Margate is a town in the throes of attempted gentrification, hoping to shed its tacky image with a new art gallery and renovated heritage theme park planned for 2011. Yet little is made of an existing attraction which is little known but simply astonishing. I can’t help but echo the Victorian novelist Marie Corelli who blamed its “plebeian” location for a lack of recognition:“[i]f the curious and beautiful subterranean temple … existed anywhere but at Margate, it would certainly be acknowledged as one of the wonders of the world”.

The Shell Grotto was discovered in 1835, prior to which date there are no maps, records or any indication of its existence, whomever may have created it and why they hid it again. It remains a mystery, with estimates of its age varying from 200 years to 2,000 year, with guesses ranging from it being a Masonic Sun Temple from the Middle Ages, to having been created by Roman soldiers. It has proved impossible to carbon date the shells due to contamination by soot from Victorian gas lighting. The material used to attach the shells, too, has been unable to shed any light but is similar to Roman cement, and seems to have been used to affix the shells while still alive.

Regardless of its origins, the Shell Grotto is an incredible place. 4.6 million shells cover almost every available space, their natural colours now covered in a patina of black and grey. Victorian damage is visible not just in the lack of colour, but in occasionally visible antique graffiti marking the shells. Finding shells with 19th century names and dates only adds to the Grotto’s charm.

A lengthy tunnel leads to a circular Rotunda passage, from which a further tunnel leads to a rectangular room known as the Altar Chamber. The images in the Grotto are open to interpretation although religious and ritual interpretations are the most common, with most seeming to pertain to fertility, birth, death and the sun. At the centre of the Grotto is a dome open to the sky which recent research has found to function as a solar calendar, forming a dramatic pattern at noon on the summer Equinox. While the mystery surrounding what ceremonial uses the Grotto may have once held are fascinating, the Shell Grotto stands alone, and would be no less intriguing if it were simply what it also appears to resemble, a work of outsider art.

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Posted by Kate P on January 23, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Toothbrush Fence in Te Pahu, New Zealand is exactly what the name suggests, a fence adorned with toothbrushes (and a few dish brushes). While the Toothbrush Fence was name checked in TV’s “Flight of the Conchords” as boasting over 50 toothbrushes, they now number in the hundreds. In all their variety they hang from the fence, their plastic still vividly coloured although their bristles are largely worn down from long service. Children’s toothbrushes stand out as makers have gone all out to make oral hygiene attractive to the young with Narnia, Lord of the Rings films and Looney Tunes all represented.

The Toothbrush Fence is located on a farm on a quiet rural road and if you weren’t looking for it, it seems unlikely you would stumble across it. We saw no other people while visiting but the bull in the nearest field stared at us, and a goat tethered to a fence across the street also ambled into the road to greet us.

A sign under the farm’s two letterboxes instructs “DIY (wire in bucket)”. The fence goer can hold their toothbrush in a clamp and drill a hole in the brush before helping themselves to a pre-cut piece of wire to attach their brush. If you need amusement while your friends drill their toothbrushes, the post boxes have games attached to the fence to play, in the form of a Rubik’s Cube and a peg based game of uncertain rules. The fence also displays a painting of Betty in her 1950s blue sedan visiting the Toothbrush Fence. The identity of Betty is unknown but her image also adorns one of the village’s other attractions – the Helen Clark Celebrity Bus Shelter.

Former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark is a native of Te Pahu. The Celebrity Bus Shelter is wooden, green and houses paintings including one of the then PM in the bus shelter and the depiction of Betty’s visit. The Helen Clark “self portrait” may be a reference to “Paintergate” where as PM she signed a painting which was, alas, not her own work.

Te Pahu also boasts an information centre in a shed, which a sign informs you is closed 24 hours a day. Peering through the window it has a "You are here!" map, a Te Pahu School t-shirt, a handful of leaflets and a Hamilton Underground Map. Hamilton (the nearest metropolitan centre) has yet to build a subway system, although it does boast a tribute in statue form of its own celebrity, Richard O’Brien as Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The creator of all the Te Pahu attractions is the self proclaimed Laird of Hamilton, Graeme Cairns. His inspiration for the Toothbrush Fence apparently came from the now sadly bare Cardrona Bra Fence. Cairns is best known for his attempts to evade the census by various methods including claiming to be possessed, completing the form in Latin and nailing it to a tree, ascending to international air space in a hot air balloon and being cryogenically frozen and declared legally dead by a “Dr Qualified”.

While his Te Pahu website claims “Te Pahu is a great place to live, and the less people who know that the better” the closed Information Centre is intended to frustrate any potential visitors, it’s well worth making the effort to stop in Te Pahu if you are ever nearby.

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Posted by Kate P on March 04, 2010 | Permalink

Tove Jansson’s Moomins, created by her in the 1940s, have been popular with children and adults worldwide (but particularly in Scandinavia and Japan) ever since. In Jansson’s native Finland, a theme park was opened with her blessing in 1993, with the understanding that it would be non-traditional, close to nature and made of stone and wood.

Located on the island of Kailo (the original choice, Ruissalo, is now home instead to the Ruisrock music festival), Moomin World (Muumimaailma) is accessible via a bridge from the harbour of the old town of Naantali.

There are no rides in Moomin World and while there is no shortage of places to buy snacks and Moomin merchandise, these don’t seem to be the park’s raison d’être. Instead visitors can visit buildings featured in the Moomin stories such as the many-storied Moominhouse, Sniff’s Summer Cottage, the Snork’s Workshop and the Witch’s Hut.

Where Moominworld does resemble traditional theme parks is in the abundance of teenagers dressed in character costumes. We saw Moominmamma, Little My, Too Ticky, the Hemulen and many more swarmed by adoring children (and one little girl whose curiosity lead her to try to unzip the Snork Maiden!).

Some of the characters also appear on stage at Theatre Emma, which gives regular performances in Swedish and Finnish. As English speakers the dialogue may have been lost on us but we enjoyed the spirited dancing of the octopus, Little My’s impudent faces and the revolving stage sets.

The park’s key demographic, families with small children wearing headscarves, loved the play together with walks through attractions like the Hattifatteners’ maze, the Whispering Woods and the Barefoot Trail, stopping in the many picnic areas and swimming in the sea at the secluded beach area. (Otherwise scarily well-behaved Scandinavian
children do splash each other!)

Moomin World is a gentle, friendly place, which reflects the imaginative landscape and idealism of the Moomin stories and can be enjoyed by children, adults, Moomin fans and Moomin neophytes.

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Posted by Kate P on January 08, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2)