A 14-year struggle to rescue a prime monument of the Gothic Revival is in doubt after the trust set up to save it has run into trouble over the lease of an education room required by the Heritage Lottery Fund as a condition of its £4.8 million grant.

“Never build a charming house for yourself between London and Hampton Court, every one will live in it but you,” wrote Horace Walpole of Strawberry Hill, his Thames-side villa at Twickenham which he named after one of the plots of common land he acquired. Collector, author, dilettante and one of Georgian England’s most prolific and witty letter writers, Walpole was the youngest son of Britain’s first prime minister. Thanks to his taste and flair, Strawberry Hill Gothick has become a style in its own right.

Walpole is also credited as the father of the Gothic novel. His book, The Castle of Otranto, was the inspiration for an entire literary movement. It influenced Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, as well as Tolkien and J. K. Rowling.

Peter Inskip, the architect who has drawn up the rescue plans, says: “Most early Gothic Revival houses are Palladian in Gothic dress. Here Walpole delighted in the changes of levels resulting from the two old cottages he incorporated in his new house, using unpredictability to recreate the atmosphere of ancient castles and abbeys.”

Walpole never expected his villa to last. “My buildings are like paper and both will blow away ten years after I am dead,” he wrote. Instead of the carved stone of Gothic cathedrals, his vaulting and tracery were fashioned in wood, stucco and papier-mâché. Yet Strawberry Hill did not blow away, but its highly fragile structure and decoration pose significant challenges.

Walpole began building in 1748 and did not cease until 1790. At the same time the property grew to 46 acres stretching down to the Thames. Around his mock-castle he created one of the earliest informal landscape gardens. In the grounds he established a private publishing company, the Strawberry Hill Press.

In the 19th century the house passed to Frances Braham, later Countess Waldegrave. From 1856-73 Strawberry Hill became the exotic setting for her activities as political hostess, which brought the addition of an immense Victorian Gothic drawing room and billiard room.

In 1923 the Strawberry Hill estate was purchased as a Roman Catholic teacher training college, saving it, like Stowe at the same time, from inevitable demolition. The Vincentian Fathers employed first Pugin & Pugin and then the great traditionalist Sir Albert Richardson to carry out repairs while living modestly in the upper rooms. Walpole’s interiors have languished since 1993 when the fathers moved to new quarters.

Michael Snodin, the chairman of the Strawberry Hill Trust, says: “Damp is growing within the walls, silk damask wall coverings have been destroyed by overexposure to sunlight, plasterwork is severely cracked, the lead around rare Renaissance window glass is failing, and delicate papier-mâché ceilings, unique to Strawberry Hill, are being eaten away by poor atmospheric conditions and by squirrels which have accessed the eves.”

The trust plans to restore Walpole’s romantic spiky silhouette, reinstating six soaring pinnacles lost in the 1930s. In the 18th century Strawberry Hill glowed in a coat of brilliant limewash. When Pevsner came in the 1950s he was horrified to find a toffee-coloured suburban-looking Victorian villa. In lighthearted mode, the college art department painted Walpole’s stair hall a strong pink. Snodin says: “It needs to be a stone colour evoking the medieval atmosphere Walpole sought to create.”

Walpole’s state apartment was approached along a corridor which he likened to the fusty inside of a traveller’s trunk – a prelude to the explosion of bright colour and crimson damask hangings in the Long Gallery, Round Dining Room (by Robert Adam) and the Great North Bedchamber.

The Strawberry Hill Trust was set up in 2002 and has signed a 125-year lease on the villa and now secured most of the £9 million needed for repairs. It plans to open the house in 2010. As space in the villa is limited, the Heritage Lottery Fund, with its strong emphasis on education, demanded a second classroom for crafts activities. The only place to provide this, without erecting an intrusive new building in the garden, is in the ground-floor room of the adjoining Waldegrave wing which remains in college use. The college agreed but is now having qualms about the implications of granting a 125-year lease on a single room. The completion date on the lease of July 31 has been missed. “No second education room, no HLF grant,” says a doleful Snodin.

This is a matter which could run and run. Yet there is good will on all sides. The top brass of all parties, including the chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the resourceful Dame Liz Forgan, should be locked in the education room till it is sorted out.

Marcus Binney is president of SAVE Britain’s Heritage

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