Famous for his dictionary, Samuel Johnson was not a resident of Twickenham. He was a visitor to his friend David Garrick in Hampton. Both men had been born in Lichfield, journeying to London together in 1737. He also visited Sir John Hawkins at Twickenham House in Heath Lane. Here, in the garden room, later known as Diamond Villa, they would meet as members of “The Club”.

Although Johnson must have visited Alexander Pope’s grotto, he misconstrued its position, claiming, in his ‘Life of Pope’, that the grotto lay beneath the road, rather than the villa: 

“…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.”