Strawberry Hill Forever...

Let me take you down.... 

Let me take you down, 

Cause I'm going to,

Strawberry Hill.....

But first I have to get there, crossing London, walking, touching the void, and....

Nothing is real

At the bottom of Green Park, at the end of the Mall, the statue of Winged Victory on the Victoria Memorial stands solemnly quiet.  There is no traffic.  There are no crowds.  There are police persons, many of them moustachioed, some bearded, some of one gender, others of another.  I have to weave my way around tapes and bollards, impatient to get past, and not understanding why today is unlike any other....

A quiet residential corner of London

I ask a policeman if I am going the right way to Vauxhall Bridge. He points down the Mall saying, The river is that way. 

It used to be, when I were brought up, that if you had any doubts at all, you would ask a policeman. 

How times change.....

Big Brother is watching you

Anyway, despite police advice, I do make it to Vauxhall, passing Terry Farrell's 1994 homage to Art Deco (with a few security gizmos) in the MI6/Secret Intelligence Service building [by coincidence Military Intelligence section six can trace its origins back to Sir Francis Walsingham in 1569, and, though this is of no consequence or public interest, I shall be in Walsingham in a day or two..... pardon the aside....]

I note that now, on the other side of the bridge, blocks of flats have arisen to mimic the colours and design of the headquarters of British espionage..... (but probably not quite so bullet proof)

How green are my glasses?

I also notice that even the Thames cannot be trusted, as some kind of security patrol is being carried out below me.

Time and tide wait for no man

Anyway, contrary to what TfL has to say, I get a direct train from Vauxhall to Strawberry Hill, where it seems that:

Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see

Strawberry Hill House is the original creation of Horace Walpole, the third son [Perhaps? his mother may have known otherwise: Ed] of Sir Robert Walpole, England's first Prime Minister and creator of Houghton Hall, near here in Norfolk (where us locals enjoy a touch of sculpture....)

Anyway, Horace may well have understood the words of Mr Lennon:

It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out

It doesn't matter much to me....

As his story is one of wandering about Europe and then making his mark in Twickenham by building what some might call a folly, but which was a significant part of the mid 18th century Georgian Gothic Revival.

Horatio (Horace) Walpole (1717 - 1797) was the author of The Castle of Otranto, which he wrote in 1764 while MP for King's Lynn (I cannot imagine a member of parliament these days being able to devote time to any secondary employment..... I mean, you need to be at meetings - eg COBRA - or there for debates and voting, etc.....)

The book is generally regarded as being the first Gothic novel, a genre which led to, among others, works by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson.  It was, apparently, inspired by a nightmare Walpole (under the ingenious pseudonym of Onuphrio Muralto - Muralto meaning Tall Wall) experienced whilst at Strawberry Hill House.

Walpole - a pole is approximately five metres long, so Tall Wall.... - [You said this, sort of: Ed] was a great collector, as well as an aesthete, a writer and a socialite. He stuffed his Gothic Castle with art and artefacts and beautified the walls and windows, delighting in that which was enjoyable without conspicuous practical use [Interesting to compare this building with Houghton Hall? Ed].

He held lavish parties here, with music and dancing [Strictly Dancing?  Ed] in the Great Hall:

With a neat, circular, withdrawing room leading off it, for retiring to..... without issue......

But he didn't marry, and died childless, so the house went first to his cousin, but then into the Waldegrave family, which included two brothers, John and George, who squandered much on drunken gambling and sold off nigh all the collection, though after George's death, his widow, Frances, took it upon herself to restore the house from the wreck her man had brung it to (sic).  It later passed to a banker, and then, in 1923, it was acquired by what became St Mary's University, Twickenham.

In recent years, it has been studiously restored and some of the missing art works, from different owners, have been exhibited here, including this portrait, below, of the Waldegrave sisters, by Joshua Reynolds, [And, Ed, there is no need for any of your facetious comments here.  Yes there are three sisters - Chekhov?  I don't think so.  Four chairs?  So?  Pictures of five women.... and only four chairs?  For God's sake, Ed, let them be.....]

So, anyway.....

Let me take you down

'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Hill

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about

Strawberry Hill forever

John Lennon wasn't much like Horace Walpole, I'm sure, but they may both have been dreamers, and sometimes there's something refreshing in uncertainty.....

Always know sometimes think it's me

But you know I know when it's a dream

I think a no will mean a yes, but it's all wrong

That is I think I disagree.....

For me, Strawberry Hill House is, in some ways, a memorial to the imagination.  It is a symbol, if you like, of the ability of an individual being to assert that individuality.  I don't excuse the excess of richesse that enables this, or any other such extravagance, but I also don't wish to suggest restriction on our desire to dream. Dreams can be elusive; hope and delusion can interweave, but shying away from dreaming is to give in to those who claim more confidence than we can muster at a certain moment. 

As Horace Walpole said:

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel....

Pero.....

Finché c’è vita c’è speranza

Cicero

No one I think is in my tree

I mean it must be high or low

That is you can't, you know tune in but it's all right

That is I think it's not too bad

John Lennon

x

London 14 - Richmond upon Thames

A Royal Bend in the River

Goo now thy wey, this penaunce ys but lyte,

And whan this book ys maad, yive it the quene,

On my byhalf, at Eltham or at Sheene.....

So says Alceste, the queen of love (modelled on Anne of Bohemia) to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, in 1386, referring to two preferred royal retreats.  

In the year 1500, King Henry VII, Earl of Richmond (in Yorkshire) renamed the quiet royal manor of Sheen as Richmond - Richmond upon Thames.

