Most of the formative experiences of Pope's lifetime took place while he resided in Windsor Forest. From the age of twelve Whitehill House at Binfield was his family home, and it remained the main locus of his spiritual life until fresh acts of oppression by the Hanoverian government led to its disposal when he was twenty-eight. Although not literally his native heath, it became the place to which his fondest memories constantly returned.

From this point in his development, we know more about Alexander's boyhood and adolescence than usually happens with individuals born in earlier centuries. Several reasons lie behind such a comparative glut of information. For one thing, in his poems and letters the adult writer often harked back to this phase. The scattered woodlands around Windsor became symbolic ‘Groves of Eden’ (TE, vol. 1, p. 148) in his work. The poet himself, as well as several others who knew him at the time (including his sister), gave Joseph Spence their recollections of the manner in which he spent his life in the forest. Then again, his daily companions in Binfield were his parents and his nurse Mary Beach – each of these lived to a good old age, and constituted a living aide-memoire. Pope kept many of the friends he had acquired in his youth, and continued to visit his old haunts even after the property had passed from his family. His sister, as we have seen, lived on the edge of the forest. Finally, the area was replete with historical, courtly and even mythical associations. The Thames washed its northern edge, and the main road to Salisbury and Exeter skirted its southern boundary. In some ways the retreat that the poet would construct for himself at Twickenham served as a replacement for the scenes of his boyhood. Halfway between Binfield and Lombard Street, the riverside house enabled him to recapture some of the values enshrined in his youthful home.