Papillifera papillaris (Müller, 1774) on Brownsea Island, Dorset

When Papillifera papillaris was found at Cliveden House, near Maidenhead, in 2004 (Ridout Sharpe, 2005, 2007) this was believed to be the first record of this clausiliid snail in Britain. The species is well known for its anthropogenic dispersal from Italy to many other places around the Mediterranean from antiquity onwards (for example, see Menez, 2007; Mienis and Gümüş, 2007). However, its presence in Britain is some 966 km (600 miles) from this circum-Mediterranean distribution, with (as yet) no known localities between southern England and the south of France. Some earlier, rather obscure, British records of P. papillaris had been attributed to either erroneous identification (in Dorset) or perhaps short-lived colonies (in Edinburgh) that are no longer extant (Dance, 2008), leaving Cliveden as the only verified British locality. Then, in August 2010, the National Trust issued a press release to announce that P. papillaris had been found on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, Dorset.

Owned by the National Trust, Brownsea Island is one of the few locations where red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) are still to be found in the wild in England, and the island is managed as a nature reserve with the northern half leased to the Dorset Wildlife Trust. The south-east corner of the island is occupied by Brownsea Castle, which has undergone several incarnations, first as a Tudor fortress built in 1545 and most recently as a large Victorian mansion built in the 1890s, which is currently leased to a retail company for use as a staff hotel and so is inaccessible to the general public.

Correspondence with the National Trust revealed that the snail could be found living on the boundary wall of Brownsea Castle (figure 1). Tom Walker and I paid our first visit to Brownsea on 17 September 2010 to look for it. The wall curves inland from the landing quay for about 100 m before it reaches the Castle gates. With a bit of practice, it was quite easy to spot and photograph the snails in situ on the wall (figure 2). Most were found nestling in crevices (figure 3) where the mortar had eroded away but some had ventured into the open (figure 4), perhaps to feed on lichens. A few snails were found on the brick façade of one of the houses opposite the Castle wall; the latter also sported a thriving population on its inner, south-facing side where it bounds the garden of the National Trust tearooms.

The timing of the National Trust press release is a mystery because, two years previously, publication of the discovery at Cliveden had prompted the following blog from Chris Thain, Reserve Manager for the Dorset Wildlife Trust on Brownsea Island, on Aydın Örstan’s website ‘Snails Tales’ (Örstan, 2008) on 28 August 2008:

“I read news of the ‘discovery’ of Papillifera papillaris with interest. In the UK it has, in fact, been known from Brownsea Island, Dorset since 1993. It is also thought to have originated here from importation of stone and statuary from Italy in the late 19th century. Identification was confirmed in 1993 by Michael Kerney at the Natural History Museum, London.”

Subsequent correspondence with Chris Thain revealed that the snail had been spotted by the Head Gardener at Brownsea Castle, Steve Teuber, in 1993. Steve had consulted with Kevin Cook, Chris’s predecessor at the Dorset Wildlife Trust, who sent some specimens to Mike Kerney. Chris Thain kindly provided a photocopy of Mike Kerney’s reply, dated 23 August 1993:

“Thank you very much for sending the clausiliids found living at Brownsea Castle. They are ... Papillifera papillaris. This is a very common snail around the western Mediterranean, in rocky ground, walls, etc. It would be interesting to know how it arrived in Dorset. My guess would be that it will not survive a hard winter, but one never knows with these introductions ... I can’t find any record of the species previously established in Britain. Would you be prepared to write a paragraph or two on your find for publication in the Conchologists’ Newsletter? It is nice to have discoveries of this kind placed somewhere on permanent record. May we keep the three specimens for the collection here?”

This letter confirms that P. papillaris was recorded on Brownsea Island in 1993, 11 years before its discovery at Cliveden and 17 years before the National Trust press release. Unfortunately neither Kevin Cook nor Mike Kerney was able to place the record in the public domain and the existence of the ‘Brownsea snail’ remained known to very few. Adrian Norris, the Society’s non-marine recorder, had no information at all about this find until the media interest following the National Trust’s press release. However, Tom Walker, with the aid of Jon Ablett of the Mollusca Section at the Natural History Museum, was able to locate a small plastic zip-bag in the Museum’s collection containing three specimens of P. papillaris. The bag contained two labels: a hand-written one with the legend ‘Papillifera 40/031877. K. Cook, 19 Aug. 1993 (see file)’ and a printed label to the effect that the snails were ‘Removed from Dr M. Kerney’s room on his retirement, 2003’. No specific identification or locality is given, but the reference to Kevin Cook and the date undoubtedly identify these shells as the Brownsea specimens.

Following the precedent of P. papillaris at Cliveden, it seemed most likely that the snails had been introduced to the gardens of Brownsea Castle on imported statuary during the vogue for Italianate gardens in the 18th and 19th centuries. Having obtained kind permission from the lessee to visit Brownsea Castle gardens and also to consult the garden records in the Castle archives, Tom Walker and I visited Brownsea Island again on 29 October, this time accompanied by Peter Dance and Brian Hammond. We were given a warm welcome by Steve Teuber, who allowed us to roam through the gardens (figure 5) looking for snails. P. papillaris was very widespread and had colonised walls throughout the Castle grounds. Steve was able to show us the exact spot where he had first discovered the snail back in 1993 (figure 6), on a rather non-descript low brick wall in the ‘working’ area of the gardens. But where had the snails come from? The gardens were conspicuous for their lack of Italian statuary.

