Weird & wonderful · South East England
Shell Grotto
A 4.6-million-shell underground passage of unknown origin, discovered in 1835.
John Baker — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons licence
Plan your visit
- Typical visit
- 1 h–2 h
About
The Shell Grotto at Margate is an underground passage and chamber whose walls are entirely covered with 4.6 million seashells arranged in mosaics — discovered by accident in 1835 by a workman digging in a field, with no record of who built it or when. Theories range from a Phoenician temple to a Regency folly, but no carbon dating has ever been done because every shell is fixed in mortar. The grotto runs as a small private attraction; the entire 21-metre passage and rotunda dome are still open to visitors.
Photo gallery
From the Wikipedia article
The Shell Grotto, sometimes called the Shell Temple, is an ornate underground shell grotto in the seaside town of Margate, Kent, England. The grotto, which has a passageway and main room, was dug out from chalk, a soft limestone common in the region. Almost all the surface area of the walls and roof is covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet (190 m2) of mosaic, with approximately 4.6 million shells. Its age, creators, and purpose are unknown, which has inspired a wide range of speculation, although several other shell grottos in England were made in the 18th century. This grotto was rediscovered in about 1835 and first opened to the public as a privately-owned tourist attraction in 1837. The grotto is a Grade I-listed building and remains open to the public. Attached to the grotto is a modern museum room, cafe, and gift shop.
Excerpt from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the source article linked in Sources below.
Background
History
The origin and purpose of the structure are unknown. A member of the Kent Archaeological Society analyzed the grotto and concluded in 2006 that it was likely a mediaeval denehole, a small chalk mine, reworked and decorated in the 17th or 18th century. The decoration may have been created or added to in the early 19th century. People have come up with a variety of speculations and hypotheses for the age and purpose of the grotto, such as: it was an 18th or 19th-century rich man's folly; In the late 1940s, a writer, who was also interested in the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship, published a book about his theory of Phoenician origins for the shell grotto. In 1952, a member of the…
Sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Coordinates
- 51.3779, 1.3815
Sources
- manual: shell-grotto-margate (manual)
- wikipedia: Shell Grotto, Margate (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Frequently asked questions
- Where is Shell Grotto?
- Shell Grotto is in South East England, in the United Kingdom — coordinates 51.3779°, 1.3815°.
- When was Shell Grotto built?
- Shell Grotto dates to the Modern era. The exact year of origin is not recorded in our open-data sources.