The Shell Grotto
Margate’s most mysterious discovery…
Is there anything better than a grotto to pay a visit to, marvel at the effort, and support with a small entrance fee? I think not.
The term usually refers to an 'ornamental cave', one that is either human made or natural. Just like its above-ground sibling: the folly, it always seems to me to be a shorthand for 'a space with very little practical purpose where an enthusiast has gone OTT'. Grottoes can be weird and cool, sometimes confusing, and are always completely unique.
Here in Margate we have a brilliant grotto (maybe the best?), so it's the very first place I encourage tourists to visit if they want to experience a part of Margate that they won't quite find anywhere else.
The Shell Grotto in Margate is a compact selection of underground passageways and room(s) that are decorated from floor to ceiling with seashells. The panels made from the careful placement of them cemented into considered and ornate patterns gives the feeling of walking through an incredibly important place of worship or ritual, or perhaps even the output of a person possessed. Aside from the floor itself every inch of the walls and arched ceilings has a line or a curl or a roundel in these foraged natural objects. Some are turned inward with others clustered into bulks, and the 3D patterned surfaces made from the intentional use of these 4.6 million shells make the soot-grey walls look like a textured woven fabric. It's breath-taking!
The grotto itself is a small enough space to take perhaps just a few minutes to stride the length of, but the point of a grotto isn't to rush through. My visit always begins in their beautiful upstairs gift shop - want to choose a pair of beaded underwater themed earrings while being overlooked by a dinosaur made of shells? You got it. Fancy choosing a gift card while standing next to a life-sized lady made from scallops? Also not a problem. It's as decorative and explorable as the grotto itself and a very sweet stage one of any visit there.
Once you've paid a mini entrance fee (£4.50 max) you can pick up a map and walk down a tiny set of stairs into the neat little museum area of the grotto. It's in this spot that you're able to discover how much of the venue's history is still cloaked in mystery from helpful exhibition pieces and early photographs and documents. As a Margate resident, I've always heard a story that the grotto was quite literally unearthed by an adventurous child in 1835 when they fell through a hole in a neighbours garden and returned some time later with stories of strange patterned walls and chambers. That their father listened to the account and chose to purchase the land when it became available shortly thereafter - 'discovering' the grotto and opening it to the public three years later in 1938. The official line is that it was struck upon by workmen making repairs to a nearby site, and there the history of it's exhibition begins. One of the most enigmatic things about the Shell Grotto is that outside of it's 1800's discovery, there is NO evidence of it ever existing in written or oral record and no amount of carbon dating and shell-identification has ever found the experts any closer to knowing why, when or by whom it was made. Can you imagine an oddity this unusual resting underground for possibly centuries and no-one has any idea about it? Well you must - because that is the Margate Shell Grotto.
There are speculations abound about the potential evidence of it being masonic, medieval, Roman, and any number of other unusual guesses, but historians and scientists simply do not yet know. It is a magical mystery.
When you've primed yourself for the second descent into the grotto cave itself it's another small set of stairs into the lowly lit series of tunnels that make up the attraction. I would suggest a slow walk around taking in each panel and having a guess at what the shapes and motifs could mean (the free map helps with this). My favourite part is the central chamber that leads up to the ground floor and is sky-lit in a way that illuminates all of the silvery shells below it. If you follow on to the end altar room you'll get more of a feel for the possibility that the grotto could have been a place of worship or ritual as the arches and podium are the first signs of anything practical.
Standing back from each part of the exhibit you can enjoy the patterns made from the shells and close up you can start to make out very old graffiti pencilled in to the chest-height ones from visitors in the 1800's. Hilariously swirly initials and dates, and also - obviously - vandalism, so while enjoying the cheeky record of former tourists please don't touch or mark the shells yourself.
I recommend it being your first stop in Margate, and organising your visit for a quiet day so that you might have more of the space to yourself. I can easily spend 45 mins or more shopping, reading, and peering at all of the wonderful variety of shapes and samples. It's an eerie and special site owned and run by a passionate collective of people, with a murky history to match it's cryptic beauty. If Margate is known as a town for whimsy, entertainment and leisure, where an odd-ball can experiment or retreat, then an industrious and unusual shell grotto appearing from nowhere and dazzling visitors ever since is just about as Margate as you can get.
Batchelor’s Patisserie
I followed up my own visit to the Shell grotto with a trip to another of the areas long-serving institutions of decorative produce: Batchelors patisserie in Cliftonville. Just a short walk from Grotto Hill, this Formica-clad high street bakery and tea rooms on Northdown Road has been selling and serving bread and cakes for over 40 years. The staff are sweet, the bakes are fancy and decorative, to me it is the perfect place to finish a visit to one of Margate's oldest attractions.
The details…
www.shellgrotto.co.uk / Shell Grotto, Grotto Hill, Margate, CT9 2BU / Winter: Thurs - Sun 11-4, Summer: Weds - Sun 10-5, School Holidays: Every day / admission: £2-£4.50 / @shellgrotto
www.facebook.com/BatchelorsPatisserie / 246 Northdown Road, Margate, CT9 2PX / Open daily 6am - 2:30pm, closed Sunday & Monday / @batchelorspatisseri