Dover Castle: A Whole Lotta History Atop the White Cliffs

For just about as long as the island of England has had people on its land, the area where Dover Castle sits has been used to defend it. Situated at the narrowest point between England and mainland Europe, Dover has been strategically important during most of the wars on the European continent in modern history.

The Romans built a lighthouse and fortification here and William the Conqueror built the first castle here fresh off of his victory at the Battle of Hastings and coronation in 1066.

Henry II began building the present-day structure in the 12th century. In medieval times, a series of tunnels were built underneath the castle in the chalky cliffs below. They were established to defend against an invasion by Napoleon. In fact, they built a series of spiral staircases to quickly allow soldiers to ascend to the castle and descend to the beach to defend this point. While never needed at that time, this tunnel network became strategically important 200 years later.

During World War II, when French and English allied troops were cornered and surrounded across the English Channel on the shores and beaches of Dunkirk, Admiral Ramsey was pulled out of his retirement to command the evacuation efforts from this series of tunnels and was able to evacuate more than 350,000 troops (far exceeding the 35,000 they’d hoped to save) using both naval war ships and locally owned and captained sailing ships and fishing boats. This evacuation led to the preservation of the British army and provided an improvement in British morale fueling the charge for future invasion and eventual defeat of the Nazis. (Watch the excellent 2017 movie Dunkirk for a more detailed telling).

During the Cold War, these tunnels and bunkers were thought to be a safe place to which to evacuate the British government in the event of a nuclear strike (until they determined that it would not actually keep people safe from the radiation).

You can tour the tunnels (in high season, buy tickets in advance and get there for opening to be early in queue), which we did; the underground hospital, which we didn’t; and the medieval tunnels, which were closed for repairs when we visited. You can visit the Roman lighthouse and St. Mary in the Castle church along with the Henry II castle site.

We had beautiful sunny skies for our entire tour, so we set off for the National Trust site a short distance up the road to visit the White Cliffs of Dover when the skies opened up and unleashed a pouring rain drenching us from tip to toe, so after a quick look and photo op we returned to the warmth and dryness of our trusty MG.