A Visit to Dover on the English Channel

I found one of the other professors who wanted to go to Dover, so we left on the train very early one morning and headed to the Channel coast. The major features are Dover Castle with its secret WWII tunnels, the famous white chalk cliffs, and the beach resorts.

The castle is a very steep climb. Gee, for some reason these guys kept building forts on the tops of big hills.

Its history is in stages--like most everything else around here. There was a Bronze Age settlement at one time. Then the Romans came and built a lighthouse to guide ships into the harbor. The original Roman lighthouse is the roundish tower on the right. It was later incorporated into a Saxon church about a thousand years ago. That's the part to the left which has had additions along the way.

The church is mostly associated with the garrisons that have been here over the centuries.

You find wonderful things like this in churches all over the countryside.

This is the inner castle primarily built up by Henry II. Remember him from"The Lion in Winter"? William the Conquorer had put a fort here previously.

A really good interpreter that the kids all seemed to like.

Give you an idea of the thickness of some of the walls and how little light there was in castles. Also, no glass in the old days, so bundle up.

These give you a pretty good idea what the kitchens were like in the Middle Ages.

See what I mean by hilltops? The castle was used during the Napoleonic wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a garrison to fight an invasion if it came. Dover is only 20 miles from the French coast and has always been a really important defensive outpost.

After cannons came along, they had them here to attack ships in the Channel.

Defender of the castle, Sir Roy of Murray.

The castle and the tunnels in the cliffs below it were tremendously important in the air and sea war efforts during WWII. Lots of German air attacks came across here.

We took a guided tour of the secret tunnels which housed communication centers, a hospitals, and a command center. Very eerie.

Dover has been a favorite seacoast resort. The big whitewashed Victorian hotel gives it the look of another age.

The famous white cliffs of Dover. They go for miles and are pure chalk with some flint mixed in.

The tunnels were cut into the chalk.

The beach is entirely smooth pebbles. They are a feature in Matthew Arnold's famous poem "Dover Beach." Now I have some to use for show-and-tell in class.

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place. This scene looked like an Impressionist painting.