Dover Castle:
The View from Hellfire Corner

At its closest point, England is seventeen miles from France. Today this tiny distance hardly separates two close allies, but for most of the preceding twenty centuries the seventeen miles of the Straits of Dover marked a hostile military frontier. In the last five centuries alone, England's enemies attempted invasions on twelve different occasions and made serious preparations at least nine other times. Before then, history records a countless litany of invaders, raiders and pirates attacking over the narrow Straits, going back to the beginning of recorded British history with the invasion of Julius Caesar. The Straits of Dover were never wide enough to protect England from her enemies.

For twenty centuries and longer, fortifications at Dover guarded this military frontier. Dover is a natural harbor cut by the River Dour in the middle of a chalk cliff thirteen miles long. A rugged hill sits on the northeast edge of this harbor. In prehistoric times, Dover's Celtic inhabitants crowned this hill with a large fort, encircling the entire hilltop with high earthen ramparts. Since then, that hill top has been continuously fortified, with each age making its own contribution to a vast and astonishing military site — Dover Castle.

Julius Caesar was the first invader to deal effectively with Dover's intimidating fortifications; when he saw the hill fort protecting the harbor, he sailed north seven miles and landed somewhere else. Later, the Romans established one of their most important sea forts at Dover, flanking it with two tall pharos, or lighthouses (both still in existence). The Romans used their Dover fleet to control Saxon pirates; when the Romans left, the Saxon pirates became the Saxon invaders. Saxons settled within the hill fort, prospering enough to eventually become a burgh, a fortified town. Around the year 1000 the Saxons built a beautiful church in their burgh, St. Mary-in-Castro, using the ruined pharos as its belltower. Both the church and its pharos-belltower still stand in the grounds of Dover Castle.

William the Conqueror built Dover's first castle, a small affair inside the burgh walls. Henry II realized that this small castle wouldn't stop a future invader any better than the hill fort had stopped Caesar, or the Saxons, or William the Conqueror. A future invader, like those great invaders of the past, could simply land elsewhere and take Dover from the land. Henry wanted a Dover Castle that was so vast and intimidating that it could deny its harbor indefinitely to an enemy that surrounded it. To do this, Henry II planned a castle on the grand scale, so huge that he had to move the entire burgh of Dover to make way for it. On the old fortified hilltop Henry erected a giant keep, surrounded by two concentric curtain walls, each extraordinarily high and bristling with towers — an unchallengeable fortress.

No one had ever built a castle like this before. Archers on the tall outer wall's thirty towers could rake the entire wall's length from above. Should the outer wall fall, archers on the still-taller inner wall, with its fourteen great towers, would rain death on anyone bold enough to cross the outer wall. This inner wall protected the heart of the castle, the inner bailey, where the garrison lived and the king slept when he was in residence. In the middle of the inner bailey, in isolated splendor, was the final defense: the magnificent keep, a tower eighty feet tall and a hundred feet on a side, with walls twenty feet thick, heavily defended with enough provisions to withstand a prolonged siege even with the rest of the castle in enemy hands. It almost goes without saying that archers on the keep roof could sweep every inch of the inner wall, including the towers, with heavy fire. Most of today's castle dates from this period.

In 1216, a major French invasion put Henry's castle to the test, and it nearly failed. Prince Louis of France, in alliance with English barons rebelling against King John, invaded southeast England. Like previous invaders, the French landed on easy ground and marched inland, quickly gaining control of the entire district — except Dover Castle. Hubert de Burgh, John's fierce Justiciar, held Dover Castle for the King with only 140 knights but ample provisions. The French invaders quickly discovered the castle's weak point: an area of high ground outside the north gate where they could avoid the downward fire from the defenders. From there the French breached the outer wall by digging a tunnel under the gate and letting it collapse into the tunnel. But the inner walls held, and de Burgh's knights pushed the French back through the breech. This blunted Prince Louis' appetite for storming the great fortress, and the invasion fizzled. Dover Castle had survived.

Under a new king, Henry III, de Burgh set about altering the battered castle to prevent another such attack. He completely blocked the failed north gate and threw up great outworks beyond it to deny the high ground to any future invaders. He linked the outworks to the castle with a maze of underground tunnels, the Medieval Tunnels that fascinate visitors today. De Burgh replaced the north gate with the splendid Constable's Gateway, protected by no fewer than six overlapping towers, and still the residence of the Deputy Constable of Dover Castle. Finally, de Burgh extended the outer wall and its towers all the way to the cliff's edge, an enormous distance. When de Burgh had finished, he had created the medieval castle we see today.

After 1500, gunpowder weapons made Dover Castle increasingly obsolete, and its garrison slowly dwindled. Then in 1744 the Jacobites in France began to organize a serious invasion threat, and Dover Castle came alive. As the garrison swelled, engineers added gun batteries and replaced the medieval buildings that lined the inner bailey with barracks. These elegant barracks, the oldest in England, still ring the austere medieval keep. But these changes, the first military additions to Dover in five centuries, were just a prelude to those of the Napoleonic Wars. As Napoleon massed an invasion force of 100,000 within sight of Dover, the castle's military engineers scrambled frantically to strengthen a castle built to withstand arrows and rocks.

