Alexander Pope and the Grotto at Twickenham
Poet, satirist, letter writer and garden designer, Alexander Pope lived and worked in Twickenham for the last 25 years of his life. It was here, beside the Thames at Cross Deep, that he created his villa, gardens, and the extraordinary grotto that remains one of the most distinctive features of 18th-century landscape design.
Early Life
Alexander Pope was born in 1688 in the City of London. His father was a linen merchant. The family was Catholic which meant that for the whole of is life Pope was subject to restrictions on property ownership, education, and the possibility of financial penalties.
In 1700 the family moved to Binfield in the Windsor Forest where Pope pursued his own studies and began to write poetry. His first published work was the Pastorals in 1709. He described the early years at Binfield as ‘the happiest part of my life’.
However it was also the time that he displayed symptoms of a tubercular disease of the bone, later known as Pott’s Disease, which eventually left him humpbacked, about four feet six inches tall and physically weak.
This did not stop him from producing a wide range of published poetry and forming lasting friendships with Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, Henrietta Howard and others. He wrote in 1726 to Swift: ‘I see no sunshine but in the face of a friend.’
The family moved to Chiswick in 1716. Pope’s father died the following year.
1719 Arrival in Twickenham
Alexander Pope came to Twickenham in the spring of 1719, leasing riverside properties from the local landowner Thomas Vernon. The site formed part of a small working riverside community, made up of artisan cottages, workshops, and businesses including a malthouse, wheelmaker and tannery — later memorably described by Warburton as standing “too close” to the poet’s retreat.
Pope arrived with his elderly mother and his childhood nurse, Mary Beach. He demolished one of the cottages, lived temporarily in another, and built himself a villa overlooking the Thames.
1719–1725: The villa, garden and first grotto
At the same time as building the villa, Pope secured permission to construct a tunnel beneath the road (Cross Deep), linking his house to around five acres of land that he transformed into a garden. This land belonged to several local families, including Vernon.
The cellars of the villa faced the river at ground level, and here Pope created his first grotto. Financial success from translating Homer’s Iliad gave him both the means and the classical inspiration to embellish the space. By 1725, the grotto was complete enough for Pope to write to his friend Edward Blount that, having discovered a spring of water, it “lacked nothing but nymphs” — creatures he never did find.
Decoration was extended along the tunnel from the cellars, concealing the fine brickwork (likely by his neighbour, the builder William Reeves). This later led to the mistaken belief, first popularised by Dr Johnson, that the grotto lay directly beneath the road.
1732: Refining the villa
In 1732, Pope commissioned William Kent to design a portico for the river front of the villa. This attempt at architectural refinement was not universally admired. His patron Lord Burlington, whom Pope also consulted, remarked that Kent had done “all that he can, considering the place.”
1739–1744: The grotto as a museum
A visit to the Hotwells Spa at Bristol in late 1739 proved transformative. Pope was captivated by the geology and colouring of the Avon Gorge and resolved to redesign the grotto as a museum of mineralogy and mining.
With help from Dr Oliver in Bath and Rev Dr William Borlase in Cornwall, materials from Cornish tin mines were delivered in the spring of 1740, with instructions for their careful reassembly. Over the next five years, contributions arrived from friends, admirers and acquaintances across Britain.
Among them were:
- a stalagmite from Wookey Hole in Somerset
- two pieces of basalt from the Giant’s Causeway, gifted by Sir Hans Sloane
- more than 140 geological and mineral specimens in total
Each year Pope claimed the grotto was finished. It never was.
1744: Pope’s death and legacy
Alexander Pope died at his Twickenham villa on 30 May 1744, nine days after his 56th birthday. He was surrounded by friends and was buried in the nave of St Mary the Virgin, Twickenham.
The grotto remains one of the most personal and imaginative expressions of his mind — part poetry, part science, part landscape theatre.
Further reading
- John Serle, A PLAN of Mr Pope’s GARDEN, 1745 (The Augustan Reprint Society, publication no 211, University of California, 1982)
- Maynard Mack, Collected in Himself, University of Delaware Press. 1982
- Alexander Pope, a Life, Yale, 1985
- Ian Gordon, A Preface to Pope, Longman 1993
- Anthony Beckles Willson, MR POPE & OTHERS at Cross Deep in the 18th Century, 1996
- Anthony Beckles Willson, Alexander Pope’s Grotto in Twickenham, The Twickenham Museum, 1998
- Anthony Beckles Willson, Strawberry Hill, A History of the Neighbourhood, Strawberry Hill Residents’ Association, 2001
The Twickenham Museum website contains further material on Pope and his grotto.