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About The Shell Grotto

ABOUT
There are more questions than answers... Discovered by chance in 1835, the subterranean Shell Grotto’s curving chalk walls are studded with 4.6 million shells. They create a magical mosaic of strange patterns and symbols.

Was this a place of worship, a setting for secret meetings or an extravagant folly? We don’t know who built this amazing place, or why, but since the first paying customers descended the chalk stairway in 1838, debate has raged about the Grotto’s origins.

For every expert who believes it to be an ancient temple, there’s someone else convinced it was the meeting place for a secret sect; for every ardent pagan, there’s a Regency folly-monger ready to spoil their fun.

At first glance the Grotto’s design only adds to the confusion, with humble cockles, whelks, mussels and oysters creating a swirling profusion of patterns and symbols. A storehouse for the imagination, there are any number of interpretations; trees of life, phalluses, gods, goddesses and something that looks very like an altar, to name but a few.

However, there’s only one fact about the Grotto that is indisputable: that it is a unique work of art that should be valued and preserved, whatever its age or origins.

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