The Napoleonic engineers' modernization efforts encrust every corner of the castle. They strengthened the outer wall with earth ramparts and mounted guns on it. They mounted guns on the keep's roof, replacing its medieval roof with a brick vaulted one. When they discovered that medieval towers blocked their artillery, they chopped off their tops. They mounted guns all over the Western Heights opposite the castle, creating an elaborate network of redoubts, batteries and tunnels. They mounted guns and infantry positions all over the slopes below the castle, ringing it with elaborate brick outworks reached with long brick tunnels. Many of these outworks are long brick galleries set in the hillside, with gun loops from which riflemen could sweep attacking infantry off the castle's slopes. They mounted guns on the medieval outwork by converting it into an elaborate brick redan, or gun platform, with intricate underground tunnels. The redan tunnels, linked in with the original medieval tunnels, are open to the public.

The Napoleonic engineers put up barracks and support structures every place they could find, and they still ran out of room. In 1797, they went underground. They built an elaborate system of underground barracks, seven parallel brick vaults of great length and height, linked by a tunnel to their rear. At the rear the vaults are fifty feet underground, but their fronts reach near the cliff edge, and a cliff-face balcony offers sweeping views over Dover Harbor. Called "The Casements", they were first occupied in 1803 and held two thousand soldiers.

The underground Casements would take on new significance during World War II. When Vice-Admiral Bertram Home Ramsey was put in charge of Channel defenses in 1939, he saw the Casements tunnels as an ideal headquarters. Bombproof and discrete, The Casements already had good communications and security from being within the walls of the still-active Dover Castle. They even had good views, allowing Ramsey to stand on a private, nearly invisible balcony nicknamed "Hellfire Corner," and see everything between Dover Harbor and France. From this private vantage point Ramsey ran the remarkable Operation Dynamo that evacuated 338,000 British troops from the shores of Dunkirk in May 1940.

As the war continued, all Channel-related activity consolidated under Ramsey's command, and the Casements became a crowded rabbit warren of offices and communications equipment. Ramsey had to expand the tunnels. This he did in two sections. First he added a set of new tunnels above The Casement tunnels, called "The Annexe" and designed as a hospital with a carefully planned sequence of rooms leading back from an ambulance bay inside the castle. Later he added a lower level, called "Dumpy", to furnish additional administrative space. All the tunnels were in full use until victory in 1945.

As the war continued, all Channel-related activity consolidated under Ramsey's command, and the Casements became a crowded rabbit warren of offices and communications equipment. Ramsey had to expand the tunnels. This he did in two sections. First he added a set of new tunnels above The Casement tunnels, called "The Annexe" and designed as a hospital with a carefully planned sequence of rooms leading back from an ambulance bay inside the castle. Later he added a lower level, called "Dumpy", to furnish additional administrative space. All the tunnels were in full use until victory in 1945.

The army finally left Dover Castle in 1958, giving it to the Ministry of Works (now English Heritage) for preservation. But they didn't turn over the tunnels. Instead, they converted the tunnels into a Regional Seat of Government for controlling what would remain of Southeast England after a nuclear war. This required a major modernization, with new air filtration, power generation and communications equipment. Dumpy Level held the offices, while the Annexe was converted to barracks and mess halls for the people below. The Casements, made of brick and too close to the cliff edge, were unused.

The very existence of these tunnels remained a military secret even as tourists wandered over the castle grounds above them. Then in 1984 the military decommissioned the underground installation and turned it over to the English Heritage staff at Dover Castle. Says General Manager Ken Scott, "They just handed me the keys and said, 'The tunnels are yours now.' It was extraordinary. They had just walked away from it, leaving everything in place." English Heritage found an astonishing wealth of material, much of it stacked in the Casements to get it out of the way: hospital equipment from World War II, original telephone exchange equipment from the thirties and forties, even theatre maps and equipment from Ramsey's operations rooms.

English Heritage has now returned the Annexe to its World War II appearance as a hospital, with original equipment carefully placed to mirror their original locations. On the tour, smells and sounds assault visitors: gurneys wheel by, footsteps echo, disinfectant reeks from the preparation room, while beef stew odors float from the mess. The transition from the Annexe to the Casements is sudden, from cramped steel-lined tunnels to the cool, tall vaults of the Napoleonic engineers. In the Casements vaults are the original telephone exchange and repeater equipment that once directed the entire Channel war effort, and the anti-aircraft operations room with its original furnishings. The vault that contained Admiral Ramsey's office has been cleared but left unrestored, to give an impression of the vast size of the Napoleonic barracks.

Today Dover Castle is a peaceful place. Even on a warm Sunday afternoon, its wide fields and shaded walks easily accommodate sightseers. Its major features are certainly exciting: its great walls and astonishing keep, the six clustered towers of Constable's Gateway, the amazing tunnel systems from medieval, Napoleonic and modern times, and the beautiful little Saxon Church and its tall Roman pharos. But the nicest features may well be the long, tree shaded walks under tall walls and beautiful towers, the spread of wildflowers in the dry moat, and the sweeping views over the town, the cliffs and the harbor. Of the many viewpoints, perhaps the most impressive is the one from the Casements balcony favored by Admiral Ramsey. Although it's now a peaceful view over the busy harbor towards the French shore, it is here easiest to remember that in Admiral Ramsey's day, and for centuries before, this was Hellfire Corner.