Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Strawberry Hill
268 Waldegrave Rd
House
March-Oct Mon-Wed 2-5.30pm, Sat & Sun noon-5.30pm (last admission 4.20pm) • £8.40
Guided tour
Sat
10.30am • £13
Garden
Daily 10am-6pm • Free •
T
020 8744 1241,
W
strawberryhillhouse.org.uk • Strawberry Hill train station from
Waterloo
One last oddity well worth making the effort to visit is
Strawberry Hill
. In 1747 writer,
wit and fashion queen Horace Walpole, youngest son of former prime minister Robert
Walpole, bought this “little play-thing house…the prettiest bauble you ever saw…set
in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges”, renamed it Strawberry Hill and set about
inventing the most influential building in the Gothic Revival. Walpole appointed a
“Committee of Taste” to embellish his project with details from other Gothic
buildings: screens from Old St Paul's and Rouen cathedrals, and fan vaulting from
Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
The house quickly became the talk of London, a place of pilgrimage for royalty and
foreign dignitaries alike. Walpole was forced to issue tickets in advance (never more than
four and no children) to cut down the number of visitors. Those he wished to meet he
greeted dressed in a lavender suit and silver-embroidered waistcoat, sporting a cravat
carved in wood by Grinling Gibbons and an enormous pair of gloves that once belonged
to James I. When he died in 1797, he left the house to his friend, the sculptor Anne
Damer, who continued to entertain in the same spirit, giving lavish garden parties dressed
in a man's coat, hat and shoes. Walpole wanted visits of Strawberry Hill to be a theatrical
experience, and, with its eccentric Gothic decor, it remains so to this day. There's a
Committtee of Taste
café
in the Great Cloister, open slightly earlier hours than the house.
22
Wimbledon
Wimbledon is a dreary, high, bleak, windy suburb, on the edge of a threadbare heath.
Virginia Woolf
Nowadays, of course,
Wimbledon
is best known for its tennis tournament, the
Wimbledon Championships, held every year in the last week of June and the first week
of July, on the grass courts of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club - to give
the ground its grand title. For the rest of the year, Wimbledon's vast
common
is its most
popular attraction, worth a visit for its
windmill
, and for the remarkable
Southside House
.
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum
Gate 4, Church Rd
Museum
daily 10am-5pm • £12
Guided tours
book online • £22 •
T
020 8946 2244,
W
wimbledon.com • Bus #493
from
!
Southfields
If you've missed the tournament itself (see p.437), the next best thing for tennis fans is a
quick spin around the state-of-the-art
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum
. It traces the
history of the game, which is descended from the
jeu de paume
played by the French
clergy from the twelfth century onwards. The modern version, though, is considered to
have been invented by a Victorian major, who called it “Sphairstike”, a name that, not
surprisingly, failed to stick. The new sport was initially seen as a genteel pastime, suitable
for both gentlemen and ladies, and its early enthusiasts hailed almost exclusively from
the aristocracy and the clergy - the museum's Edwardian dressing room is the epitome
of upper-class masculinity. As well as the historical and fashion angles and the tennis-star
memorabilia, there's also plenty of opportunity for watching vintage game footage.
Wimbledon Windmill
Wimbledon Rd • April-Oct Sat 2-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm • £2 •
T
020 8947 2825,
W
wimbledonwindmill.org.uk • Bus #93 from
!
Wimbledon
With none of the views of Richmond,
Wimbledon Common
can appear rather bleak:
mostly rough grass and bracken punctuated by playing fields and golf courses, and cut
through by the busy A3. The chief reason to come here is the
Wimbledon Windmill
,
situated at the end of Windmill Road in the northern half of the common, with
