buildings which were Walpole's original little villa and his adjacent office block. In so doing she created a drawing room, dining room and accommodation for her several staff and expected house guests.
The nineteenth century architecture linking the two Walpole buildings contributed greatly to the impressive view from the lawns of the extended house which we can still enjoy today. She and Harcourt travelled across Europe, acquiring furniture and other embellishments for the house. In Vienna they purchased the beautiful parquet flooring which was to adorn the drawing room and Walpole's Long Gallery.
When Harcourt died, in December 1861, it was fairly obvious to all of Frances' closest associates that she would not remain single for long. For some considerable time she had been the object of much admiration by Chichester Fortescue, another politician and frequent house guest. After the required period of mourning they were married on January 20th 1863 - in the same Brompton church where she had married her first husband, John Waldegrave.
When Chichester was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1865, he and Frances moved to Dublin. They spent the summer months, where possible, at Strawberry Hill and the soirées, balls and other social gatherings quickly gathered momentum. The house became a major venue for leading Liberal politicians of the period. Gladstone was among the visitors and Frances soon became renowned as the most sought after political hostess in the country. Royalty, too, were often on the guest list and, in 1873, in anticipation of one particular event, more lavish than all the rest, Frances had a billiard room constructed opposite the drawing room, because the game of billiards was a favourite pastime of the Prince of Wales.
Strawberry Hill Station
In this same year the railway station at Strawberry Hill, on the Twickenham to Kingston line, was opened and it is a matter of some speculation whether the building of this station was influenced by Frances and her husband. Both were interested in property development in the immediate area, as can be seen by the number of houses from that period in the Strawberry Hill neighbourhood. Some of those in Waldegrave Park, on the south side of the Waldegrave estate, are still used by St Mary’s University College as student accommodation.
The addition of a railway link to London would therefore have been a great marketing asset. Additionally it would have greatly eased the journey of house guests from London to Strawberry Hill. Unfortunately, as all records of planning meetings for the railway development were destroyed by fire during the London Blitz, the truth of any actual involvement of the couple in the building of the station will never now be known.
Shortly after a party in June 1879 Frances was suddenly taken ill with a severe chest infection. She was rushed to her Carlton Gardens house in London to be seen by her physician, but died on July 15th. So passed an amazing woman who, as a consummate political hostess, had become confidante and friend of politicians, princes and kings.
The Waldegrave Suite Today
The rooms she created in order to fulfil her passion for entertaining still remain – in two of them are displayed portraits of Frances at different times in her life. The Walpole building is no longer part of St Mary's University College, but the elegant Waldegrave Suite – the dining room, billiard room and drawing room with its ante room leading down to the grounds via an ornate iron staircase – still provide an elegant focus for the social life of the University College as well as offering an excellent venue for private functions, wedding receptions and conferences.
