Strawberry Hill (St Mary's Training College)

Strawberry Hill, now St Mary's Training College, was built between 1749 and 1776 by Horace Walpole, with William Robinson and later James Essex acting as executive architects. Richard Bentley, John Chute, Thomas Pitt, and Robert Adam contributed to the interior design. The main facades are on the south and east sides of the building. The exterior is stuccoed and stands two to three storeys high.

On the south facade, 19th-century additions by Lady Waldegrave now incorporate the base of a circular tower built in 1759, which contains kitchens and a Round Room with Tudor windows. A turret with a steep, conical roof covered in fishscale slates was added in 1777.

To the right of the tower is a five-bay range, two storeys high, featuring painted two-light windows and buttresses between them. This section connects to a Great Cloister on the ground floor and a Gallery above. A single-bay section is set back, followed by a triple-angled bow window, also two storeys high, with trefoil-headed ogee windows on each facet, containing the Little Parlour and Blue Bed Chamber. A single bay extends to the corner, returning similarly on the east side with three storeys, featuring ogeed two-light windows on the ground and first floors, and quatrefoils above. To the right, along the east facade, is a three-facetted bow with ogee heads to the first floor, above which is a rectangular oriel with five painted lights, set under a stepped gable. A single bay houses the Great Parlour, with a library above. The parlour features a square-headed oriel, while the library has a cinquefoil-headed window with intersecting tracery, flanked by quatrefoils. Battlemented parapets run throughout the building, punctuated by pinnacles.

Notable interiors include a staircase designed by Bentley; a library with Gothic arches for bookcases and a ceiling inspired by Edmund Crouchback’s fireplace in Westminster Abbey (1754, designed by Chute); the Holbein Chamber, featuring a triple-arched screen, tracery, and a niched fireplace (Bentley); a fan-vaulted Gallery with elaborate canopies (Pitt); the Round Drawing Room and Beauclerc Room (Adam); a Tribune with an elaborate, domed, and traceried ceiling (mostly designed by Chute in 1763); and the Great Bedchamber (1772).