Alexander Pope (21 May 1688-30 May 1744)
is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century and is the third most frequently quoted writer in the English language after Shakespeare and Tennyson.

Alexander Pope moved to the rural setting of Twickenham in 1719, leasing three cottages on a small plot of land on the banks of the Thames beside a road now known as Cross Deep. Twickenham was becoming a fashionable retreat, being within easy reach of London by water or road.

He set about building himself a villa in the Palladian style, facing the river. The riverside garden was small and overlooked by nearby properties which included a malt house, a wheel maker’s business, a bricklayer’s yard and a tannery. Here he planted a weeping willow sapling which, although not shown on any view of the villa in his lifetime, acquired fame through association with the man later in the century.

Alexander also leased about 5 acres of unenclosed land across the road, which up to that time had been used for grazing cattle and for the production of food. He started to create a garden based on the pastoral and landscape gardening ideas he had formed.

The infamous Grotto
Pope’s Villa was separated from his main garden by the road and in October 1720 he obtained a licence to construct a tunnel under the road to connect the two. The tunnel led out of the basement of the villa where, in the central section, Pope made his first grotto. He described his delight and happiness in finishing the grotto in a letter to his friend Edward Blount in 1725.

The tunnel acquired decoration, so forming an extension to the grotto itself. Dr Johnson, wrote a mocking but inaccurate description: "A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit rather than exclude the sun, but Pope's excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage".

For more information on visiting the grotto at Cross Deep, please refer to www.twickenham-museum.org.uk