IT’S HARD TO DECIDE whether a visit to Sir Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham is a visit to a magical castle, a dip into a gothic romance or a trip to the theater. These days it’s surrounded by 20th-century suburbia, but lose yourself behind a particularly two-dimensional crenulated wall (clearly created for ornament rather than defence), and you’ll enter into a world of delighted artifice, gold filigree, wedding-cake frosting and fairytale nooks just waiting to be filled with mad monks, innocent maidens and moustache-twirling villains straight out of one of Walpole’s own novels.
What started out in 1747 as “little more than a cottage” was gradually developed by Walpole into a fantasy that generated its own architectural term. Strawberry Hill Gothic was based on pictures he and his friends had seen of the great medieval cathedrals. Because he hadn’t seen most of the actual buildings, though, Walpole was forced to be inventive, and what he lacked in accuracy he made up for in panache. From the beginning, he realised that such a confection as his was going to be ogled at by all and sundry, high and low. Walpole liked being visited by the high. He deliberately left the main road just outside his door, so that celebrities and bigwigs of the day could drop in. He was less keen on the other type of visitor. When the general public came a-knocking, he hid in the cottage across the road, leaving his housekeeper to show them around. In case she missed out any of the good bits, though, he wrote a special guidebook for tourists.
Strawberry Hill was closed to the public for many years, during which time age caught up with it. Fabulous medieval trefoil windows may have been all the rage in the 18th century, but they let the rain in something dreadful.
When the house finally became vacant in 2004, a Heritage Lottery Fund fortune was spent on restoration. Now the public can finally experience what it must have been like for the hoi polloi who tramped through the place in its glory days. We no longer get a housekeeper to show us round (though the volunteers manning each room are some of the most excited and knowledgeable I’ve ever come across), but a rather wonderful facsimile copy of Walpole’s original guidebook is included in the ticket price. By following his own route and reading his own words, we too can stand with the gawping “middling sort” of 200 years ago, marvelling at vaulted ceilings, mystery bookcases, trompe l’oeil walls, over-the-top fireplaces—and several pounds of best-quality gold leaf.

A FEW DAYS LATER, Tony and I were stuck in a traffic jam on the M25, trying to visit his parents in Portsmouth. We were going nowhere. The only thing to do was to pull off for a while, and, with Strawberry Hill still resonating in my mind, I remembered a place I’d been meaning to visit for ages.

RICHARD HOLTTUM

Painshill Park is virtually unknown, and I cannot fathom why. It’s as grand in its own way as the great landscape gardens of Stourhead and Stowe, and it’s (just) inside the M25. Yet if you talk about it with anyone who doesn’t live within 10 miles of the place, you’ll get a blank face. Perhaps it’s because this magnificent garden lay in ruins for many years, rotting into oblivion. Then, the Painshill Park Trust began, in the 1980s, to restore it and its fabulous follies, towers and grottoes, Chinese bridges, islands and temples, vineyards, water wheels and even a Turkish tent, back to their original glory.
I expected it to be quite good, with perhaps one or two set pieces. I didn’t expect a two-mile odyssey through beautifully restored alpine meadows, cascades and an “Elysian Plain,” no less, with a combination of renovated originals and lovingly recreated exact replicas. Here, you can peek through the windows of a ruined abbey, climb to the top of a gothic tower and gaze across London or sit in the rustic hermitage. Painshill’s eccentric owner once advertised for an elderly man to spend seven years living there as a “recluse,” wearing a filthy old robe, refraining from cutting his hair or nails and with just a bible for company. If the man completed the seven years, he would receive 700 guineas. If he left before that date, he would receive nothing. It all ended in tears when, just three weeks into the job, the chosen incumbent was discovered carousing in a local pub.
Of all the magnificent sights at Painshill (and believe me, it just keeps getting better as you work your way along the lake-route), what really took my breath away was the Crystal Grotto—which has to be the finest in England. It’s constructed from thousands of dazzling, sparkling stalactites of gypsum, fluorite, quartz and calcite, lit from cleverly concealed windows in a 40-foot underground chamber opening out after a long, mysterious tunnel, with glimpses out across the lake.

