Research for a new experience that opened at Dover Castle this July has led to the discovery of a heavily graffitied door dating to the 1790s, revealing intriguing insights into the thoughts of the soldiers stationed there at that time.…
This image shows a castle door, which was etched with some macabre graffiti by English soldiers during the Napoleonic era. The simple wooden plank door, from the top of a remote tower in Dover Castle, was rediscovered years ago, but…
• Dover Castle
• Britain’s first medieval chess workshop
• Reconstructing the Sutton Hoo ship
• Experiments in construction at Butser Ancient Farm
• Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit
The most expensive secular building of its day, Dover Castle was described by the 13th-century chronicler Matthew Paris as 'the key of England'. But though its imposing fortifications tower over the shortest sea crossing between Britain and the European mainland, it wasn't built in response to any threat of imminent foreign invasion. Instead, its construction in the years after the murder of Thomas Beckett in 1170 owed more to the growing numbers of foreign dignitaries who began to make the pilgrimage across the Channel to Canterbury to pay their respects to the slain archbishop.
Dover’s massive castle, rising in tiers above the harbour to the crest of the hill above the town, looks like the very model of a medieval fortification – but, as a new book reveals, it has some very odd features indeed. Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports on the efforts of English Heritage and Historic England, as well as castle specialists and medieval historians, to explain this extraordinary monument.