Let the Mystery Be

I desperately wanted to know who built these wondrous mosaics. But maybe some things are better left unexplained

- Gabrielle Schwarz

Six years ago, during a trip to the seaside town Margate, England, my family and I visited a site known as the Shell Grotto. When it first opened to the public, in 1838, it was advertised as an unexplained mystery. Apparently workmen had stumbled upon the “curious and interesting sight” while digging in the garden of a cottage. Further investigation revealed a subterranean network of passages and a chamber covered in approximately 4.6 million seashells, laid out to form a 185-square-meter mosaic spanning walls and archways, and a domed shaft that lets in a narrow beam of light. Today the shells—round winkles, long razor clams, mussels, other less familiar specimens—are mostly faded in colour, some blackened with dirt.

Who made this grotto, and why? Theories veer from the wacky to the mundane. One writer made a case that the walls were built at Twickenham, 50 kilometers to the west, by Alexander Pope, the 18th-century English satirist, then transported to Margate and concealed underground. In the 1940s, a medium claimed that the grotto was dug out and adorned by a lost tribe of Israelites in celebration of their safe passage from Egypt. Skeptics point out that shell grottoes are a recurring feature of English architecture, and that it might be in the interest of the attraction's private owners to suggest a more mythic history.