Strawberry Hill House

This weekend I finally got around to visiting Strawberry Hill House. It’s only a couple of miles or so away from us, and it's ridiculous but we never been there since it was opened to the public a few years ago. It's supposed to mark the start of the Gothic revival in British architecture and it was built over several decades in the second half of the 18th century. It was finished in 1776, so it pre-dates the period of my latest book, Burke in the Land of Silver, though not by much.  

The house was built by Horace Walpole, the son of Britain's first Prime Minister. He had acquired land near the Thames at Twickenham. It was an attractive location, with many grand houses on the stretch of the river from Kew Palace to Hampton Court. Neighbours included Henrietta Howard, who had been the mistress of King George II. Alexander Pope, who had died in 1744 had lived less than half a mile away and built his famous grotto in Twickenham.

Walpole’s book, The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, is regarded as Britain's first Gothic novel. Walpole was a huge fan of Gothicism and decided to build himself a small but perfect Gothic palace. The result is shown in the photo below:

Strawberry Hill House. Photo reproduced under Wiki Commons licence

Walpole’s grand design stretched as far as the round tower. The small section that stretches beyond the tower (with an outdoor staircase leading to the first floor) was built later as a ballroom and other rooms were added to the original house. The whole thing, as built by Walpole, combined a Gothic grandeur with a very domestic scale. If you count the windows, you’ll see that it’s not that large. Indeed, it was intended only as a summer villa and was closed up in the winter. Staff there will tell you that it is still very cold on chilly days.

The building was always intended to be open to visitors. Originally it housed Walpole's impressive collection of art, although one of his descendants sold all of it off in 1842, having gone bankrupt. The idea was that a journey through the house should take you from its dark, mysterious entrance hall through rooms lit by skylights and stained-glass windows, until you arrived in the great State Rooms, full of light and gilding. The photo below shows the Gallery. Fifty-six feet long, thirteen wide and seventeen high, this is the most splendid room in the house. The gold leaf used on the ceiling was the most expensive single element of the restoration. As with all the other detail in the house, the Gothic elements have been shamelessly stolen from elsewhere. In this case, the ceiling is a copy of that in one of the side aisles of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey. Although visually convincing, it is not really a fan vault, since it does not support the roof, being made of papier mache.

 The Gallery at Strawberry Hill House. 

Originally, the walls here (mostly covered with red damask) would have had a lot more paintings on them. The paintings were lost when Walpole’s collection was sold off, although they are gradually being replaced with copies.

The use of other materials to give the effect of stone is common throughout the building. Many of the apparently stone walls and ceilings are brick and wood panelling, carefully painted to give the appearance of stone. Similarly, some of the fireplaces, which may look like stone or marble, are painted wood. A good example is the chimney piece in the Library. (The painting that would have hung in the middle has been located and the gap will soon be filled with a copy of it.) Again, the details are copied from genuinely Gothic elements: in this case the chimney piece is based on the tomb of John of Eltham Earl of Cornwall in Westminster Abbey while the stone work is copied from the tomb of Thomas Duke of Clarence at Canterbury.

The Library. 

Our visit to Strawberry Hill vastly improved a wet and miserable Bank Holiday. I recommend it.

Nearest station: Strawberry Hill (from Waterloo). The house is a five to ten minute walk from the station: follow the sign at the end of each platform.

IT'S TODAY!!!!

Today is the official publication date of His Majesty's Confidential Agent. You've been able to get it on Kindle for about a week, but just last night a box full of beautifully printed copies arrived in my home. Most of my reading nowadays is on Kindle, but there's still nothing quite like the look and feel of a novel you've worked on, finally there as a real publication.

Accent Press are running a promotional price on some of their books at the moment, including mine. So to buy it on Kindle costs just 77p. Yes, you can buy the product of my sweat and tears for pocket change. Here's the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Majestys-Confidential-Agent-James-Burke-ebook/dp/B00JZZS5JY

The paper version is rather pricier. Its £12.51 price tag reflects the fact that comes in at a hefty 325 pages,so not quite an airport read but a fair number of words for your money. You can buy it HERE.

Both versions should already be available in the US.

77p. Just buy it.

Nothing to see here

No blog post here today - but I have got a post on Jenny Kane's blog, telling the story behind "His Majesty's Confidential Agent." Why not pay her a visit?

What a holiday in Scotland told me about the world of my book

Tweet

I'm just back from a long weekend in Scotland. We visited Leadhills in the Southern Uplands. We went because we'd been told that the area was spectacularly beautiful. The scenery was, indeed, impressive, but I ended up by being more interested in the history of the place.

Leadhills

Leadhills is named for the fact that Leadhills were full of – yes, lead. Nobody is sure when people started mining lead in Leadhills. It may have been as long ago as Roman times. By the 17th-century mining was very important and the area was flourishing. The lead was so plentiful that, at first, it was mined by opencast mining, just digging the lead out at the surface. Over the centuries, though, the miners began to follow the veins further and further into the mountains using a system known as "drift mining". Eventually shafts were sunk and the mines grew into huge enterprises. The development of larger mines and increasingly sophisticated operations meant there was a need to improve the technology that kept the workings dry.

Burke in the Land of Silver starts in 1792, so I have naturally developed an interest in this era. It was the start of the Industrial Revolution. At school I was taught about the importance of the development of the Spinning Jenny and the development of new technology at Ironbridge in Shropshire. Nobody mentioned Scotland, which is odd as James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was a Scot, working in Scotland. Watt was not alone, though. In Leadhills, William Symington was developing steam power himself. The photograph shows the stonework that supported a beam engine of his at the mines in nearby Wanlockhead. The date, if you can't read it, is 1789.

