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Case file s1813 · Literature and art · 1797
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1797
Horace Walpole: Portrait of Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Horace Walpole. Joshua Reynolds. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
2 March 1797
Place
London, England
Field
writer and collector · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
English law (settled estates) · Common law
Historical event
The Great Sale at Strawberry Hill, 1842
Member of
Royal Society of London, Club de l'Entresol, Whigs (Wikidata)
Literature and artEmpires and conquestEuropeUnited Kingdom

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill collection was sold off over 24 days in 1842 after heirs spent the family fortune

Walpole died in 1797 and Strawberry Hill passed first to his cousin Anne Seymour Damer, then to John Waldegrave, a grandson of Maria Walpole. John and George Waldegrave spent most of the family fortune in the first half of the 19th century. The Great Sale, held in the grounds in 1842, lasted 24 days and stripped the house of nearly all its contents. The Guardian, citing Kennedy in 2010, reports this. George Waldegrave died on 28 September 1846, and his wife Frances inherited the whole estate. She restored the derelict house from 1856. The collection scattered to museums and private owners worldwide. From October 2018 to February 2019 about 150 works were returned to their mapped places in the house for the exhibition Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill. Yale University's Lewis Walpole Library keeps a database of known and untraced items. The total raised by the 1842 sale was not found†.

What the law took from it

A collector's house can outlast him only if the heirs keep both the house and the contents, and a single spender can dissolve a collection.

Sources
  1. The GuardianPress
  2. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill collection was sold off over 24 days in 1842 after heirs spent the family fortune,” story s1813, https://www.celebrity.estate/horace-walpole-1797, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artEmpires and conquestEuropeCommon lawUnited Kingdom