Underground London - Marble Hill ice house

 After visiting Marble Hill grotto, I went to see the ice house. I mentioned it in my blog in 2021 when I wrote "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."

There is not much to see, just the door

The restored garden seat, mentioned on the noticeboard -

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 man made grotto in the park.

I first went to look at the grotto in March 2021 and found it was under renovation. Marble Hill House and the gardens were also going through extensive renovation. There was very little to see at the grotto, see photos on my blog.

My next visit was at the end of Feb 2022, and found there was an archaeological dig in progress at the grotto. The whole area was being excavated. Over the following months, I checked the Marble Hill website but there was no mention of the grotto.

I didn't get around to going back until Oct 2024 and was surprised at the transformation. It looked so different. The first two photos are March 2021, then Feb 2022 and finally Oct 2024 -

The notice board says -

Grotto & 'Rustic Grot'

Henrietta Howard probably started building the grotto at Marble Hill in the 1730s. In 1739, while decorating the grotto, Henrietta wrote "I am at this time over head and ears in Shells". The poet Alexander Pope advised Henrietta on her garden, and this grotto may have been influenced by the one he created at his house nearby.

Grottoes were a popular addition to 18th-century gardens as part of the fashion for recreating the gardens of ancient Rome. The grotto would have been a secluded spot, and may have been used for dining, entertaining and contemplation. 

While Henrietta lived here there were two grottoes, both featured in a poem of 1764 by her neice Anna Chamber. The one you see today was described as a 'charming scene' and surrounded by flowering plants, the other, located to the south, was called a 'rustic grot', enclosed by huge trees and rocks.

The sketch shows Alexander Pope in his grotto in Twickenham, and is attributed to William Kent, 1730s. I still want to visit Pope's grotto, but it has very limited opening times.

I was surprised at how small the grotto is, just a small room. Very different to Scott's grotto I recently visited. It is gated so people can't go in.

Both Scott's and Henrietta's grottoes were decorated with shells. Some of the shells in Henrietta's grotto came from the Caribbean. Traces of the shell imprints -

Research is being carried out in the grotto -

See more on Marble Hill on English Heritage

See also Grotto Directory , and The Londonphile .

Greenland caves

 In Aug 2024 I was on a cruise to Greenland. After we left Narsarsuaq in Southern Greenland, we headed out through the fjord, passing the town of Narsaq.

Angakkok Cave was marked on my phone map -

I couldn't find anything about Angakkok Cave except "Angakkok Cave is a cave in Narsaq Municipality, Kujalleq. Angakkok Cave is situated close to the community centre Forsamlingshus and the town hall".  Latitude 60.91403° or 60° 54' 51" N , Longitude 46.0367° or 46° 2' 12" W.               

The Inuit angakkuq is an intellectual and spiritual figure in Inuit culture who corresponds to a medicine man.

The town of Narsaq is on the right of this photo -

Gina Moseley, a British cave scientist and paleoclimatologist has been doing research in Northern Greenland caves. From Wired : "In Partnership with Rolex | Paleoclimatologist and Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate Gina Moseley is delving into remote caves in search of traces of earth’s atmosphere—in the hope to better understand the changes to come."

See also the Greenland Caves Project .

And my blog on Narsarsuaq in Southern Greenland. 

Scott's Grotto, Herts

I made a trip to Hertfordshire, which is north of London, in order to see Scott's Grotto. The grotto is located in the town of Ware, up on the hill opposite the railway station. It is classed as the UK's most extensive shell lined grotto. 

Scott's Grotto is in the garden of Amwell House, where the poet John Scott once lived. The house still exists, it is on the main road at the bottom of the hill and has been turned into apartments. The gardens stretched from the house up the hill to where the grotto is, but none of the gardens remain except for the small area around the grotto and summerhouse. Photo of Amwell House taken from Google Streetview

The grotto was built in the 1760s. It was open to visitors and became quite a tourist attraction in the 19th century. It was nearly demolished in the 1960s to make way for housing, but fortunately was saved by the local council in 1974, who have now had it for 50 years. 

It is now open on Saturdays and Bank Holiday Mondays from 2 - 4.30 pm between 1st April and 30th September. It costs just £2 to go in, which is a bargain! View of the grotto from the entrance gate -

I went up to the summer house first, which is above the grotto at the highest part of the garden. There would have been good views over the river valley. The summerhouse is octagonal in shape and was used by Scott for writing his poetry. The summerhouse was extensively renovated after 1990. 

