Events and News

Events

Date	Event
8th June to 31st December 2019	Our friends at the Twickenham Museum have curated an exhibition to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Pope's arrival in Twickenham. It runs until the end of the year and there's more information here.
Monday 9th September	As part of Richmond-upon-Thames Know Your Place Heritage Festival, the grotto will be open from 6 pm to 7:30 pm. Sold out
Saturday 21st September 2019	Open House London: the grotto will be open in the morning. A limited number of free tickets are available. Sold out
Saturday 28th September 2019, 18:00 to 22:00	We will be participating in Emerge, a new festival of night-time events in museums, galleries, historic houses, visual arts venues and more. Blind storyteller Giles Abbott will roam through the candle-lit chambers of Alexander Pope’s lair presenting his interpretation of Pope's quest for perfection, overcoming disability and adversity. There's more information here.
Public Open Days in 2020	Information about Public Open Days in 2020 will be available on our Visiting page.

Newsletters

Newsletter 1: Project status, fund-raising events, Pope and gardening and the fate of Pope’s Skull.

Newsletter 2: The status of our conservation project,our last symposium, other local grottos and the ‘Nine Ladies of Crux Easton’.

Newsletter 3: Our recent Heritage Lottery grant, laser-scanning the grotto, the second Grotto at Marble Hill House and “The Residence of the Muses”: a paper on 18th century literary life in Twickenham.

Newsletter 4: Completion of the conservation and lighting of the South Chamber and an article on “Pope’s mortal blow”.

Newsletter 5: Changes to the conservation plan,  recent fund-raising events and open days, our plans for the 300th anniversary of Pope’s arrival in Twickenham, a tragic event in Stanton Harcourt and an abbreviated transcript of a talk by Dr Emrys Jones “an ornament from an inconvenience”. (the full text of Dr Emrys Jones talk “An Ornament from an Inconvenience” can be found here).

You can keep informed by subscribing to our email list here.

In the news

This is an article about the restoration project in the Daily Telegraph (15th September 2015) by Victoria Lambert: “Inside Alexander Pope’s hidden grotto”.

Read this article from the Observer (8th May 2016) about our project: “Hope springs eternal: project to save Alexander Pope’s secret grotto”.

Here’s an excellent article in the London Review of Books blog by Mary Wellesley (4th August 2016): “In Pope’s Grotto”

Hyperallegenic, an online magazine based in New York, has a good article about us here: “Restoring Alexander Pope’s Glinting Grotto to Its Former Glory”.

A couple of articles about our project have been published in 2 local magazines, not available on the web: The Friends of Tabley House (Cheshire) Newsletter February 2016, and An Baner Kernewek (The Cornish Banner), August 2016.  The latter is a long-standing Cornish cultural magazine. The connection with Pope’s Grotto is made via Dr William Borlase of Ludgvan, who supplied Pope with Cornish minerals for his last building phase.

Historical novelist, Lucy Roeber, has written and excellent article on the grotto in her blog: “The Season of Grottos”. Well worth reading.

After a visit to the Grotto in August 2018, Frank Skinner talked a length about his visit and Pope on his Saturday morning radio show on Absolute Radio.  Listen to a clip here:

 

The London Topographical Society has published an article on the grotto in their Newsletter Number 88.