The “samphire pickle” sometimes to be bought is not always what it pretends to be, for here, as so often elsewhere, adulteration’s artful aid is called in, and the more plentiful and much more easily gathered glass-wort, which grows on mud-flats, and greatly resembles samphire, without its aromatic qualities, is bottled with vinegar, to the deception of a trustful public.
The cliffs along the way to Folkestone are of quite extraordinary interest, so numerous are the schemes and exploitations they display. Here, looking over the edge, you see, on a scrap of foreshore where the railway emerges from the tunnel, a siding with works of sorts and a smoking chimney. This is the site, not only of the Channel Tunnel works, but also of the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery.
The idea of a Channel Tunnel, under consideration so long ago as 1867, was originally received with great favour in both France and England, and an agreement upon the subject was arrived at in 1876, by which it was to be begun simultaneously from either side.
It was, however, regarded as a commercial project and in no sense as a Government undertaking, the respective Governments merely adopting a benevolent attitude toward the scheme. Some years passed before the Channel Tunnel Companies on either side commenced operations from Dover and Sangatte. It was due to the energy of that arch-contriver, Sir Edward Watkin, that the scheme at last took definite shape and was translated into action. As chairman of what was then the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central) and of the South-Eastern Railway, he was generally credited with a bold plan for creating a through trunk line from Manchester to London and Dover, and thence beneath the Channel and so on to France, without change of carriage. Like many another Moses, he saw his Promised Land, but could not enter upon it. He brought the old M. S. and L. to London and lived to see it the “Great Central,” but his Channel Tunnel, begun so bravely, was stopped by a nervous Government in 1886, when it had progressed 5,500 feet. A like distance had been tunnelled from the French coast.
It was an alarmist article in the Nineteenth Century that spoiled his pet scheme, and although Watkin on several occasions went to the great trouble and expense—or perhaps it would be more correct to say, saddled the South-Eastern Railway shareholders with a great expense—of inviting parties of statesmen and influential personages to inspect the works and to partake of costly luncheons on this spot, he never gained any return for his outlay on chicken and champagne.
The plans for the Tunnel had originally provided for starting actually from the Dover side of Shakespeare’s Cliff, instead of from the present obscure situation; but the War Office insisted upon the change, although it is the simplest proposition in strategy that the mouth of the Tunnel, placed where at first intended, would have been easily controlled by the Dover forts. The selected spot, supposing the work ever to be completed, is far more capable of being used by an enemy, being relatively away from observation and masked from gun-fire by the intervening shoulders of the hills.
The plan for tunnelling the twenty-three miles was for parallel tunnels, each carrying a single line. The original estimate was £10,000,000, but the work, as it progressed through the chalk, proved so easy that these figures were reduced to £4,000,000, largely because it was found that the chalk was watertight and required no casing. The abandoned works remain quite dry to this day. The scare, shared though it was by Lord Wolseley and other eminent authorities, does not seem very creditable, and there can be little doubt but that, sooner or later, the Government bar upon the progress of the work will be removed, and the Tunnel become an accomplished fact. Meanwhile the Channel Tunnel Company continues to hold its annual meetings, and new Parliamentary Bills are duly promoted. “Public sentiment has been aroused against the Tunnel,” remarked the chairman recently, “and it must abide its time and opportunity.”
From railway tunnelling to coal-mining the transition, for the scheming brain of Sir Edward Watkin, was easy. An idea had long been current that coal existed under the Kentish chalk. Geologists considered that the French and Belgian coalfields naturally continued under the Channel, and that borings would disclose coal-measures, probably at considerable depths. Many borings were made at various places, among others at a spot north of Battle, in Sussex, in 1872, where a depth of 1,905 feet was reached, without result.
SHAKESPEARE CLIFF COLLIERY, AND THE COAST TOWARDS FOLKESTONE.