John Burke's Hastings, August 1999
Dover Castle |
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| Sunday 1st August 1999
When we set out to Dover, we little realised what a brilliant day we were about to have.
And we certainly never guessed that we would see nothing of Dover except the castle.
We decided to visit the castle first, so that we would have enough time to see it all before
looking around the town. We never got to the town... |
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| It meant that we could visit as many of their sites as
we liked without paying any extra.
We crossed the drawbridge and entered the castle. There were several events during the day.
We passed a group of archers, firing at a dummy hanging from a tree - seemed a bit unfair to
string the poor fellow up and then shoot at him... |
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This, believe it or not, is known as "Queen Elizabeth's
Pocket Pistol"! The Queen Elizabeth in question is the first one of course; Good Queen Bess,
though the 12-pounder brass cannon of 1544 was actually a gift to her father, Henry VIII.
Dover is the closest point to France and several monarchs have strengthened the defenses here.
In fact, there are Roman remains here at Dover, as we shall see later.
There are more modern weapons in evidence. Dover was in the front line in World War II as
the Battle of Britain raged overhead. |
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It was our first line of defence in case of invasion and Dover Castle has a
splendid view over the Channel.
Left is the modern ferry port. On the right is a WWII vintage Bofors anti-aircraft gun.
Children swarmed over it, fascinated. Dad - who did his National Service - was secretly wanting to play... |
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| About a mile away, the hovercraft ferry was coming into harbour, the roar of
its engines loud in the quiet of the early afternoon. Behind it looks to be a cruise liner.
There was quite a haze, I shot this with my zoom lens on full telephoto and have boosted
the contrast on the computer.
Normally from here it is quite easy to see the coast of France with the naked eye. |
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| From this Admiralty Platform, Winston Churchill and his colleagues stood and
gazed at France, planning and preparing should Hitler invade. |
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| This wartime telephone exchange stands at the entrance to an intricate and
once-secret system of tunnels excavated out of the chalk of Dover's cliffs beneath the castle.
In 1797, with the war against Napolean requiring the garrisoning of huge numbers of soldiers
in the town, miners were brought in to create seven tunnels to be used as barracks.
By 1803 there were 2,000 men accomodated within the tunnels, which were equipped with
fireplaces. With WWII imminent, the tunnels were expanded, to be used by the coastal artillery
and the Royal Navy's Dover Command. |
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The wartime tunnels housed an emergency hospital and countless offices.
Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay directed the Dunkirk evacuation of May 1940 from his office
within the tunnels and here enemy aircraft were tracked and the RAF directed to intercept.
These two photos from English Heritage postcards |
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We had seen (and walked partway down) an old spiral staircase that had
been built in the 1870s and after we left the tunnels we found the entrance to the stairway on
the hills above.
During the Napoleanic Wars entrances were sunk from the cliff face and several balconies
were created. This shaft gave direct access downwards from the surface. |
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