Dover Castle and Castle Church

Officially owned by the English Heritage group, Dover Castle, including its nearby neighbors--- an Iron Age hill barricade, an old Saxon church, and an even older Roman lighthouse--- is undoubtedly Dover's most poplar tourist attraction. There has been some type of fortification at the Dover Castle site since the earliest days of human inhabitation, primarily because it is strategic location, only twenty miles from the French coast, makes it a natural crossing point. In Iron Age times, Dover's first defenses, was a simple wooden fort with surrounding earthworks that the local built to ward of marauders from nearby tribes. When the Roman soldiers attempted to land at Dover in the year 43, they were met by barbarians (as the Romans called them). Standing at the cliff tops, these local warriors threw rocks at the invaders and the Romans had to find another place to come ashore.

Rome's legions eventually overcame the local defenders, of course, and as they set out to establish their main English port ( Dubris or Portus Dubris) at Dover, their first task was to improve their defenses. Building near the site of the earlier fortifications, they erected a stone castle. They also established two lighthouses to guide ships into Dover's harbor. (One of these, Pharos, still stands one the grounds of Dover Castle and is England's tallest Roman remaining structure.)

When the Saxons arrived In Dover replacing the Romans in the 900s, they renamed the town Dofras and it gradually grew into a busy medieval town. A sturdy Saxon church--- St. Mary in Castro (meaning in Castle)--- was built during the tenth and eleventh centuries, stands within Dover Castle. The church is reported to have earliest door arch of any church in England and, adding to the of antiquity, the old Roman lighthouse, Pharos, was used as the church's bell tower.

From 1555 to 1557 the church was abandoned because it structurally unsafe. However, repairs were made and in 1582 it was again opened for public worship and for burials of troops from the castle garrison. Again declared unsafe for people in 1590, the church was used as a warehouse and coal storage facility during most of the 1700s and well into the next century. Finally, in the 1880s, it was again restored for use as a Roman Catholic church and since then has served as such to the Army garrison and local people.
(Factoid: Legend has it that while the first worship structure at the site was a shrine to the Roman gods of war, Minerva and Mars, it has actually been used for various sorts of religious ceremonies for as many as two thousand years.)

When William the Conqueror's Normans battled the Saxons for control of England in 1066 , they burned down much of Dover and destroyed most of Dover Castle. William then built a new castle on heights where the Iron Age fort had stood. This construction was continued in the 1100s under Henry I and Henry II. Notably, Henry II enlarged the castle complex with a series of circular walls spreading out from the Inner Ward (Castle Keep), making Dover Castle the first of this kind in Western Europe. The bastion was put to the test in 1216 when, assisted by French forces, King John's rebel barons attacked the outer walls with sophisticated stone throwing engines. Although they did some damage, the attackers were unsuccessful and the castle survived. By 1240 weaknesses in its fortifications were correctly and the castle was considered virtually impregnable for the following several centuries.

The history of Dover Castle includes many unsuccessful attacks but once incident during the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century was a notable exception. This period saw the Stuart kingdoms of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales split seriously by religious and political differences. In 1642, the troops garrisoned at Dover Castle were loyal to the monarchy, while the people of Dover town supported the Parliamentarians. In August of that year, a group of townspeople scaled the cliffs, something previously thought to be all but impossible. They surprised the soldiers and captured the castle without a fight, much to the chagrin of King Charles!

Actually, the defeat of royalist forces led to the trial and execution of Charles I and the replacement of the English monarchy with first the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and the ascent Oliver Cromwell as "Protector." The Civil War introduced the idea that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament, although this concept had to wait several decades before it was firmly established.
(Factoid: The conflicts of the 1640s were not strictly a British phenomenon but were, rather, part of a wider European struggle for supremacy between Catholics and Protestants.)

Tunnels are an important part of Dover Castle's story. In the thirteen century, invading French forces honeycombed the cliff beneath the castle with underground passages. More tunnel construction occurred during the eighteenth century and the wars with Napoleon--- a series of underground chambers able to house up to two thousand men were added. The Grand Shaft, a unique triple staircase, was also cut into the cliffs so that soldiers could get down from the castle heights to the port in the event of a French attack. (The Grand Shaft is open to visitors in the summer months.)

In the Second World War, Dover Castle once again got to play a major part in conflict and was equipped with antiaircraft guns, searchlights, and radar. In addition, when the British War Office was planning the evacuation of allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in early 1940, a secret headquarters was needed for what became known as Operation Dynamo. Dover Castle's underground tunnels and troop barracks, dating back to the Napoleonic Wars, were set up to be used as a hospital and a secret command and communications center was carved into the cliffs beneath the castle.

When in late May the order was given from beneath the castle to evacuate the troops from the French coast it was believed that the rescue operation might bring back forty-five thousand men --- in fact, after one of the most memorable and heroic nights in English history, almost three hundred forty stranded troops were saved.

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