The historic part of Walmer Castle, which is now under the direct control of His Majesty’s Office of Works, may be inspected for the modest fee of threepence, at times when the Lord Warden is not in residence. The plainly furnished little bedroom in which the great Duke of Wellington died in 1852, and the room where Pitt and Nelson planned those naval operations which put an end to Napoleon’s designs upon this coast, are shown. The approach is imposing, the entrance by a bridge across the deep, dry moat made more picturesque by the early eighteenth-century additions of a bell-cupola and an oriel window above the gateway. Some of the ivy which too thickly covered the fine old stonework has now been removed. It has never been the fate of Walmer Castle to fight the enemy, and its castellans for a hundred years past have been those ornamental officials, the Lords Warden, who have no duties and receive no emoluments. Thus, as a residence, it has received certain accretions which rather lessen its character as a stern, business-like fortress; although, to be sure, the ingenious planning of the interior, with its massive brick passages and unexpected turns, would result in any enemy who succeeded in entering at once losing his way. It is very curious to note, in the construction of this sixteenth-century castle, the survival of mediæval ideas, with a difference. Thus, while ancient Gothic castles had projecting machicolations over the exterior of their gates whence melted lead, boiling oil, and such-like deterrents could be poured upon the enemy, here are great holes overhead, within the entrance, for the same purpose; an exquisite refinement upon the original idea, which was merely to check the enemy and persuade him to retire. Here you first caught the enterprising foe, and, having got him within one of the artfully contrived bastions, you simply overwhelmed him at leisure.
WALMER CASTLE.
Among the greatest of the Lords Warden was William Pitt, who was here throughout the Napoleonic scare. The beautiful wooded park owes much of its charm to his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept house for her bachelor uncle, and in particular planted the fine Portugal laurels which are among its chief ornaments. Pitt’s own avenue of sycamores has grown to great nobility. Cobbett, who could pen the most wonderful descriptions of scenery and the most virulent personal abuse, describes in one of his “Rural Rides” how he came from Dover to Walmer and Deal, and handles Pitt pretty severely on the way. “I got to this place (Deal) about half an hour after the ringing of the eight o’clock bell, or curfew, which I heard at about two miles’ distance from the place.” This was the curfew, still rung nightly from the Norman church-tower of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe. From the town of Dover you come up the Castle Hill, and have a most beautiful view from the top of it. You have the sea, the chalk cliffs of Calais, the high land at Boulogne, the town of Dover just under you, the valley towards Folkestone and the much more beautiful valley towards Canterbury; and, going on a little farther, you have the Downs in full view, with a most beautiful corn country to ride along through. The corn was chiefly cut between Walmer and Dover. The barley almost all cut and tied up in sheaf. Nothing but the beans seemed to remain standing along here. They are not quite so good as the rest of the corn, but they are by no means bad. When I came to the village of Walmer, I inquired for the Castle—that famous place, where Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, and all the whole tribe of plotters against the French Revolution had carried on their plots. After coming through the village of Walmer, you see the entrance to the Castle away to the right. It is situated pretty nearly on the water’s edge, and at the bottom of a little dell, about a furlong or so from the turnpike-road. This is now the habitation of our great Minister, Robert Bankes Jenkinson, son of Charles of that name. When I was told by a girl who was leasing in a field by the roadside that that was Walmer Castle, I stopped short, pulled my horse round, looked steadfastly at the gateway, and could not help exclaiming, ‘O! thou who inhabitest that famous dwelling! thou who hast always been in place, let who might be out of place! O thou everlasting placeman! thou sage of “over-production,” do but cast thine eyes upon this barleyfield’—and so forth.
ENTRANCE TO WALMER CASTLE.
Onward from Walmer Castle, along the beach to the “Ville and Hamlet of Kingsdown,” we come at length to the end of the coastwise road. Kingsdown is a fishing village on a very wide bank of shingle-beach, with scattered shanties built on it, and old windlasses and a very abandon of quaint seashore properties. It is perhaps possible at low tide to scramble along under the lofty cliffs all the three miles or less to St. Margaret’s Bay but it is dangerous, and there is no means of climbing its cliffs. Old people still talk of a road that once ran all the way; but encroachment of the sea has long destroyed it.
It is therefore necessary to climb the exceedingly steep and very pretty leafy lane from Kingsdown to the high road and the grim bare downs. Against the sky, as you proceed, is the tower of Ringwould church, crested with its Dutch-like cupola. Looking backwards you see, peering over the verge of the naked fields, the little bell-turret of Kingsdown church, seeming pitiably insignificant; the church so small, the sea out beyond so immeasurable, and such an aching void.
Passing the beautiful woods of Oxney Court, in a sharp dip of the road, and coming up to the cross roads called “Martin Cross,” the village of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe is one mile to the left. It has a particularly fine Norman church with lofty interior and an enriched western doorway. Here the curfew-bell is still rung in the winter months; but this is not the genuine curfew of Norman times; dating only from 1696, when the income from five roods of land was bequeathed by a shepherd for this purpose. By the chance ringing of this bell he had been saved from walking over the cliff in the dark.
