A further allusion to Strawberry Hill at Lee Priory, Kent (Letter)

Since the publication of the article on Thomas Barrett and Lee Priory in this Magazine 1363 (December 2015, pp.836–42), further evidence concerning Lee Priory’s relationship to Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill has emerged. This indicates that an additional playful reference to Strawberry Hill existed throughout Lee’s Gothic centrepiece: the octagonal library and its antechamber. Polychrome bookcases with either open or enclosed upper shelves, as recorded in John Carter’s pencil sketches of Lee Priory made in 1791, are found in both rooms and in the dog-leg connecting these quite different spaces, the antechamber being a half-cube and the Library a chapterhouse-like octago