Library

For the interiors, which are equally variegated, Walpole and his friends took as their models the illustrations in the few publications on medieval architecture then available. Their application was done in a purely decorative way. A Gothic tomb or rood screen could serve equally as a basis for a fireplace or bookshelves. In this way, there arose an amalgam of diverse sources from different buildings and stylistic phases of English and French Gothic, all on a reduced scale, all made of plaster, wood or papier mâch�, and brightly painted and enlivened with mirrors. It was an artificial, playful world that still had much to do with the Rococo and was concerned little with the archeological seriousness that would subsequently overtake the Gothic Revival and Neoclassicism alike later on during the 18th century.