Search

Series I holds printed portraits of Walpole and Waldegrave family members primarily created as plates for eighteenth and nineteenth-century publications. Multiple portraits are present for Horace Walpole (1717-1797) and his father Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford (1676-1745), as well as other key associates such as his publisher Richard Bentley and friends Mary Berry, William Cole, and Anne Seymour Damer. The collection also contains a few early twentieth-century photographs of portraits, both printed and painted.

Series II primarily documents the sale and development, in the late nineteenth century, of Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole's estate in Twickenham, and Houghton Hall, the family's estate in Norfolk, through printed auction prospectuses, maps, and site plans issued by London firms marketing the properties. Material is present too for Little Strawberry Hill, which was at times offered separately from Strawberry Hill, as well as the family's home at 15 Berkeley Square, London. Also here are engraved views and floor plans of Strawberry Hill and Houghton Hall removed from publications, a photograph of Houghton Hall (1865, a plate from Norfolk Photographically Illustrated), prints of Strawberry Hill interiors, chimneys, and collection objects (plates engraved for A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole), and newspaper clippings describing the estates. In addition, there are views of homes of the Berry, Chute, and Townsend families, and another Walpole ancestral home, Wolterton Hall in Norfolk.