FRED HOLMES

The grotto needed a lot of restoration after the lead was pinched from the roof in 1945 to pay for a V.E. Day party, but they’ve just received the welcome news that the Heritage Lottery Fund has agreed to finance the last bit of renovation. When that’s complete, the grotto will sparkle like it’s 1765. Painshill is one of the big surprises of my year so far—an extraordinary piece of secret Britain.

AND IT’S INCREDIBLE just how quiet the capital can keep secrets if it wants to. The very wonderful Steam Industry theater company have been holding free summer shows for nine years at the Scoop on the South Bank (an outdoor amphitheatre just outside City Hall, next to Tower Bridge). Until a pal of mine asked if I fancied joining her, though, I had never heard of them. Armed with a cushion each, we saw an excellent, full-length musical production of Around the World in 80 Days, with a cast of 10 plus a very splendid elephant puppet. The shows run for a full month, twice a day—one a family show, the other a more challenging adult piece—this year’s was Brecht’s The Mother. It’s all free to the first 1000 people who turn up each night. And they say London’s expensive…

ODDLY, I FOUND MYSELF back at the Scoop a few days later, during what I can only describe as the chaos of the Thames Festival. There’s a festival of some sort most weekends in the capital in the summer and it’s easy to get a bit blasé about them all. But the Thames Festival, held each September, is the daddy. Reaching from St. Katherine’s Dock in the East all the way up to the London Eye, sound stages, dance groups, performances, theater shows, choirs and what has to be a good 1,000-odd craft stalls line the banks of the Thames.
Sometimes it can get a bit claustrophobic with the sheer number of people milling around, but for exhilaration, you can’t beat it. All the performances, workshops, lectures and concerts are free. Tony and I went with a couple of friends from New York. We started up by the Scoop, listening to a massed choir of 850 singers, and slowly, over several hours, worked our way through works of art, specialist DJs and some very strange theatrical “experiences” to Hungerford Bridge, where there was a tango workshop and display. I cried off the evening torchlight carnival, though having walked through some of the groups preparing, it must have been something special. Later, we watched the incredible firework display from our bedroom window five miles away before collapsing in a heap. It’s not an event for the faint-hearted.

MUCH MORE SEDATE was the highlight of the month for my parents who were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. Being party-phobic, Mum and Dad would have hated a big “do,” but they are enthusiastic ballroom dancers. My sister Mary and I arranged a table at one of the famous afternoon tea dances at the Waldorf Hotel. They’re held bi-monthly in the art deco Palm Court and evoke a gentler age, where one sips Darjeeling, Assam, Earl Grey, or whatever one’s preference in tea may be, nibbles cakes, and enjoys musicians in dickie-bows playing a selection of classic standards, watching, or, if you’re my parents, joining in with, couples whirling foxtrots, two-steps, waltzes and rhumbas on the polished dance floor below.

THIS MONTH’S CONTACTS


Strawberry Hill House
www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk

Painshill Park
www.painshill.co.uk

Steam Industry Free Theatre
www.steamindustryfreetheatre.org.uk
The Thames Festival
www.thamesfestival.org
The Waldorf Hilton Tea Dances
www.waldorfhilton.co.uk

There’s a bit of a ballroom dancing revival over here and the dancers are increasingly young-looking. There’s also high demand for tables, so I would suggest early booking if you’re a dance fan. For my parents, being those very dance fans, it was a marvellous afternoon. For me, who was there for the tea, it was slightly disappointing—both in the selection and quantity of the fare. I have eaten better for a lot less in other places recently (those Cordon Bleu students last month took a bit of beating) and despite my specifically mentioning Mary’s gluten allergy, both on booking and a few days before the event, they still seemed horrified when I reminded them on the day, which meant she got very little to eat for her £45.00. My advice, therefore, is this. If you are there for the dancing, you won’t get a better experience in London—it’s a truly authentic piece of unashamed 1930s glamor, and the five-piece band is exquisite. If you’re just there for the tea, try one of the less well-known venues; you’ll get much better value for money.
Next month, my quest for the best afternoon tea gets literary; I’ll be tracking down a slice of Georgian shopping action and seeking out a certain House on the Strand…