Some of us who show people round Marble Hill House took a busman’s holiday this week and went to visit Pope’s Grotto.
Marble Hill House
Alexander Pope is important to the story of Marble Hill because he was a great friend of the first owner of the house, Henrietta Howard. Henrietta probably moved here partly because Pope owned house a little way further up the Thames just beyond Twickenham. He was very interested in gardening and his garden was, at the time, quite well known. Unfortunately for him, most of it was on the other side of the road from his house which had a lawn stretching down to the river but little space for the elaborate garden design he wanted. So, this being the 18th century and Pope being quite well off, he built a tunnel under the road to access the rest of the garden. The tunnel was built out from the cellars of the house and the whole underground work was decorated as a grotto, which expanded to have side passages and even an underground waterfall. It was probably the inspiration for the grotto that Henrietta had built at Marble Hill, but his was much larger and more elaborate.
Grotto at Marble Hill
Unfortunately, in the course of 300 years It deteriorated quite badly. His house was demolished and a new building constructed over the grotto. People I know who saw it when we first moved to Twickenham said it was little more than a gloomy cellar with some rocks stuck on the wall. Fortunately, if 18th century grottoes are your thing, over the last few years it has been opened up and substantially restored. Although it was originally decorated with bits of mirror and glass to make a sort of shiny pretty space, Pope later developed an interest in geology and decided to make the whole thing into a sort of mystical mine decorated with different kinds of stones and minerals. We have descriptions of it from the time allowing us to replace many of the rocks that have been lost. The effect is simultaneously gloomy (it’s quite dark down there) and rather pretty. You can definitely feel transported back to Georgian times.
More on grottoes
Coincidentally, Deborah Swift has just written about grotto’s in her newsletter. Here’s the LINK. They are very different to Pope’s and Henrietta’s!
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