The Winchester 'Mystery House'

The museum that I intended to visit today was closed and so I headed for San Jose to visit the Mystery House - a Victorian Gothic mansion of ridiculous proportions with some 167 rooms ('only' 110 were visited on the house tour).  The house would have been larger - until the earthquake of 1906 it was six stories high in places as this old engraving shows.

The Winchester in the name comes from the gun manufacturer - the lady who lived in this house and who was responsible for the literally continuous building programme from 1884 to 1922 was Sarah Winchester, widow of the heir to the fortune created by the firm which manufactured both rifles and other metallic goods.

It is a truly odd house.  No photography was permitted inside but it is a maze of passages, stairways, rooms within rooms and 47 fireplaces - many of which have chimneys which don't connect to the roof.

In places the house is very opulent - these front doors - which don't photograph well from the outside - were created by Tiffany & Co specially for this house, but were never used.  There were many beautiful Tiffany windows, some featuring prism glass which were really spectacular.  Other areas of the house were very plain indeed.

The story that we were told on our tour was that Sarah Winchester, having lost a child and her husband in quick succession, came to believe that she was being haunted and punished by the  spirits of those who had been killed by the Winchester guns manufactured by her husbands firm.  She held seances and determined that her route to forgiveness and eternal life was by a continuous expansion of her house.

The contents of the house are long gone - many rooms are empty and austere and those that are furnished have been re-created using period furniture.

The gardens and outbuildings were interesting - like Tyntesfield, this was a sophisticated and self-sufficient estate of its time.

It was great to see trees and flowers in bloom in the milder Californian weather..

This last was my favourite shrub..

It was named 'Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow'..