A FAMOUS MANSION

Evening Star, Issue 19770, 21 January 1928, Page 4

A FAMOUS MANSION

TO BECOME A TRAINING COLLEGE. One of England’s stately homes. Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, famous as the former residence of Horace Walpole, was opened recently by Cardinal Bourne as a Roman Catholic training college for teachers (states the 1 Daily Chronicle’), It is to be called St. Mary’s College, and will be staffed by twenty priest’s of the congregation of St. Vincent de Paul. There is accommodation for 200 men students. The original college was founded by Cardinal Wiseman, first Archbishop of Westminster, at Brook Green, seventyfive years ago, “ During recent years the demand for admission to the college has far exceeded the accommodation,” one of the priests said at the opening. “We purchased Strawberry Hill two years ago, and sold our old college to Messrs J. Lyons and Co., who wanted mors room for Cadby Hall.” Walpole’s mansion has been left intact, but a new wing containing lecture rooms, dormitories, and a chapel has been added at a cost of £60,000 “ Every effort has been made to preserve the mansion as a national monument,” the priest added. “In the new wing the old Gothic architecture has been followed. We have already received visitors from all over the world.”

Strawberry Hill was bough o by Walpole in 1747. The interior decoration? and enlargements carried out by him were churchlike in appearance. Some of the mantelpieces are replicas of tombs; another is of inlaid marble, which was worth £3OO even in the eighteenth century. One ceiling is an extraordinarily fine copy of mat in Henry VIII.’s chapel in Westminster Abbey. The mansion afterwards passed into the possession of the Waldergrave family. The last "owner was Lord Michelbnm, and the Roman Catholics bought the mansion from Lady Michelham. There , was thirty acres of beautiful gardens.