The Accidental Discovery of the Shell Grotto
- Jan 30
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
200 years ago, not long before the Grotto was discovered, the land above it was open meadow, forming part of an area known variously as Luck’s Dane, Lucas Dane or Luke’s Dane Farm, in the parish of St John the Baptist, Margate. Lucas Dane consisted of a house and lands and had formed part of the estates of the Norwood family of Dane Court from at least the middle of the 1500s.
In 1755, the land was bought by the Cowell family where it remained until 1824 when Elizabeth Cowell divided up the fields to be sold off as building plots, as Margate rapidly began to expand eastwards.
In 1829, a builder named George Bowles unknowingly bought the two adjoining plots above the Grotto, on which he built his new home, Belle Vue Cottage. Works were completed in the spring of 1834, just a few months before Bowles sold the cottage to a Joseph Lewis and emigrated with his four sons to America, following the death of his wife the previous year. There is no evidence at this point that Bowles was aware of the Grotto's existence, though later claims say he was. It certainly didn’t appear in any sale deed.
Just down the road, James Newlove (1785-1851), ‘a fine man…six feet high and eighteen stones in weight…[and] very strict’, was successfully operating a private boys’ school called Dane House Academy. In January 1835, not long after Bowles emigrated, Newlove also began renting Belle Vue Cottage and installed his wife, Arabella, as head of a new private girls’ school there, which he ran in conjunction with the boys' school. Both buildings still stand - Belle Vue Cottage is now a private residence called Rose Lodge, at the bottom of Grotto Hill, and Dane House Academy is a pub on Dane Road called Mulberry Tree.
It wasn’t until three years later, on 12th May 1838, that the earliest known reference to the Grotto’s discovery appears, in an article in the Kentish Gazette aptly titled ‘Extraordinary Discovery’, announcing its forthcoming opening as a public attraction. The circumstances were described simply: workmen excavating the grounds of Belle Vue Cottage were impeded by a large stone which, once removed, led to the discovery.
“Extraordinary Discovery - The Dane, at Margate, has for many centuries been celebrated for a decisive battle between the Danes and Saxons: entire skeletons, bodies partly decomposed, armour, and warlike weapons of the most ancient calibre, have been from time to time discovered, exciting the inquiry of antiquary and the astonishment of the natives, and many a spear that glittered in the sun beam lies deeply buried there. A more recent circumstance is now the all-engrossing topic, and the good folks of Margate are again wondering. Belle Vue cottage, a detached residence, has been lately purchased by a gentleman, who, having occasion for some alterations, directed the workmen to excavate some few feet, during which operation the work was impeded by a large stone, the gentleman immediately called to the spot, directed a minute examination, which led to the discovery of an extensive grotto, completely studded with shells in curios devices, most elaborately worked up, extending an immense distance in serpentine walks, alcoves, and lanes, the whole forming one of the most curious and interesting sights that can possibly be conceived, and must have been excavated by torch light. We understand the proprietor intends shortly to open the whole for exhibition, at a small charge for admission.”
The first recorded visit to the Grotto, in an 1844 diary entry by a Lucy Daniell, indicates that the reason for the excavation was to dig the foundation for a washhouse for the girl’s school.
“It was now proposed to go see the marine cave which is a large grotto, lately discovered, whilst digging a foundation for a wash house to a ladies school… and it was in the falling of the earth through [the] dome that the Grotto was discovered, exactly in the state of preservation as it is now shown.”
And by 1885, when the popular writer Marie Corelli related the story told to her by her Grotto guide, the account had been expanded to include a workman losing his spade down a hole and a boy being lowered into the void to retrieve it.
“The foundations for a school were being laid just above here, and one of the workmen let his spade fall. To his surprise it dropped through a hole and disappeared. A small boy was then let down through the hole to look after the spade, and when he got to the bottom he found himself just close to the centre column of the Grotto. Afterwards the entrance was found, and cleared of stones and rubbish, so the people could walk through.”
However, by the end of the 1800s, the discovery story as reported in 1838 began to unravel, as accounts from those present at the time, the few primary sources we have, were recorded by Mr Algernon Goddard, future owner of the Grotto.
Chief among the witnesses, and entering her seventies when she was interviewed in 1893, was Newlove’s youngest daughter, Francis (1823-1909), who had also been curator of the Grotto from about 1846 to 1869, following her father’s death.
According to Francis, she and her brother Joshua (1819-1892), aged 12 and 16 respectively, had discovered the Grotto some time before its ‘official’ discovery but had kept it a secret.
“My brother found out about the underground place some time before it was known. He never dared to tell father. He found the chalk loose at one end of the passage next the cottage, which was built afterwards, in rough blocks. Then, when the opening was wide enough he crawled through and got into the Grotto. And so did I. Yes, and two or three other young girls too. We crept in through the opening, and had to scrub ourselves right over the dirty chalk, and lor! We did make a mess of ourselves. But we got in and saw it all! We had to take a candle in a lantern round somebody’s neck…"
Francis claims that this earlier discovery was made after her brother overheard two men encouraging their father to buy the cottage rather than sign a twenty-one-year lease, as he'd planned.
