The selection of Dover as a likely place was due to the stopping of the Channel Tunnel works by the Government, in 1886, when the tunnelling machinery was thrown idle and the employment of it in shaft-sinking for coal on the same site was suggested. Coal-seeking was thereupon begun, in spite of the already long-expressed opinion of Sir Roderick Murchison, one of our most eminent geologists, that the existence of any productive coalfields in the south-eastern counties was in the highest degree improbable. The results of some thirty years’ boring and shaft-sinking at Dover seem to amply justify his view, for since March 1905, when a number of journalists were invited to inspect the works of the Consolidated Kent Collieries Corporation, little has been heard of coal at the Shakespeare Cliff shafts. On that memorable occasion the chairman of the company pointed triumphantly to a small stack of what undoubtedly was coal, and the journalists gazed, awe-stricken, upon the sight. It was not coal that would commend itself to a householder, for kitchen, or indeed any other use, being soft and easily to be crumbled between thumb and finger. The heap weighed about twelve tons, and was the sole result, to that date, from one and a half millions sterling subscribed by the public to the successive companies seeking coal here. It had thus cost £125,000 per ton; and, being so rare and costly, the chairman was very properly indignant when it was proposed to burn some. Since then; notably in 1912, other coal has been raised here and has been triumphantly exhibited in Dover shop-windows; but, up to the present, a very great deal more of that mineral has been expended upon working the machinery of the shafts than has been brought up from them.
There is a vast deal of exhausting up-and-down walking along the lofty cliff tops on the way from the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery to Folkestone. The Dover to Folkestone road itself, running somewhat inland, at first in the lap of these downs, climbs continually for more than five miles, and is a profoundly wearisome highway. It is an effect of vastness which obsesses the traveller here, and, where the road leaves the sheltered, tree-clad hollow, one of stark and uncomfortable surroundings; horribly bleak in winter, and hot enough to fry you in summer. But at a point a mile and a half along the cliffs’ edge, where they rise to a great height beside a coastguard-station, the explorer on foot may, at the cost of another considerable output of exertion, descend to the beach in a very fine, romantic, and absolutely secluded nook. Rarely will you find any one down here: the spot is too little known, and the effort of descending and climbing up again is too great. No fewer than 530 steps lead, roughly, and with many zigzags, down the face of the cliffs to the beach. The spot is known as Lydden Spout, from a clear spring which used to gush from the chalk, and, later, was made to issue from an iron pipe. It spouts no longer; but this is still a place worth all the trouble of getting at. Gulls down here, screaming and chorusing like so many party politicians (but much more sincere), take little notice of the rare stranger. If you like, you can walk back along the beach, all the way to the Colliery. Which is the more exhausting, the shingle walk, or remounting those more than 500 steps, I will not pretend to say.
The pedestrian’s way into Folkestone lies along the Warren, that ancient, tumbled expanse of wild undercliff, two miles long, which you see spread out before you on reaching the “Royal Oak” inn, by the roadside. Resisting the hospitalities of the tankards held out by the beery votaries of the wayside public, let us descend through the Warren into the town. On the way down we shall pass by the gorsy hollow called “Steddy Hole,” a spot of horrific interest a good many years ago, for here, in the Crimean War period, August 1856, a soldier of the Foreign Legion, one Dedea Redanes, a Neapolitan, murdered “sweet Maria and lovely Caroline,” as a stone formerly to be seen here described them: two sisters, Caroline and Maria Buck. He was duly executed at Maidstone. The stone is no longer to be seen, and the tragic hollow to such a degree been forgotten that on summer days happy lovers may be found in the ill-omened spot, unconscious of its tragedy.
There is a large area of Warren, appearing the larger by reason of its tumbled nature. The South-Eastern Railway runs through its midst, and the two most easterly of the old martello towers on the Kentish coast stand on guard, aloof, grim, grey, and solitary, with all Folkestone for a background. The Warren is full of wild life, and is thus the very antithesis of Folkestone’s stuccoesque conventions. I believe, on the authority of the late Rev. J. G. Wood, that the “rare earwig, Labidura riparia,” is to be found here. The information came to him by way of a courageous lady who, wandering over these hummocky hollows, discovered the fearsome thing roaming about in happy ignorance of its Latin name or its exceeding rarity, and, with a courage beyond her sex in dealing with creeping objects, captured it and sent it to that eminent naturalist.
CHAPTER XXII
FOLKESTONE—THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW—DICKENS AND “PAVILIONSTONE”—SANDGATE
We come into Folkestone by way of the mean streets that immediately fringe the Old Town, that survival of the fisher-village which existed many centuries before ever the modern pleasure-resort was thought of.
No one has with any certainty penetrated the mystery of Folkestone’s name. As the Lapis Populi of the Romans, the “Folcanstane” of the Saxons, and the “Fulchestane” of Domesday Book, it remains a puzzle. No one knows who these “folk” were, nor what was their “stone.” The situation of the town is really, when you come to consider it, of the most extraordinary kind; but no one who has not approached it either way along the coast, or from inland, can quite sum up this situation, for the growth of modern Folkestone is so great that, when in it, the natural features of the spot are obscured by many houses. Perhaps the best point of view whence to sum up Folkestone is at the rear, along the road from Canterbury. Up there, on the lofty downs, those bold, grassy chalk-hills, you look down across a mile or so of apparently level land, at whose seaward extremity the clustered houses of the town are massed against the sea. But, coming down into those levels, it is seen that the Old Town lies in a hollow on the shore, while fashionable Folkestone occupies a lofty cliff-top; the famous “Leas,” intermediate between them being the business districts, including Tontine Street and Rendezvous Street.
Not all Old Folkestone survives, nor is even that which remains exactly as it was. The old open stream which dashed down into the harbour has been piped; because, they say, its odour became too strong. That is as may be; but the remark is permissible that the super-smells of Folkestone Harbour at low-water outclass anything possible in streams. Still, enough remains of Old Folkestone to show the inquisitive stranger what the old-time fishermen’s and smugglers’ haunts were like. No one is in the least inquisitive about the new town, because it displays itself most prominently to the view, hiding nothing. Thus viewed, it is seen to be chiefly in that manner of building which prevailed in South Kensington’s early days, before that region became a byword for culture. It is in the greyest of grey stucco, and exceedingly dismal.
