Our patron, Kim Wilkie, awarded CBE in New Year’s Honours
We are immensely proud that our patron Kim Wilkie has been awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours list for his services to Landscape Architecture.
Kim has been a patron of Alexander Pope’s Grotto since 2014, but his connection to the site goes back to the 1990s when he joined with the Garden History Society, National Heritage Memorial Fund, Royal Fine Arts Commission, English Heritage, National Trust, V&A Museum, Georgian Group, Thames Landscape Strategy and London Borough of Richmond to attempt to create a combined study centre for Strawberry Hill and Pope’s Grotto.
As a Landscape Architect his approach emphasises a deep engagement with a place’s inherent character, memory and ecological context, to create designs that are both functional and meaningful.
Alexander Pope’s Grotto is the last remaining part of his famous villa and gardens, which he built in 1720 on the banks of the Thames at Twickenham. A mine of minerals gathered from all parts of the world, it is listed as Grade 2* and as Heritage at Risk ‘Of outstanding national importance’. It is loaded with significance for British culture and for the birth of the English Landscape Garden Movement, described by Mavis Batey as ‘A seminal event in in the 18th century search to establish man’s relationship to nature’.
Demolished in 1808, the villa was replaced and the property became the subject of much redevelopment over the following 200 years. In 1996 St James’s Independent School for Boys acquired the estate, remaining for 14 years, during which time a Charitable Trust was created to preserve the grotto. The current owner, Radnor House School, acquired the school in 2010 and has committed wholeheartedly to the project of conservation and to the activities surrounding it.
Since the Trust started opening the grotto regularly to the public in 2016 more than 5000 people have explored its passages and minerals, drawing Londoners, students and enthusiasts from all over the world. Our conservation project finished in 2024 and we plan to hold regular public Open Days each year.
You can find out more about the project to preserve and restore the grotto on our Conservation page.
The conservation of Pope’s Grotto has been supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
