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Where the books were written, set, sold, printed and buried: from the Globe to the graves, the bookshops to the presses.
This season's book talks, festivals and exhibitions are in What's On: Books & writers
Horace Walpole's Gothic castle in miniature, where The Castle of Otranto came to him in a dream and the Gothic novel began.
Writers' housesIn the storyGo inside
Also in Museums and Architecture.
Walpole bought a cottage by the Thames in 1747 and spent thirty years turning it into a little castle of battlements, fan vaults in papier mache and painted glass, the first Gothic Revival house in England; in 1764 he dreamed of a giant armoured hand on the staircase here and wrote The Castle of Otranto in two months, inventing the genre that runs to Frankenstein and Dracula. He ran his own press in the garden, printing Gray's Odes, and the house restored in 2010 has its gilt and gloom back, with the collection he described in his own catalogue returned to the rooms.
| Monday | Closed |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Wednesday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Saturday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Sunday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.
House and shop; last entry 16:00. Garden and café open from 09:30 on weekdays and 09:00 at weekends.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.