A short trip to Dover was today's plan. The castle and the WW2 underground tunnels being our main focus, followed by a visit to the National Trust site to get a photo or two of the White cliffs.
We parked our car, and ticket purchased, we made our way into the Castle area. It is breath taking in its scale and you can see why tourists flock here from abroad. Being near the ferry terminal might help! We spent several hours wandering around and reading and listening at the many information spots.
The Medieval Colton Gateway of Dover Castle - The entrance though which Roman, Saxon and probably their Iron Age predecessors once entered their respective fortifications.
St Mary in Castro, or St Mary de Castro, is a church in the grounds of Dover Castle. It is a heavily restored Saxon structure, built next to a Roman lighthouse which became the church bell-tower. St Mary serves the local population and is the church of the Dover Garrison.
There are records of a church being built within the castle by Eadbald of Kent in the 630s. However, it is unclear whether this means within the Saxon burgh (usually dated to later than 630) on the Eastern Heights, or within the ruins of old Roman fortifications in the valley. The large, late-Saxon cemetery around the present church does suggest the existence of a c.600 church, but not definitively.
Next to the church is a ‘reasonably’ well-preserved Roman Lighthouse or Pharos, dating from around 46-50 AD (during the reign of the Emperor Claudius 41-54 AD) and, just after the invasion of Britain in 43 AD; the Roman army possibly first coming ashore here or further along the Kent coast at Walmer.
The Romans built a large fort here in c130 AD in order to guard the harbour and sea-route for the fleet sailing from Gaul and through the English Channel. It seems likely they rebuilt the fort in the mid 3rd century. They called the place Portus Dubris or Dubrae, which eventually became the Port of Dover.
From a vantage point near the church, I took my first image of the imposing castle.
The Great Tower, which Henry II built, dominates the scene, and the history of this famous monarch made more sense when you actually stand among the remains of his grand edifice. The reconstructions, such as the kitchen, really brought alive the era. The whole castle appeared to be in the hands of the French today as bus loads of French school children swamped the area - how would Henry have dealt with that, I wondered.
King's Gate was built in the 1180s as part of the Inner Bailey walls surrounding the keep. The gate has an outer barbican for additional defence, with it's gateway positioned away from the main gate to limit a rushing attack - so I am led to believe!
As the closest part of England to the French coast, Dover was in a very important position in the WW2 struggle. Under the Castle area, tunnels had been constructed when we were expecting a Napoleonic invasion. As this never materialised, the tunnels fell into disrepair but were resurrected and expanded for use in the 1939 to 1945 war. We did two guided tours through the tunnels, one to the Hospital area, where we followed an audio and projected display of an operation to save a pilot who had been shot down and one to the operations area for Operation Dynamo:
Imagine working day and night deep inside Dover Castle's top secret tunnels as war raged outside, in a desperate bid to rescue the troops stranded at Dunkirk as German forces closed in.
This life or death battle against time was won in just ten short days in 1940, when Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay pulled off a miracle. With no technology and with pitiful resources he masterminded the rescue of 338,000 troops from his Naval HQ in the tunnels below the castle. Vice Admiral Ramsay, is the unsung hero whose brilliant organisational skills pulled off the greatest rescue in our history - Operation Dynamo. The rescue from Dunkirk `tour` uses original newsreels and recordings, testimonies from veterans and dramatic special effects to recreate the terror and tension of these dark days of Second World War.
This was a very sobering tour, and is well worth a visit if you are anywhere near Dover.
The NT area on top of the cliffs, overlooking Dover harbour, has had an interesting history. It was first used as a holding area for convicts, then as a garrison for the military in Dover and then purchased by the NT in 1988, in whose capable hands it serves as the entrance to the Cliff top walks.
Above the current NT area, the cliff appears to have many zig zagged by paths. Apparently these are where railway tracks were laid, allowing materials to be moved in as the harbour was expanded.
It is difficult on a lovely sunny day to imagine the years of the war when this area was subject to ferocious shelling and bombing.
A gunnery duel, along with heavy German shelling and bombing of Dover strait and the Dover area, led to this stretch of the Channel being nicknamed Hellfire Corner and led to 3,059 alerts, 216 civilian deaths and damage to 10,056 premises in the Dover area. British coastal convoys had to pass through the bottleneck of the Dover strait to transport supplies, particularly coal; Britain's road and rail network was not then able to cope with the volume of traffic that had to be handled. Although the German guns regularly fired on these slow moving convoys from 1940 to 1944, with an interlude in 1943, they only sank two ships and damaged several others. Two seamen were killed and others were injured by shell splinters from near misses. However, the civilian crews of the merchant ships found the shelling more unnerving than the attacks by aircraft or E-boats that they were also subjected to and there were instances of crews refusing to sail from their forming-up point at Southend-on-Sea because of the German guns
A walk along the cliff top to a viewing point and a few photographs of the White cliffs, we made our way back to base for a well earned cuppa and rest!
