Positioned on Walpole’s “sweet walk” to frame a view of the River Thames, the seat was conceived as both a visual spectacle and a place of sociable engagement — an extension of the drama of the Gothic house into the garden. Walpole was enchanted by it, writing in 1759 about the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond and Lady Ailesbury seated together: “There never was so pretty a sight as to see all three of them sitting in the shell.”
Jean-Henri Müntz, View of the Shell Seat and Bridge at Strawberry Hill, 1755. Ink drawing. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
A recreation of the bench, installed during the major restoration of Strawberry Hill between 2007 and 2010, has now deteriorated significantly after fifteen years exposed to the elements. Strawberry Hill has launched an appeal to raise £30,000 for a new reconstruction — one built to last. Factum Arte is now working to produce an exact digital record of Bentley’s original eighteenth-century design, enabling a faithful replica to be made in durable, weather-resistant materials. The restored Shell Seat will also serve as a memorial to Derek Purnell, Director of Strawberry Hill from 2020 to 2024, who championed the project before his death last year.
Detail of a 18th-century engraving by Thomas Morris after Bentley’s design
The project deepens a collaboration stretching back over a decade, during which Factum Arte and the Factum Foundation have produced many facsimiles of major works for Strawberry Hill — including the portraits of the Waldegrave sisters by Joshua Reynolds in the Scottish National Gallery, and the Cellini Bell (actually made by Wenzel Jamnitzer) in the British Museum.