Not for nothing are there pubs here named The Duke of York, and The Prince's Head.  It wasn't far away, in Richmond Park, in 1536, that Henry VIII stood on what is now known as King Henry's Mound to spy the smoke signal announcing the beheading of Anne Boleyn at Tower Green.  The following day he remarried.  From this viewpoint today it is possible to see the dome of St Paul's, ten miles away across the city haze (telescope provided by my uncle's firm).

In the town itself, at the end of King Street (or Duke Street, or Old Palace Row), lies Richmond Green, where jousts were held in the 15th and 16th centuries - though nowadays any game involving more than ten players needs special permission.  

The Gate House, Wardrobe and Old Palace Yard of the Tudor Palace (originally founded in 1299 but rebuilt by Henry VII after its destruction by fire in 1497) still remain (as do the 18th century houses of the Maids of Honour of Queen Caroline).  Both Edward III (1377) and Elizabeth I (1603) died in the palace here.

At least one other royal connection can be traced around this bend of the river.  Ham House, just beyond the village of Petersham, owned by the National Trust since 1948, is 17th century baroque and was gifted by Charles I to his whipping boy, William Murray, later 1st Earl of Dysart. Apparently, the house was also where King Charles II secretly met with his Cabal (his policy-making committee, named after the initials of its five members).  

The river flows.....  Central to England and its history.  The bridge here, 91 metres long, opened in 1780, is the eighth bridge to span the Thames in Greater London, and the oldest surviving, and it connects the two parts of the Borough of Richmond, the only London Borough to exist on both sides of the river.

The river flows.....  For centuries the Thames was the preferred means of transport from west to east, and vice versa.  The railway arrived in Richmond in 1840, but the river is still busy with craft of many kinds, though these days more for pleasure than for business.

And as it flows, it floods too, with spring tides still causing difficulties for local residents and patrons of certain hostelries.....

And as it floods it washes the pastures, with Petersham meadows being the nearest true farmland to London.....

And rising above the meadows, with the only view in London protected by Act of Parliament, is the Grade II listed Royal Star and Garter Home, built by Sir Edwin Cooper, based on a 1915 plan by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of the St Pancras Hotel and Bankside Power Station - Tate Modern -  amongst other things).  This great building, which occupies the site of the popular Star and Garter Hotel on Richmond Hill, was built to care for servicemen who had been severely disabled during the First World War. Queen Mary, with George V at her side, inaugurated the home in 1924.

The Royal Star and Garter Home, Richmond Hill; sold for £50m in 2014

The Royal Star & Garter Homes is a charity that provides nursing and therapeutic care to the ex-Service community. Having sold their property on Richmond Hill, they now have two homes, one in Solihull and the other in Surbiton, though they plan to open one more in High Wycombe.

The London Square Company (founded in 2010, the company has already created a development pipeline worth over £1 billion) is now working closely with the Borough of Richmond upon Thames, English Heritage and the local community to create a residential scheme which respects and complements the wonderful heritage of this Grade II listed building. 

It is a relief to know this: some people might have worried that the edifice would just be converted into flats.....

For house hunters who are not into makeovers, Richmond has a range of properties, from this five bedroom Terraced house (valued at about £3m) ....

Or for a similar price, but with one less bedroom, there is Wick House, built in 1772 for the painter Joshua Reynolds, who died here twenty years later....

Though for a two bedroom cottage in Old Palace Lane the price would be a much more affordable one million....

Richmond attracts. Clearly the royals of yesteryear found it healthy and restful, and so apparently do the nouveau riche of today (Sir Michael Jagger being but one householder in the area).  Others from the stage and screen have retired here:

And almost exactly one hundred years ago an earnest, slightly stressy couple moved, initially, into a flat above the delivery entrance to Boots, escaping the intensity of Bloomsbury.  

Virginia Woolf had attempted suicide in 1913, and her husband Leonard fancied that Richmond would be more relaxing.  The lady soon settled in and was often to be seen walking her dog, Grizzle, near the river, which she referred to as my river.....

Unfortunately her recovery was short lived, and just as the couple was about to move into Hogarth House in March 1915 she had a breakdown and was admitted to a nursing home.  Leonard moved in himself, and then Virginia joined him in April, attended by four nurses.

 

They founded the Hogarth Press in March 1917, using a small, hand-operated press, and began by publishing some of their own short stories.  

Then, in November 1918 they were visited by an American who had just turned thirty-one. Within a couple of years, with a little help from Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot produced The Waste Land, first published in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Virginia had noted that this was a very strange young man.  On June 18th, 1922, he recited the poem to the Woolfs (Woolves?) in their home. Mrs Woolf noted in her diary that He sang it and chanted it, rhymed it. It has a great beauty and force.....  What connects it together, I'm not so sure. 

In September 1923 the Hogarth press published 450 copies of the first UK book edition of the 434 line poem.  The type was set by Virginia herself.

Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me.  Richmond and Kew

Undid me.  By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.

My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet.  After the event

He wept.  He promised a ‘new start.’

I made no comment.  What should I resent?

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

A Bend in the River

V S Naipaul

(NB: Naipaul's river was an unspecified African one, probably the Congo, but through gossamer threads I linked his bend and his river to Conrad, and Eliot, colonialism and nothingness - though I realise I am probably stretching all this beyond acceptable limits!)

St Mary Magdalene, Richmond Town Ministry

Elizabeth and Leicester 

Beating oars 

The stern was formed 

A gilded shell 

Red and gold 

The brisk swell 

Rippled both shores 

Southwest wind 

Carried down stream 

The peal of bells 

White towers 

Weialala leia 

Wallala leialala