Restoring Alexander Pope's Grotto

The grotto, designed by Pope and standing as the only surviving element of his villa and garden landscape in Twickenham, provides insight into the life of the poet and satirist.

A view through the grotto to a projected image (Photo: James Newton).

The restoration of Alexander Pope’s Grade II*- listed grotto has been completed by Donald Insall Associates for Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust. Pope (1688–1744), a central figure in the neoclassical movement and often described as the best English poet of the 18th century, came to live in Twickenham in 1719. His villa was designed by James Gibbs, who had designed the Orleans House Octagon (Grade I, 1720) nearby (see Ayaka Takaki, ‘Restoring Orleans House Octagon’, Context 167, March 2021).

The cellars of his villa were at ground level, facing the river. Pope devised the grotto as a ‘subterraneous way’, connecting a formal riverfront garden to the more private garden to the rear of his villa. In 1732, Pope employed William Kent to extend the portico for the riverfront of the villa, which can be seen as the remaining facade of the grotto entrance today. After Pope’s death in 1744, the house was acquired by Sir William Stanhope and it remained in Stanhope’s family until 1807. Baroness Howe of Langa (1762–1835), then acquired it and had it demolished in the following year. JMW Turner, who admired Pope’s work, painted a lamenting view entitled ‘Pope’s Villa at Twickenham during its Dilapidation’.

Pope was responsible for some of the biggest changes in garden design in his time. His garden and the view of the Thames valley at Richmond was the inspiration for the English landscaping style which was later developed by Capability Brown. The grotto, having been altered several times over the centuries and having suffered natural deterioration and extensive inappropriate repairs carried out in the last century, had reached a stage where action had to be taken to ensure its survival. Today, the grotto lies below Cross Deep between Radnor House independent school to the east and St Catherine’s School to the west. Access to it can be arranged through Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust during school holidays.

The early 18th century was a critical point in the evolution of the English landscape garden, seeing the transition from formal and geometrical baroque design to a more contrived, natural landscape, responding to the natural topography. Pope, surrounded by influential figures such as Lord Burlington and William Kent, was considered as a pioneer of the English landscape movement at the time.

In his 1713 essay in the Guardian (a short-lived newspaper published only in that year) Pope wrote that the taste in ancient gardens was for the ‘amiable Simplicity of unadorned Nature’. In the same year, he translated the descriptions of the Gardens of Alcinous from Homer’s Odyssey. His knowledge of classical literature helped him to form and expand his ideas on a classical approach to architecture and garden design.

He based the design of his garden on classical literature, antiquity and illusion. The garden was open to the public from 1736, attracting great interest and admiration. In its five acres he devised and experimented with a variety of layout and interesting features. ‘A Plan of Mr Pope’s Garden’ (1745) by John Serle shows it containing a pavilion known as the Shell Temple, stoves, a vineyard, an obelisk, a bowling green, a grove, an orangery, a garden house, two hot houses for growing pineapples and a kitchen garden. A number of well-known gardens of the early 18th century were influenced by Pope and his garden, including Prior Park, Stowe, Chiswick, Marble Hill and Cirencester Park.

Paul Richens was commissioned to create an interactive digital reconstruction of the villa and garden, and of the adjacent Thames and buildings. This visual, A Virtual Arcadia, is projected in the section of the lobby facing the grotto, recreating the Thames view that Pope himself would have enjoyed. It is also available on the trust’s website.

The grotto consists of two main chambers, flanking a central chamber that leads down to a narrow passageway where visitors enter a new interpretation space. The central chamber features a group of Georgian mirrors, restored as part of the 2022/2023 restoration project. The grotto comprises a series of decorated chambers and a long causeway. Pope decorated the grotto with over 30 tons of ores, spars, mundic (pyrites), stalactites, crystals, Bristol and Cornish diamonds and marbles, alabaster, snakestones and freestone, as well as petrified wood, fossils, glass, coral and humming-bird nests. This remarkable collection, which is variously fixed into the walls and ceilings with a lime-mortar bed and/or iron clamps, was donated to Pope from his friends in Norway, German, Peru, the West Indies, Italy, Egypt, Spain and Brazil, and sourced within the UK over the course of 20 years.

The site deteriorated after the villa was demolished in 1808 and the shining gemstones have been subject to pilfering. In more recent times, the collection and the tunnel structure, which is open to the school and the general public on an appointment-only basis, has suffered from decay caused by water ingress, natural stone loosening and deterioration, inappropriate repairs using cement mortar, and rusting iron fixtures.

The project to conserve and restore the grotto has spanned over 20 years. Many of the individuals, including the client team; Nicolette Duckham, the senior conservation officer; the Donald Insall Associates team; and the conservator team from Taylor Pearce spent several years enabling the works, implementing the conservation and alteration works over two phases. The South Chamber was selected as the pilot area (Phase 1 works). Repair works, carried out in 2017, informed the conservation methods and philosophy for the rest of the grotto. The last stage, Phase 2, was carried out in 2022 and 2023.

