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Dover Castle - Dover, Kent (EH)

The wide-ranging and imposing site of Dover Castle has been used in various forms as a defensive stronghold for over two thousand years. Long before the arrival of the Normans in 1066, this high land above the English Channel was an Iron Age hill fort, whose shape determined the stone fortifications still visible. Looking out towards the sea, on a clear day you can see France and also the steady white procession of ferries which ply the shortest sea crossing to mainland Europe. It is this geographical location which bestowed the vital importance of the castle throughout its long history of defense against invasion.

On the highest point of the enclosed ground are the cheek-by-jowl remains of a Roman lighthouse (among the highest standing Roman structures in Europe) and the Saxon church of St Mary-in-Castro. It is probable that it was also on this hill that William the Conqueror built his first wooden castle shortly after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Roman lighthouse was built in the second half of the first century AD to provide guidance for ships crossing the Channel. A similar pharos stood at the western end of Dover town but there only the foundations remain. The eastern pharos enclosed within the castle originally rose to about 80ft. and was octagonal, with eight stepped stages. The bottom four can still be clearly seen, with their typically Roman building fabric of stone (local flint here) divided horizontally with strips of red tile. When the Romans left, it gradually fell into ruin, but was repaired and refaced with the top part rebuilt between 1415 and 1437 to be used as a bell tower for the church.

The church itself, immediately adjacent to the lighthouse, dates originally from 1000 AD, but was heavily restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1862, with the tower and interior mosaic added by William Butterfield in 1888. The church and its surrounding Saxon burials suggest that there was an Anglo-Saxon burgh here before the Normans arrived.

The castle-building great-grandson of William the Conqueror, Henry II, had a major impact on the site at Dover. As the first line of defense against mainland Europe (now that the Vikings had calmed down), Dover's keep was built between 1170 and 1190, with concentric fortifications around it, the first castle in Western Europe to have such defenses. It remains pretty much as it was when first built, able to accommodate the King and his retinue, important visitors, providing storage of food and supplies to the garrison kept here right up until 1945. Dover, as a Royal castle and also as one of the last of its type to be built, was large and relatively luxurious. The rings of earthwork and stone wall defenses meant that the keep itself could trade off some element of defense against comfort. The heavily fortified forebuilding protects the entrance on the first floor and the little chapel immediately in front of you as you ascend the steps reminds you of the multifunctional role of the castle. 

There are three floors, each divided into two main rooms, with smaller rooms around them. The King would have occupied the grandest upper floor, with less important guests on the first floor below. The basement, only accessible from the first floor, was always used for storage. This plan follows that of the contemporary keeps up and down the country, such as Peveril in Derbyshire and Richmond in Yorkshire. The rooms would have been mainly bare, as they are presently, with the luxurious furniture and wall hangings being brought in when the King was about to visit. In 1240, a new more convenient hall was built for the king along the eastern side of the inner bailey, the lower portions of which are still visible beneath the barracks built in the eighteenth century. The keep was kept in repair however and the visit of Henry VIII and his wife Anne of Cleves in 1539 is the focus of the current exhibition within the keep, showing the boxes and preparations in audio and visual scenes. 

One of the highlights of the keep is the Chapel of Thomas Becket. This is directly above the chapel at the top of the forebuilding, but is twice its size. Here, the decoration of dog-tooth carved arches and finely carved capitals on the pillars proclaim the higher status of this chapel. It contains the best preserved original stonework of the castle and was later dedicated to St. Thomas Becket who was murdered by Henry II's knights at Canterbury Cathedral shortly before the keep was begun.

The roof of the keep was replaced in the 1790's by a strong stone gun emplacement and now provides good views out to sea and over the rest of the castle buildings. The inner bailey - the enclosed area immediately around the keep - now has barrack buildings dating from the mid eighteenth century, but many of these were built into and on top of the earlier medieval buildings. The bailey wall, constructed at the same time as the keep, has a sequence of fourteen towers in its walls, adding greatly to the defensive platforms from which to fire arrows and missiles. The two gates were heavily defended with outer barbicans but only the northern one survives. The wall towers have been repeatedly refaced over the centuries and at the end of the eighteenth century, they were lowered to provide a better field of fire for the latest guns.

During the Civil War, the Parliamentarians took Dover with comparative ease, fortunately for us, as its destruction would have impoverished the superb example of medieval castle-building that survives here. 

One of the exceptional features of Dover castle is the network of tunnels of varying dates underneath the outer baileys. The castle successfully withstood a siege by Prince Louis of France in 1216-1217 and Hubert de Burgh set about strengthening the castle's outer defenses almost immediately afterwards. The siege had highlighted where the castle was vulnerable and the northern gateway had been successfully mined. To avoid any repetition of this, the gateway was substantially restructured, becoming the Norfolk Towers, with the new Constable's Gateway built to the west. Beyond the moat, a new earthwork was built from which defenders could attack any enemy approaching this area of the castle. Linking the defensive spur with the outer bailey was a series of tunnels, cut into the chalk. 

Parts of these medieval tunnels remain, but they were substantially altered in the late eighteenth century, when invasion from France was again feared. A caponier, or protected passageway was built from brick to provide an artillery defense at the base of the castle, to augment the gun platforms above ground on the various spurs and battlements around the outer defenses. These tunnels and passageways are eerie, with the remarkable series of doors controlled centrally particularly atmospheric. 

The tunnels at Dover were further expanded and used once again during the Second World War. A top secret headquarters was established in 1939 and the Dunkirk evacuation, so important to later success, was directed from the tunnels by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. As once again Dover became the frontier against invasion, the castle's various buildings were used as offices and the network of tunnels expanded to three levels, containing a hospital, a telephone exchange and control rooms. The middle level tunnel, known as Casemate, used existing Georgian underground barracks. The upper tunnels, Annexe, were built between 1941 and 1942 to house the hospital and the lower level, Dumpy, built later. There is a substantial difference between the high, brick-lined Georgian tunnels and the more hastily constructed low, steel lined twentieth century tunnels. Conditions during the war were cramped and unhealthy, but they were safe from bombs and stayed secret until well after the war. As late as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the tunnels were in use by the military and a regional government would have been run from here in the event of a nuclear attack.

Dover castle is a fascinating slice of the military history of southern England. There are so many different periods of building and defense that it takes a good while to do justice to the castle. There are guided tours of parts of the building, with all visits to the wartime tunnels escorted and timed for safety reasons.

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