When Strawberry Hill was being built in 1753, Horace Walpole wrote:

"I have carpenters to direct, plasterers to hurry, papermen to scold, and glaziers to help: this last is my greatest pleasure: I have amassed such quantities of painted glass, that every window in my castle will be illuminated with it: the adjusting and disposing it is vast amusement"

Walpole used English, Dutch and Flemish stained glass, much of it 16th and 17th century, to enrich his gothic windows and create a lively and colourful background for the carefully contrived displays within his rooms. He particularly sought portraits in stained glass and heraldic pieces to evoke historical associations. Moreover he used the medieval chairs illustrated in one scene, the Supper at Emmaus of about 1510, as models for furniture, even using the decorative patterns in some of the glass as a design for a carpet. In addition Walpole engaged the best English glass-painters to embellish his windows and to supply new stained glass subjects for them. The windows which remain in the house are unique in that, despite two hundred and fifty years, much of the glass is in positions chosen for it by Walpole. His enthusiasm for the glass was infectious and it soon became fashionable to incorporate ancient glass into your house to proclaim yourself a man of taste as, for example, William Beckford did at Fonthill Abbey, Sir John Soane in his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.

In recognition of its historical importance, the glass has been included in a joint project between the Corpus Vitrearum Medeii Aevi of Great Britain (CVMA), centred at the Courtauld Institute, and King's College London, for a new website illustrating important stained glass in Great Britain and containing 5000 images. So you can now browse over 105 illustrations of the glass at Strawberry Hill, room by room. Our previous Membership Secretary Dr Michael Peover, who is also the Librarian of the British Society of Master Glass Painters and has made definitive studies of the glass at Strawberry Hill, has assisted the CVMA in the display of the Strawberry Hill windows.   Visit the CVMA website