 

Symington wasn't just copying existing technology. He was working on ways to use steam engines in entirely new situations. His monument, at the graveyard in Leadhills, shows his greatest achievement: the world's first steam powered vessel, the Charlotte Dundas.

Leadhills, toward the end of the 18th century, was poised on the edge of the modern world. The miners were educated, literate men. Their library (founded in 1741) was the first subscription library in Britain.

Despite this, children worked in the mines, pulling the lead ore out by hand. Even younger children worked outside barefoot in the winter cold, washing the ore in the streams. The miners were encouraged to build their own houses, which offered decent shelter from the elements and which, at the time, were regarded as models of workers' accommodation, but they were tiny places to raise families and the graveyard was well filled.

From Leadhills we travelled to New Lanark, to visit another memorial to those changing times. New Lanark was the site of a cotton mill built by David Dale in 1786. It became an important landmark in industrial development when it was acquired by Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, who had become the mill manager in 1800. Owen built housing for the workers which represented a massive step forward in the accommodation provided for ordinary people at that time. The housing was subsidised and Owen also introduced compulsory medical insurance, which gave his workforce effectively free healthcare. Later he introduced free education, insisting that children in the workforce went to school rather than work in the factories before they were ten. Schooling was available until the age of twelve for those who wanted it and adult education classes were provided in the evening for the workers. The mills were a triumph of engineering with a complex belt system powering several floors of looms from one huge engine. Waterwheels were also used to provide cheaper supplementary power – an early example of an attempt to use renewable resources whenever possible. Owen was a great reformer, one of the founders of the Cooperative movement, and he saw the opportunity for social improvement alongside the immense technical developments of the day. New Lanark employees worked 12.5 hours a day with Sundays put aside for recreation and, later in his life, he argued that the working day should be reduced to 8 hours.

New Lanark is, even today, an impressive complex of buildings (many now converted into highly sought-after flats) but it was Owen's ideas for social development that were his most important legacy.

The decades around 1800 marked a time of massive change. In many ways, they were the start of the modern world. Burke in the Land of Silver is rooted in the history of those times.

In 1800 the world could be a very small place

When my wife was young, she lived in a small village in mid Wales. One day, one of her neighbours decided not to shop in the local market town but to travel away to the big city. When she got there, she found a junction that was controlled by traffic lights. She was so freaked out by this bit of modern technology, that she had to be guided through the town by a friendly policeman. True story.

There are many anecdotes about how, until comparatively recently, people didn't travel the way they do today. Laurie Lee's famous novel, Cider with Rosie, describes how, in the middle years of the last century, many people never travelled more than a day's walk from their village. So we have this notion that people's lives used to be very limited geographically.

In fact, around the beginning of the 19th century, when His Majesty's Confidential Agent is set, the world was not nearly such a big place as we think. The Napoleonic Wars were, in their way, world wars. British forces clashed with the French and their allies throughout Europe and the Middle East. The French supported Indians fighting the British in India and Britain invaded South America. In London's National Army Museum there is a map showing the movements of one private soldier during this period. Over the course of just a few years, he travelled halfway round the world.

My story follows the life of a real person, James Burke. He was born in Ireland but went to France to fight under the French flag. The French sent him to Saint-Domingue (now part of Haiti). There, he surrendered to the British and returned to this country. Eventually he was ordered to Buenos Aires. He also travelled to Spain and spent time in Brazil. He will have seen much more of the world than the average man of the mid-20th century.

Colonialism in those days made the world, in many ways, a very small place. It also allowed for adventures on a very grand scale. I hope you enjoy reading about them.

If it's Easter, it must be time to visit Wales

I seem to have got into the habit of posting a picture from Wales around Easter time. Lambs seem particularly popular with readers, so here's this year's lamb picture.

And here's a bonus.

I love Wales which, coincidentally, is where my publisher, Accent Press, is based.

Field trip

Until this weekend, I'd never been to Portsmouth.

The home of the Royal Navy is also the home of several naval museums and famous ships, including Nelson's Victory. As the Burke books are set around the Napoleonic wars and warships feature in them, I thought Portsmouth was well overdue a visit.

Most of the museums are set in the Historic Royal Dockyards, where ships from the 19th century sit close to very 21st century warships that are berthed in their home port. The juxtaposition brings home to you how much the Navy is a continuing thread in Britain's history. It's an amazing place and I'll definitely be visiting it again.

The Victory is probably the most famous vessel there. Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, the Victory is still technically a commissioned ship of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, being the flagship of the First Sea Lord, who uses it for formal entertaining. Mostly, though, it is a museum, still being lovingly restored back to the state that it was in when it led the British in their greatest naval victory against the French.

The sequel to His Majesty's Confidential Agent is being polished up and it includes a description of the Battle of the Nile (another of Nelson's victories) as viewed from the gun deck of a British man o'war. Being able to walk the gun deck of a ship of that period has helped me understand better what it must have been like, though a lovely sunny afternoon safe in dry dock can give only the faintest idea of the horrors of that same deck when filled with cannon smoke and hundreds of men serving the guns amid the noise of battle and the stench of death.

Warships then and now are both beautiful and terrible things. At least this weekend, we could admire the beauty knowing that, for now, the Navy's big guns are silent.