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Pope's villa was the residence of Alexander Pope at Twickenham, then a village west of London. He moved there in 1719 and created gardens and an underground grotto. The house and grotto were topics of 18th- and 19th-century poetry and art. In about 1845, a neo-Tudor house known as Pope's Villa was built on approximately the same site; it is a listed building. Pope's Grotto, which is listed Grade II * by Historic England, survives and is occasionally open to the public. ==Alexander Pope's villa== Alexander Pope moved in 1719 to Twickenham, where many wealthy Londoners had houses. From Thomas Vernon, a local landowner, he leased a piece of land and close to the water on a stretch of the River Thames known as Cross Deep; there were two cottages on the site and Vernon added a third.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Pope's garden )〕 Pope demolished one cottage and part of a second and employed the architect James Gibbs to create a house in Palladian style, which became known as Pope's villa.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Alexander Pope's Grotto: A source of inspiration and contentment, 1720 – 1742 )〕 He extended it with a portico in 1733.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Houses of local interest: Pope's Villa, Cross Deep, Twickenham )〕 Contemporary drawings and paintings of Pope's villa show a fairly conventional classical 18th-century English country house rather than a faithful reproduction or pastiche of a Palladian villa. The house was on three floors, with a central corps de logis of three bays under a hipped roof, flanked by two lower wings of only one bay each with rooves concealed by a closed parapet. The flanking bays had ashlar quoins. The only decoration to the facade were a pedimented window at the centre of the principal floor, and a stone urn at each termination of the closed parapet. An unusual feature of the facade was at its centre on the ground floor—a large elliptical arch with dominating voussoirs. The arch, flanked by small Florentine Renaissance style windows, is redolent of a water entrance to the portigo of a Venetian palazzo. Bearing in mind the proximity of Pope's Villa to the River Thames, this resemblance is unlikely to be co-incidental. The arch, or portal, was contained in a ground projection of the corps de logis which formed the base for the modest portico, more a porch, built in 1733. Pope planted a weeping willow on the small piece of land next to the house (a tree trunk in the loggia of the grotto is said to be from this tree or another planted by him),〔 and on about 5 acres (2 ha) across the street now also called Cross Deep, laid out one of the first picturesque gardens.〔 According to Pope himself, the garden included "a Theatre, an Arcade, a Bowling Green, a Grove, and a 'What Not'".〔 After receiving a licence to do so in 1720, he constructed a tunnel leading from under the house to the garden, and branching from this, a Romantic grotto.〔〔 The house and its gardens and grotto are mentioned in poetry and depicted in art from the 18th and 19th centuries. After Pope's death in 1744, the house was acquired by Sir William Stanhope, who had it extended in 1758.〔 He also extended the garden, and built a second tunnel; what remains of this is a Grade II * listed building.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Underground passage in grounds of St Catherine's High School )〕 Little remains of the garden, but the site was listed Grade II on 1 October 1987 and a brick gazebo is also a Grade II listed building.〔 The house remained in Stanhope's family until 1807, when Baroness Howe of Langar (1762–1835) bought it; she had it demolished the following year and built a new house next to the site,〔 and also removed some of the decorations from the grotto and made further changes to the garden.〔 J. M. W. Turner, a neighbour, objected to the demolition of the house; his painting ''Pope's Villa at Twickenham'' mourns its loss. Baroness Howe's house was subsequently partially demolished and the remainder divided into two houses, Ryan House and River Deep.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Houses of local interest: Ryan House (formerly Castle Ryan & River Deep) )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pope's villa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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