Grotte du Lazaret, Nice, France

In Oct 2021 I was on a cruise ship that docked at Nice, south of France. Luckily it was a small ship and we were able to dock in the port, rather than the cruise terminal which is much further away from town. I spotted a cave marked on my map which was very close to the port, so had a google and found it is an archaeological cave and worth a visit. 

Grotte du Lazaret Nice

An archaeological cave site of prehistoric human inhabitation, situated in the eastern suburbs of Nice, very close to the port. The entrance is off Boulevard Franck Pilatte, and the cave is in the hill below the arches. Excavations have revealed  human shelters dating back to the  Lower Palaeolithic, 186 k - 127 k ya. More than 20,000 fossilized faunal bone fragments have been found. 

Cranial fragments of a skull are believed to be from a 9 yr old, at 200,000 years old, this could be Homo heidelbergensis or a proto Neanderthal human. 

Excavations took place in the 1970s. Close to the cave mouth, Andueulean stone tools were found. as well as fragments of animal bones and what are thought to be two charcoal hearths. 

From the road, a path leads up to the reception and the path is lined with information boards on the archaeology, geology etc, with prehistoric animal shapes made out of metal. 

At the reception I had to show proof of covid vaccines or a negative test. Then up to the entrance - amazingly there is no charge. A walkway into the chamber is lined with information displays and replicas of cave deposits. 

The cave itself is one chamber and visitors go along a platform listening to the audio visual display. The visuals are good, with items such as tools and bones illustrated in a square of light on the walls or floors. At the end of the platform there is a longer light display, showing a river or the sea in the cave, then "holograms" of  human inhabitants and animals etc with cave paintings of animals shown on the walls. It was all very effective and different from anything else I've seen. 

This wall is a replica of the wall that still exists on the hill top and the cave is below (see last photo) -

Apparently the cave opened to visitors in 2017, and surprisingly is free. Behind the reception is a very small room showing different skulls and a model of a cave man.

The hill where the cave is located, with the arched wall above -

See a detailed page on Grotte du Lazaret here and also a Wikipedia article.

Underground London - Eltham ice well

 I'm slowly visiting different ice wells and ice houses in the Greater London area. This one near Eltham I saw the sign as I was passing on the bus, so stopped for a visit. It is actually by Mottingham station, and is located at the edge of The Tarn, which is an area of woodland and parkland. 

The ice house was for Eltham Lodge which isn't that close, but the Tarn was then part of Eltham's Great Park. It is now part of The Royal Blackheath Golf Club.

The ice well is located north of the lake, where the word "The" is on the above map. It was built between 1750 and 1760. Eltham Lodge was built in 1664. The ice was cut from the lake and placed in the well, which was brick lined. The entrance faces north to give it shelter from the sun. The whole construction would have been thickly insulated with a conical straw thatch covering. And it is located in a shady and damp part of the wood.

A section has been removed to allow visitors to look into the well. 

The tarn is now a  bird sanctuary -

Underground London - Marble Hill grotto

Marble Hill is a heritage house and park near East Twickenham in the London Borough of Richmond. The park extends down to the Thames. There is a manmade grotto in the park.

I walked upstream along the Thames from Richmond bridge, and entered the park from the river path.

The estate dates back to the 18th century. Building work on the house began in 1724 for the owner, Henrietta Howard, who later became Countess of Suffolk. The gardens were designed as pleasure grounds, with terraces, shrubberies and trees. Henrietta Howard was the mistress of King George II when he was Prince of Wales. The house is a Palladian villa. 

The existing subterranean grotto is some 100 m south of the mansion. A flight of steps leads west, down to the remains of the brick-built grotto. When I visited in March 2021, the house and gardens were undergoing extensive renovation, and the whole grotto site was fenced off. 

The grotto used to be enclosed within evergreen and deciduous shrubs. The shrubs have been completely cut back, but presumably will grow again -

The grotto is not normally open to the public, so I didn't miss too much, I could only view it from behind the fence.

Originally there were two grottoes made for the Countess of Suffolk. However the second one had gone by 1816 and its site is not known. The surviving grotto, which by 1816 was already 'forsaken and dilapidated', was excavated in 1983 and later renovated.

The grotto was lined with shells, corals and blue glass

Alexander Pope the poet helped design the gardens. His grotto is situated in the grounds of his house and gardens in Twickenham, just a short distance from Marble Hill.

On the north-west edge of the Marble Hill shrubberies, within the wooden fencing, is the brick-built icehouse (listed grade II). I will have to go back once all the renovations are finished. 

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See more on the Historic England site, where there is a drawing of the grotto surrounded by shrubs, as well as a lot of information on the house and grounds. This blog has more info and some good photos of the grotto surrounded by shrubs (2012). I don't know if there are plans to restore the shrubs or why they were removed in the first place. 

And English Heritage places to see.

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"June 2021, two subterranean grottos in Twickenham will be having synchronised open days on the same day. Grottos were the height of fashion in the early eighteenth century and Twickenham is home to two of the most spectacular examples. The Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust and English Heritage, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, are offering a rare chance to visit both Alexander Pope’s grotto in Cross Deep and Henrietta Howard’s grotto at Marble Hill in one day."

However when I tried to book one month before, tickets were already sold out.

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UPDATE FEB 2022

At the end of Feb 2022 I went back to Marble Hill to see if the grotto was open, but found an archaeological dig was in progress. The notice board says they are removing the soil to reveal Henrietta Howard’s lost grotto.

I don't think it will be open by the spring as the notice suggests!

This English Heritage page gives more info on the updates to the grotto work, Nov 2021 and some of the finds.

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 UPDATE 2024

I finally visited the grotto in October 2024

3 myo old human ancestor fossil sent to Oxford for study

 The Malaysian media recently produced a few reports on how Perak Man has "been given a face" by 3D scanning. The human skeleton is roughly 10-11,000 years old. See my blog.

Then on 2 March 2021, BBC had an interesting report "Human origins: 'Little Foot' fossil's big journey out of Africa". It describes how the the of "Little Foot", the most complete Australopithecine fossil ever recovered, was sent to Oxford, UK, 2 years ago, for high resolution X ray scanning.

It took some 20 years to excavate Little Foot's bones from the Sterkfontein Caves just outside Johannesburg. The bones are thought to be more around 3.6 million years old. 

So far just the skull has been scanned.

See BBC report. 

The bones were sent to the Diamond Light Source in Oxford. And coincidentally after the BBC report, Diamond had a virtual tour on 13 March. This was really interesting, lasting over 2 years and was very detailed and informative. They even mentioned they had worked on Little Foot. See the virtual tour page.