Horace Walpole rents a small house, known locally as Chopp'd Straw Hall, with 5 acres of land.

Cambridge Park is enlarged by Martha Ashe the property having been in the Ashe family since 1657.

Walpole buys the house and grounds which the deeds call Strawberry Hill.

Horace Walpole begins to create his own Strawberry Hill, a neo-Gothic fantasy, on the banks of the Thames west of London

Horace Walpole forms a 'Committee of Taste' with friends John Chute and Richard Bentley, and creates his 'little Gothic castle' over the next 50 years, giving rise to the style 'Strawberry Hill Gothic'.

A bridge is opened at Westminster

Richard Owen Cambridge, after whom the house is named, buys Cambridge Park.

Walpole adds the library and refectory or great parlour to Strawberry Hill.

The first, highly decorative, Hampton Court Bridge with seven steep sided arches opens and replaces the ferry and the ford used in the drier season

David Garrick, famous Shakespearian actor, leases and then buys what was known as Hampton House, now Garrick's Villa, as a country retreat and place to entertain friends

Richard Hoare moves into Barn Elms, beginning a long period of close involvement of the famous banking family in the affairs of Barnes

Garrick's Temple, designer unknown but possibly modelled on Lord Burlington's temple at Chiswick House, is built by David Garrick to entertain friends and house his Shakespeare mementos

Walpole founds a printing press, the Strawberry Hill Press.

After the death of Prince Frederick in 1751, his widow Princess Augusta establishes the botanical gardens at Kew.

John Robartes dies and Radnor House passes through various ownerships.

Joshua Reynolds, by now the most fashionable portrait painter in London, copes with as many as 150 sitters in a year

Garrick commissions from Roubiliac a statue of Shakespeare for a large niche in the Temple at Hampton. The original is now in the British Museum and an exact is replica in Garrick's Temple

Stanhope remodels and extends Pope's Villa.

Liverpool-born artist George Stubbs sets up in London as a painter, above all, of people and horses

The first (wooden) toll bridge at Kew, built by Robert Tunstall, is inaugurated by the Prince of Wales (later George III).. At this time it is the only bridge between Fulham and Kingston

Asgill House, designed by Robert Taylor, is completed for Sir Charles Asgill, recently the Lord Mayor of London (1757-8)

A new theatre opens in Richmond, with a prologue written for the occasion by David Garrick

Walpole adds the Gallery, round tower, great cloister and cabinet to Strawberry Hill.

Hampton Court is effectively abandoned by George III as a Royal dwelling and gradually becomes occupied by "Grace and Favour" residents

Designed by Sir William Chambers, the Orangery in Kew Gardens is completed. It bears the arms of Princess Augusta, for whom it was built, and her husband Prince Frederick.