Binfield - Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Pope was born to Alexander Pope Snr. (1646–1717) a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, and Edith Pope (née Turner) (1643–1733), who were both Catholics.

Shortly after William and Mary became joint monarchs in 1689, Catholics were expelled from the City of London. The Popes moved up river to Hammersmith, but in 1700 they relocated to Binfield. There, the principal manor house, Binfield Place, was held by the Catholic Dancastle family. The village was also only seven miles across the heath from Hall Grove, Bagshot, in Surrey. This was the home of Magdalen Rackett, Mr Pope's daughter by his first wife.

It was through Magdalen's husband Charles Rackett that Pope had been able, in 1698, to purchase Whitehill House, a small manor house in fourteen acres of land in Binfield. The house has been known successively as Binfield Lodge, The Firs and Arthurstone. Now much altered, and renamed Pope's Manor, it was for some years the southern headquarters of the construction company Bryant Homes (later Taylor Wimpey), who refurbished the then much neglected property.

But if Queen Anne was capable of acts of clemency towards individual Catholics, she showed no compromise to Catholics in general. In 1706 she made it a treasonable offence to convert anyone to Catholicism. She ordered the enforcement of the laws against Catholics and had a census made of the Number of Papists in every Parish, with their Qualities, Estates and Places of Abode. The Catholic population of the Thames Valley area remained fairly static at about 1 per cent. In Berkshire, for example, there were 293 known or suspected Catholics. In the city of Oxford there were fourteen.

In the spring of 1714 Pope returned to his parents' home in Binfield from one of his frequent periods in London. With him came the poet Thomas Parnell, a charming Irish Anglican clergyman who was greatly liked by the Catholic household. Two months later Parnell revisited Binfield and from there he and Pope travelled to Letcombe Bassett (3 miles SW of Wantage).

In the spring of 1715 Alexander Pope paid his last visit to the family home in Binfield, Windsor Forest. Whitehill House, his parents' home, had been sold and a few weeks later they moved to Twickenham. Where Popes House still stands to this day.