John Scott (1731 - 1783) was a Quaker landowner, his father had moved from London to escape the smallpox. He constructed other summerhouses and seats in the garden. Today there are lots of woollen knitted animals dotted around the garden, which I found rather odd!

The drum in this alcove represents Scott's best remembered poem, The Drum, an anti-war poem written in 1783. 

I walked down to the grotto. Scott started building the grotto with the porch and chamber behind it, when finished in 1764, he called it his Shell Temple. The remainder of the grotto was finished by 1773. 

In the 1990s, the entrance porch and dome, which had been demolished in the 1960s, was rebuilt. 

Inside you are given a brief explanation then left to walk through the grotto on your own. You can borrow a torch as most of it is not lit. The corridors are rather narrow. Most are lined with flint stone and shells, though one long curving corridor is undecorated.

Air tunnel in first chamber -

Looking along a flint lined tunnel -

Passage with seats -

A seat -

This is the grand chamber, which, apart from the impressive shell decorations, is also the only room to be lit -

The Scott's Grotto official page. And see more on IanVisits .

 

El Torcal karst and Antequera, Spain

Whilst in Andalusia in southern Spain, I did a tour to El Torcal and Antequera. El Torcal, or Sierra del Torcal, is a small mountain range south of Antequera in the province of Malaga.

It is a karst area known for its flat limestone blocks. The Jurassic limestone is about 150 myo and was laid down in a marine corridor along this section of the Spanish coast, from Malaga to Alicante (to the east). The seabeds were then uplifted to over 1300 m in the Tertiary era, during the Alpine orogeny. Unusually the resulting beds are quite flat. It is considered one of the most impressive karst landscapes in Europe. 

It almost looks man made, as if some giant hands have sculptured the landscape. The area was designated a Natural Site of National Interest in July 1929, and became a Natural Park Reserve in October 1978. And it is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, along with the Antequera Dolmens Site and La Peña de los Enamorados or Lover's Rock.

Driving north from Malaga, the landscape is mostly gentle hills with very dry lands. As you approach El Torcal you see the lighter coloured creamy rocks forming large hills or small mountains. The road goes up to the visitors' centre. We had no time to look in here, instead walked straight to the viewpoint. This was being renovated and unfortunately the view was right into the sun. However around the path you get a good view of the flat lying limestone. Rocks looked like they had been piled on top of others, just like the small stacks of rocks people now build in tourist areas.

These features have been formed over the millennia when a series of fractures, cracks and faults at right angles were eroded, producing "alleys" between the limestone blocks. The blocks themselves have been subjected to both dissolution by water (karstification) and freeze-thaw splitting action which, working on the limestone's horizontal beds, resulted in the various shapes visible today. And of course many of these have been likened to things people see and have been given names such as the Sphinx, the Jug, the Camel, the Screw, etc.

The Screw is now used as the symbol of the park. From the car park we walked to see the Screw. On the way we were lucky enough to see a group of Spanish ibex, also known as the Andalusian mountain goat, the Iberian ibex, the Spanish wild goat and Iberian wild goat. This is a species of ibex, (Capra pyrenaica) that is endemic to the Iberian Peninsula. I was excited to see this first one standing on rocks at quite a distance. Then as we walked on, we saw a lot more -

There is a clear path with gravel most of the way though for some sections you are walking on limestone pavement. It was a pleasant walk to see The Screw.

We also saw some Griffon vultures but I didn't get any photos. There are also caves in the Torcal includes caves, although we didn't see any. Some of them are of historical importance like the Cueva del Toro (Cave of the Bull) with its Neolithic artifacts.

We then drove down through the valleys to Antequera. North of the town is Lovers' Rock, La Peña de los Enamorados. 

This rock, along with the dolmens, completes the World Heritage site. We didn't have time to visit the dolmens. There are three megalithic monuments: the Menga and Viera dolmens and the Tholos of El Romeral. 

"Built during the Neolithic and Bronze Age out of large stone blocks, these monuments form chambers with lintelled roofs or false cupolas. These three tombs, buried beneath their original earth tumuli, are one of the most remarkable architectural works of European prehistory and one of the most important examples of European Megalithism." (from Antequera Dolmens Site )

Apparently the entrance to Menga dolmen faces Lovers' Rock, so is the only dolmen in continental Europe that faces towards an anthropomorphic mountain. And Tholos of El Romeral, faces the El Torcal mountain range

In the centre of this photo is a brown chimney and in front of that is a grassy mound, that is one of the dolmens -

The World Heritage Antequera Dolmens Site was inscribed in 2016.

See more on Peña de los Enamorados ("The Lovers' Rock") on Wikipedia.