The rendering that holds together precious and semi-precious stones to the brick substrate was consolidated and stabilised and the stone surfaces gently cleaned. Cementitious materials were removed. The removal of the cement screed to the floor uncovered the historic brick floor and enabled the building to breathe.

All minerals were conservation cleaned and physically checked to confirm that they were stable. Individual loose minerals, areas suffering from deteriorating mortar or detrimental cementitious pointing were identified. All minerals were reset using a lime-putty mortar. This included individual loose minerals and larger areas where the minerals were recorded prior to dismantling to enable them to be reset in their original position. The background mortar was taken back to a sound surface, with the surface prepared with a key and edges cut back at right angles. A slurry was applied to the background and a scratch coat layer used as required.

Areas of missing minerals and inappropriate repairs were rebuilt using new minerals. This was done in the same way as the resetting of the original material, with the backgrounds thoroughly prepared and scratch coats applied where necessary to build the surface out to the surrounding area. All background material was consolidated prior to the setting of the minerals. Stainless-steel fixings were used as required for larger and projecting stones. Where possible, historic fixings were incorporated into supporting the new minerals. Stainless steel was set in either Prompt natural cement or Hilti HY-170 resin.

All areas of the walls and ceilings were inspected and consolidated as required. Voids and open joints were packed out with a lime-putty mortar. Brick and tile were used in larger voids and the voids filled in layers if necessary. Loose minerals were stabilised with mortar if possible or removed for resetting. Mortars were covered and tendered for several days, before being raked and tamped to provide the required finish.

It was important for the Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust to tell the story through the preservation of the grotto. A towering figure of 18th-century England, it is less known that Pope suffered from a spinal deformity, either due to tuberculosis, trauma or congenital weakness, which shaped his career. The trust commissioned Giles Abbott, an award-winning storyteller, to write and perform a piece called ‘Alexander Pope: a search for perfection’. His storytelling vividly describes Pope’s life, with his difficulties of illness, deformity and religious exclusion, and his genius. Abbott continues to perform it. Paul Richens’ interactive digital reconstruction has also been presented in various venues in the UK.

During the pandemic, the trust initiated and teamed up with neighbouring heritage groups such as Marble Hill House and Strawberry Hill House and started the Twickenham Luminaries in 2020. The luminaries have produced a series of online lectures which engaged audiences beyond physical reach. Topics include heritage buildings, art, historic gardens and landscapes. The success of the Twickenham Luminaries led to the formation of the London Luminaries, supported by Heritage Lottery Fund.

The works incorporated a comprehensive lighting scheme by the late Jonathan Howard of DHA Designs. Howard carefully placed each light fixing to bring the chambers to life and limited fixtures to return the space to how Pope may have seen it originally with candles and natural light. Howard’s Georgian-style, portable, silver-backed LED candle sconces are extremely effective. To the central chamber and entrance lobby area, blue ripple-effect feature lights create the effect of light reflecting from water, which Pope’s sketches show him to have been keen on achieving.

Some areas were left exposed to show where historic construction was consolidated, serving as windows to display that construction. For example, two previously obscured areas of the original cellar construction that were revealed during the works have been left exposed. Evidence of a possible rill as well as a waterfall, as suggested in Pope’s drawing of 1740, was discovered in the central chamber. The rill was formed in a brick-lined trench, capped by stone slabs. This was recorded by Thames Valley Archaeology and carefully covered in self-binding gravel.

The alterations to the lobby area were one of the key aspects of the restoration project. The grotto lobby is a heavily used passage for the school, whose art room is right in front of the grotto’s entrance. It was challenging to make the entrance as appealing as possible when the lobby functions as school corridor. In order to regain the lost connection between the grotto and the Thames, the trust wanted to project the video of the reconstructed 1740s Thames on the art room wall. A double door system can now be opened up to receive projected images during open days, with exhibition panels installed on the insides of both door leaves.

We hoped to re-establish the poet’s sparkling vision through the grotto’s restoration. It was important that the works were informed by and incorporated the grotto’s rich history, which has been partially preserved through Pope’s surviving letters, sketches by William Kent and the physical fabric on site.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Angela Kidner, whose passion and rigour as a Pope’s Grotto trustee has been fundamental to the project over two decades.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024. It was written by Ayaka Takaki, associate director of Donald Insall Associates.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation

Related articles on Designing Buildings Conservation.

• Capability Brown.
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• Conserving structures in historic designed landscapes.
• Genius loci.
• Heritage.
• Historic environment.
• IHBC articles.
• Institute of Historic Building Conservation.
• Restoring Orleans House Octagon.