Strawberry Hill 1

For many years we have been thinking about and talking about visiting Strawberry Hill, a queer house not far from Epsom. Ambitions kept alive by extensive coverage in the press on the occasion of its fairly recent refurbishment and by our visits to Houghton Hall, one at least of which is recorded at reference 1. Then, earlier this week, we finally made it, in the margins of a visit to John Lewis to regulate a purchase of small clothes.

Elected to get to John Lewis (at Kingston) by train which meant that we were able to pay a quick visit to the waiting room library at Raynes Park where the usual collection of light fiction for ladies was augmented by what appeared to be a collection from an elderly relative and which contained a lot of calendars featuring rather good pictures of the alps, some from Korea, a lot of booklets about matters botanical and a rather smaller number of booklets about matters arty.

Onto to tea, coffee and cake in Fife Road, where my cake was a biscuit base take on an apple crumble pie. Warm and filling.

Amused at the otherwise very smart John Lewis by the trolley illustrated, looking very Co-op among all the usual finery. I might notice also that, unlike those from M&S, the receipts from John Lewis turn black all over if you attempt to iron them. I remember now that there once used to be small printers attached to computers which worked by touching the heat sensitive paper with small hot wires, a dot matrix of them, and I can only suppose that John Lewis are still using them.

Back on the train to Strawberry Hill to find that this last is one of those stations which turn out to be just a hole, as it were, in the side of a suburban street, a phenomenon I first discovered along the northern reaches of the Piccadilly Line. Arnos Grove comes to mind. It being a suburban street, the supply of restaurants and public houses was a bit uncertain, so we settled for bacon rolls at the café near the station. A café which was run by a cheerful lady with a slightly odd accent, which I took to be Australian but which turned out to be of Greek descent, via twenty years in South Africa before winding up in Strawberry Hill. Bacon quite good and plentiful, if a little salty to my taste.

The maps offered by Microsoft on my telephone turned out to be rather idiosyncratic in regard to their labeling of features with some of the labels seeming to come and go. And that downloaded from Ordnance Survey, while much better in that regard, a proper map rather than a town street map, did not, for some odd cartographic reason, include Strawberry Hill House. But we got there in the end.

The House turned out to be an improper National Trust offering, that is to say not a full member of the Trust family and with pretensions to independence in the way of, say, Painshill Park (see reference 2) and attracting a slightly better class of trusty. But they played the Trust game to the extent of having a shop and offering for sale a small but select selection of plants, including some large-leafed strawberries in hanging basket format.

The catch was that while they did not insist on guided tours, which I do not care for at all, they did do timed entry with a talk at entry. The first available slot was 1440, it then being 1330 and raining. We might have abandoned ship at that point but didn't, booking our tickets and sailing off to inspect the Thames from the nearby Radnor Gardens, from where we were able to tweet some green parakeets swinging about their home turf of Ham Lands Meadows. The rain reminded us that riverside cottages were all very well but apt to be damp and cold in the winter.

From there to the rather grand Young's public house and hotel called 'The Alexander Pope', an establishment probably built in the thirties of the last century and graced by the addition of a very grand glass extension out front more recently. Their web site at reference 3 does not do justice to the very decent selection of white wine by the glass, unusual for a public house. We sipped our wine and wondered about the longevity of the seals between the substantial slabs of glass making up the extension. No built in waterproofing in the way of tiles or slates.

And so back to Strawberry Hill at 1440 sharp for our introductory talk, short and rather better than I had feared. The house turned out to be a very odd place indeed, the creation of the youngest son of the Sir Robert Walpole of reference 1. Lots of stuff about the place on the internet, with reference 4 being just a sample, but I offer a few observations.

Lots of money been spent on the recreation of fancy wallpaper and fancy paint. All very heritagefull I dare say, but I am not sure about value for money. But, given that they are a trusty rather than a public operation, I suppose that that is up to the trustees.

I was surprised at the trompe l'oeil wallpaper up the main stairs, but then remembered the trompe l'oeil painting on some of the grand ceilings at Houghton Hall. Even Whig grandees were moved to cut corners at times. Indeed, such painting was quite common at the time and I think that the nearby Ham House is full of it.

Not impressed by the soft toys masquerading as art all over the place, the work of an artist now sedentary but of traveller stock. But while I was not impressed, I could see that the rooms would have seemed a bit cold and empty without, the original contents of the place having been long since dispersed.

The interior doors were of fancy shape, but otherwise rather shoddy looking pine doors. A bit incongruous amid all the fine wallpaper. There was also an element of work in progress and some of the floors had been a bit cut about over the years, rather like our own.

Lighting mainly by Ikea, with some rather clever imitation candles at one point, with the flames cleverly replaced by bits of flame shaped, fluttering foil.

Out to return to the station by a slightly different route on which we were very impressed by the size and appearance of some of the suburban villas. large red brick affairs, rather handsome if expensive to run and probably something more than 100 years old. Made those of our road in Epsom, and its vicinity, seem very lower middle class.

And a return visit to the waiting room library, of which more shortly.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/bob-of-lynn.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/kingfisher-time.html.

Reference 3: http://www.alexanderpope.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/.