Horace Walpole's friend Richard Bentley designed this lantern for the entrance hall to Strawberry Hill, Walpole's Gothic Revival villa at Twickenham. "In the well of the staircase," Walpole wrote, "by a cord of black and yellow, hangs a gothic lanthorn of tin japanned, designed by Mr. Bentley, and filled with painted glass; the door of it has an old pane with the arms of Vere, earl of Oxford." On 11 June 1753, he announced to his friend George Montagu, "I have filled Mr Bentley's Gothic lanthorn with painted glass, which casts the most venerable gloom on the stairs that was seen since the days of Abelard."