“England has many castles, but this has the richest, deepest history of them all – and it’s a frontline, action-packed story,” says Paul Pattison, English Heritage’s historian, as we stand surrounded by medieval walls and Napoleonic-era barracks. “It spans English history from the Iron Age to the Cold War, and now we’re opening a new chapter to the public – a whole extra section of the castle.” He looks around and adds: “The French broke through the defences where you’re standing. This is where the battle for the castle raged. The story of this country could have been so different.”
We are at Dover Castle, over 800 years after that French attack. The year was 1216, when England was in the grip of a civil war (I thought we only had one, so I’m learning). The Magna Carta had been signed by King John, but then ignored, so two-thirds of the English barons rebelled. They had invited the French Dauphin “Louis the Lion” to ascend the English throne – a move that led to the First Barons’ War.
Dover was a royal castle. Built on what almost certainly began as the earthworks of an Iron Age fort on top of the White Cliffs of Dover, it has a remarkable Roman pharaohs (lighthouse) and a large, thousand-year-old Saxon church within its walls, but the castle we see today was first built by Henry II between 1180 and 1189. As I climb the steps to its Great Tower (its exterior reminiscent of the Tower of London), I am surrounded by colorful fabrics and brightly painted furniture that looks strikingly modern. “Color was status,” the room guide tells me. “Paint was expensive and this was a showpiece castle.”
Henry apparently built it primarily to entertain high-status guests from the continent – just 34km (21 miles) away across the water. But he wasn’t taking any chances. The tower also has bow slits, a crenellated roof (with fantastic views) and a second-floor well that sinks 122m (400ft) into the earth (skillful 13th-century engineering!) – all crucial if under siege. As the castle was in 1216, when it was considered “the key to England” and a strategic necessity for any invasion.
The new Dover Castle Under Siege experience, opening next week, has three elements. There’s a wooden children’s play area, complete with an almost life-size siege engine where kids can pull back the catapult (as medieval soldiers did). It doesn’t fire ammunition (thankfully), but it does record how far your siege ball would have traveled. Then there’s a multimedia exhibition set in four rooms in Georgian casemates – bomb-proof barracks built in 1797 in fear of another (Napoleonic) French invasion. Short videos reveal the history of the 13th century, using imagery inspired by manuscripts from the era. You can even fire a crossbow (with the help of a laser) before heading underground.
Louis breached the castle walls, but was repulsed. The castle held out – just barely. With the First Baron’s War over, vast sums were spent improving Dover’s defences in the form of underground tunnels – recently opened to the public – designed to allow rapid, safe and secret resupply to a vulnerable landward fortress: the medieval barbican now known as The Spur. At first the tunnels are neatly lined with brick and painted white, dating from the Napoleonic Wars, but soon the walls darken, the floors slope and we are taken back to their construction after the siege of 1217-30. The tunnels are surprisingly spacious – almost more like naves than underground landing strips for soldiers. “They were built by royal masons,” says Pattison, “and they did a good job.”
We soon enter St John’s Tower (built at the same time) and enter the defensive moat, now filled with biodiversity-boosting grasses. We gaze up at the bastions above, before following more tunnels to a Georgian guardhouse. Here are “18th-century remote controls,” says Pattison – a clever and unusual system of levers and pulleys built in the 1790s that operated five heavy doors to quickly seal the tunnels in the event of an attack. “There was a very real fear of invasion in those days, just as there was in the 13th century,” he adds, “people used to come up to the White Cliffs with telescopes and could see the French camps just across the water.”
The tunnels end at the triangular Spur – never before opened to the public. The views of the castle are spectacular: the Great Tower rising at its heart, the inner and outer bailey walls, the deep moat, medieval towers, 18th-century caponiers (hidden gun arches) and the 13th-century Constable’s Gate, “the largest and most sophisticated medieval gatehouse surviving in England.”
“This is the enemy’s point of view,” says Pattison, “the ‘let’s just go back to France’ moment. It really brings home the difficulty of besieging this castle and the extraordinary feat of building it – all by hand.”
That era of manual construction isn’t the whole story, though. As the threat to French territory resurfaced during World War II, Dover Castle’s elevated position on the coast and its secret tunnels lost their appeal. There are two related tours: to the underground hospital built in 1941, and to the command tunnels of Operation Dynamo, the Dunkirk evacuation. There’s so much to do here that I only have time for one, so I’ll go for Dunkirk.
The tour begins in the Napoleonic-era tunnels, sheltering some 2,000 men in the 1790s and marked with early graffiti. Converted and expanded in 1939, this complex housed secret command centres for all three armed forces. Through archive footage and the voices of veterans projected into the rooms where the Dunkirk evacuation was initiated, we are taken on an emotional journey through the suffering, risk and ultimate rescue of over 338,000 Allied servicemen. It was a retreat, but it was also a victory – if all those men had died, how different would the story of this nation have been (again)?
On my way out I see a door leading to the even lower Dumpy Level. This was the site of a government nuclear bunker, which was only decommissioned in 1982. This marked the end of Dover Castle’s extraordinary eight centuries at the heart of England’s defences. Or so we hope.
Dover Castle is just a 20-minute walk (uphill) from Dover Priory Station (an hour by fast train from London). You can also stay in a 13th-century tower or a 19th-century house (www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/dover-castle).