The Castle archives and the official guide book (National Trust, 2006) present an interesting history of Brownsea Castle. At least three of its owners had established Italianate gardens. The first was Sir Humphrey Sturt (1725–1786) who inherited Brownsea Island in 1765 and set about rebuilding the castle on a grand scale. He is said to have spent over £50,000 just on establishing the ornamental gardens. The Hon. George Cavendish-Bentinck (1821–1891) owned the island from 1873 until his death, and he is reported to have filled Brownsea Castle with a spectacular array of Italian Renaissance sculpture. Finally, Charles and Florence van Raalte bought the island in 1901 and soon afterwards laid out a formal Italianate garden in the grounds of Brownsea Castle. However, not all of Brownsea’s owners led charmed lives and nearly all of the Italian statuary was auctioned off in 1857 and again in 1927 to pay off debts. Today very little remains of the Italianate splendour of the past – except for P. papillaris. The snail appears to be more or less confined to the Castle grounds, although Steve Teuber believes that it has increased its range over the 17 years since he first discovered it. There is certainly a flourishing and at present unthreatened colony on Brownsea Island, which may be slowly expanding as a result of global warming.

But when was it introduced? It had been assumed that it arrived at Brownsea during the latter part of the 19th century when George Cavendish-Bentinck was importing Italian sculpture. This would have made it a near contemporary of the Cliveden snail (1896) with a slight claim to precedence (1873–1891). However, there are some hints to suggest that it may have been on Brownsea Island for a century longer than its ‘rival’ at Cliveden.

Peter Dance’s (2008) research brought to light a hand-coloured engraving which appears to represent P. papillaris, with its distinctive crenulated suture and pinky-brown colour, in ‘A descriptive catalogue of the British Testacea’ by Maton and Rackett (1807). The accompanying text identifies this shell as Turbo bidens Linnaeus (as P. papillaris was then known) and as a specimen from the collection of Richard Pulteney (1730–1801), which was then housed by the Linnean Society but was auctioned in 1863 and is now lost. Pulteney described the shell as ‘a Dorsetshire shell’, although the authors of the 1807 catalogue considered that he was mistaken since ‘notwithstanding a most diligent search’ they had been unable to find it for themselves. Tom Walker tracked down the Natural History Museum’s copy of Pulteney’s ‘Catalogues of the birds, shells, and some of the more rare plants of Dorsetshire’ published in 1799, but the description of ‘Turbo bidens’ is ambiguous and appears to combine elements of both P. papillaris (‘the sutures ... elegantly crenated’ and found ‘in the chinks of old walls’) and Cochlodina laminata (‘shells three-quarters of an inch long ... common in woods, upon trees, and on moss’). This entry was omitted from the second edition, which was revised by Thomas Rackett and published in 1812 after Pulteney’s death.

Clausilia bidens (= Turbo bidens) was included by Mansel-Pleydell (1885) in his list of the land and freshwater molluscs of Dorset, but under the heading ‘Spurious’ with a note to say: ‘Figured in the Linnean transactions as a Dorset species, but doubtless erroneous’; in his later, more comprehensive catalogue (Mansel-Pleydell, 1898) he omits it completely. Kennard and Woodward (1926) dealt the final blow by synonymising Pulteney’s Turbo bidens with Marpessa (now Cochlodina) laminata.

So the only evidence we have to suggest that P. papillaris may have been introduced to Brownsea Island by Humphrey Sturt in the 18th century is a pretty little drawing of a lost shell, identified by Richard Pulteney as Turbo bidens. For the next 200 years or so no one was prepared to accept that Pulteney may have been right, but there are some other clues to a possible 18th century origin for this snail on Brownsea Island: its widespread distribution within the Castle grounds compared to its more restricted distribution at Cliveden, and a reference in the Castle archives to the fact that Cavendish-Bentinck’s Italian stone carvings were mostly of Venetian origin, and so outside the natural range of P. papillaris in peninsular Italy and adjacent islands. Richard Pulteney might possibly have collected his ‘Dorsetshire shell’ from Sir Humphrey Sturt’s garden in the late 18th century, which could explain why later collectors on mainland Dorset were unable to locate this species. If this assumption is correct, the Brownsea Island colony was established nearly 250 years ago and is more than twice as old as the colony at Cliveden House.

Although the ‘Cliveden snail’ is becoming established in the literature, it may seem more appropriate to dub it the ‘Brownsea snail’. However, the National Trust has launched a campaign to survey the grounds of its other properties with Italianate gardens and members of the public have been invited to search for Papillifera papillaris country-wide, so there is a chance that further colonies will be found. It is even possible that the sale of garden ornaments from Brownsea Castle transported snails to new sites. To avoid any potential rivalry between different locations for naming this species in the vernacular, might I suggest ‘Pulteney’s door snail’ instead?

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks are due to Peter Dance, for raising the possibility that Papillifera papillaris might have been present in Dorset in the 18th century; to Judy Faraday of the John Lewis Partnership Archives for supplying information about the history of Brownsea Castle and in particular the auction records of 1857 and 1927; to Steve Teuber, for giving so freely of his time to show us around the Castle gardens and talk ‘snails’; to Chris Thain, who responded to my enquiries with such enthusiasm and arranged access to the Castle for us; and not least to Tom Walker for his support, which included research at the Natural History Museum and driving us down to Poole Harbour (and back) twice.

_{figure 1: The public face of P. papillaris on Brownsea Island: the Castle wall.}

_{figure 2: Tom Walker photographing snails in situ on the Castle wall.}

_{figure 3. P. papillaris typically within a crevice.}

_{figure 4: ... and on the surface of the wall.}

_{figure 5: Brownsea Castle and part of the gardens.}

_{figure 6: The 1993 findspot in the Castle gardens.}