“They said to him ‘Newlove, don’t lease it, buy it outright!’ The lease was already prepared, but that was all altered, and father did buy it… They seemed to know of something, those gentlemen, but people generally knew nothing about it then.”
Francis retained the unsigned lease, which she cut up to line some bookshelves but was retrieved shortly after her interview. It now resides in the Grotto archive, stamped with the date 25th February 1835 - less than two months after Newlove began renting Belle Vue Cottage.
Newlove seems to have taken their advice and bought the cottage and land outright in August 1837. The sale deed, again, made no mention of the Grotto.
A letter from Francis written in 1897, 4 years after her interview, named the two men as Captain Jeremiah Easter of The Wilderness and Chateau Belle Vue, and Mr de Costier, likely Maurice D’Acosta of Lausanne House.
“I will tell you how he heard of it. My father was just about to sign a lease with Mr Joseph Lewis for 21 years when he had visiting him a Capt Easter and a friend of his, a Mr de Costier, who persuaded my father not to have a lease, but to buy the House and ground that there was something on it worth his while but they could not tell him what. My brother passing in and out of the room heard this talk and the following summer vacation thought he would explore and in doing so found some blocks of chalk that looked like bricks placed together: he pulled them out, and heard a rush of chalk; and that entrance through the chalk was discovered, when he got a light and went down after that he built it all up again and did not tell any one till after the hole in the ground was found at the dome. We were brought up so strict that he was afraid to tell his father.”
This reveals that Francis and Joshua discovered the Grotto in the summer of 1835, and that the two men may have had prior knowledge of it.
"But it was really discovered in 1837, and my brother was dropped down the dome with a light. He had been through it before, but had not told father.”
John Hudson, a pupil at Dane House Academy at various times between 1834 and 1844, confirmed that the Grotto was discovered sometime before its official discovery in 1838, but seemingly under different circumstances to those recounted by Francis, with no implication that Joshua or Mr Newlove already knew of it.
“As Joshua Newlove and myself and some other boys were digging a hole to make a duck pond in the garden behind the Girl’s School, the ground fell in, and the underground place was then discovered. I was on the spot at the time. No one went down at first. Looking down we could see the shell-work, but could find no entrance. It was the place called the Dome. Then old Newlove wanted to know what was the matter, and had it covered up by Holton, who did all Newlove’s rough work…. It was in 1834 or 1835, more likely the second. He kept it quiet and until he made the purchase…
The place opened was covered by a stone. I saw it put down. I think Mark Holton was employed to take it up again when it was re-opened by Newlove, after purchase of the property.”
A Mr Gore remembered the discovery happening in 1837.
"As the school throve it became necessary to enlarge it. Excavations followed for the new foundations, and one day some tool fell through an opening in the wall and disappeared… At the hole where the tool sank in a boy was lowered, and the Grotto was brought to light. This happened in 1837… For some time the new find was kept a secret.”
And a Mr Stroud told a simple account of how his father John, a gardener who lived next door to Belle Vue Cottage and worked for Newlove, and had sold the two plots to George Bowles in 1829, was the man who came upon the slab above the Dome and helped remove it. It’s unknown whether this account relates to the official discovery or an earlier one, and there’s no indication that the man who sold the land to Bowles had prior knowledge of its existence.
With variations across all the primary sources, it’s possible that memories were skewed by time or conflated with Victorian embellishment, subconsciously or otherwise. Someone who had nursed Francis before she died later said that Francis had purposely given ‘misleading answers’ during her interview.
They all seem to agree, however, that the Grotto was discovered earlier than the 1838 events announced in the Kentish Gazette and that at least one discovery took place through the top of the Dome. Given what we do know, it seems plausible that the Grotto was discovered in the summer of 1835, first by Joshua uncovering its chalk passageway further up the hill and later by students digging in the school’s grounds, after Newlove took the advice not to lease the land, whether due to prior knowledge of the Grotto or not.
The Dome, through which the Grotto was found, then seems to have been covered with a stone and its presence kept secret until a second, staged discovery in 1837, once Newlove had bought the land, as reported by the Kentish Gazette in 1838.
Regardless of how or when it was discovered, Mr Newlove clearly saw the commercial potential of the Grotto and promptly began to make it fit for public exhibition. The passage Francis crawled through, thought to have only been around four feet high at the time, was enlarged to allow easier visitor access and three small niches were added to hold candles. This is now known as the North Passage. And at least some sections of mosaic were likely repaired, leading to conspiracies that Newlove and his schoolchildren were involved in the Grotto’s creation. However, with no detailed record of the Grotto at the time of its discovery, it’s difficult to determine the extent of Newlove’s alterations.
The Grotto officially opened to the public as a tourist attraction on Monday 4th June, 1838.
