SHELLING OUT AT GROTTO
HIDDEN away between tall pines in deepest West Wales, this amazing shell grotto looks foreboding and maybe even Gothic. But when the sun shines, the rays glinting off the roughly hewn white quartz, it’s transformed into something magical – a shimmering whiteness among the trees.
This is the Cilwendeg Shell House Hermitage, one of the most remarkable ornamental grottos in the country and an incredibly rare survival in Wales.
Described in sale particulars in 1906 as a “quaint grotto and rookery”, it’s set at the end of an intentionally secret little track on the privately owned Cilwendeg Estate on the edge of the tiny village of Boncath and just eight miles from Cardigan. It’s only open on a Thursday and even then, you have to collect a key from the gatekeeper to the hermitage, local historian Alan Thomas.
It’s owned by the London-based Temple Trust which was set up by Suzanna Fleming to preserve historic garden buildings. It cost £156,000 to buy it off the local farmer. Even though he’d received a grant in the 1980s to build a new roof – thereby saving the building – in the process all the shells and materials had been unceremoniously swept out and left to rot.
So began a patient and painstaking restoration project by the Trust in 2004 to return this 200-year-old building to its former glory. With only half the shells needed recovered from the dilapidated building, Suzanna found it a challenge to find enough until she had a tip off to visit Borth beach, 90 minutes north of Boncath. She had to wait for the tides and winds, but eventually the team were able to beat the shifting sands to collect enough to complete the project.
The Cilwendeg Estate was established in the 18th century by the Morgan Jones family, who made their fortune by owning the Skerries lighthouse, just off the coast of Anglesey. Compulsory tolls had to be paid for every ship passing and every ton of weight in cargo.
Morgan Jones the elder lived out his days as a recluse and died in 1826 and it was his nephew, Morgan Jones the younger, who inherited his uncle’s estate and income. And it was he who set about erecting the exquisite hermitstyle shell house in a homage to Morgan Jones the elder.
Nearly two centuries later, it is a fitting tribute to the elder Jones – a sparkling whiteness among the pines or perhaps a remote lighthouse in a dark sea.
There is perhaps nothing that can more perfectly embody the historical name of Cilwendeg, which literally means “the fair white or light nook”.