Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION NINE.
SOCIAL HISTORY.
II. LOCOMOTION.

 The earliest methods of locomotion had not been much
improved on in the Sixteenth Century. When Queen Eliza-
beth made her historic progress through Kent, starting from
Greenwich Park on the 14th July, 1573, Her Majesty and
her suite did not arrive on Folkestone Plain until August
15th. That gay and glittering cavalcade, consisting of the
Queen and her attendant ladies and knights. Archbishop
Parker and his train of follovv'ers, and the Lord Warden
Cobham with the Barons of the Cinque Ports, was so long
that when the leaders of it were at Dover descending from
the Western Heights by Cowgate into Queen Street, the
rear of the procession was still toiling up Folkestone Hill.
It was a grand show, and, in honour to the Queen, it was
largely made up of ladies mounted on chargers with rich
pilUon cloths of lace and embroidery. The whole company
consisted of about a thousand great personages on horseback,
and upwards of a thousand two-wheeled waggons drawn by
six horses each — the horse-power that was necessary indicating
the nature of the roads at that time. Lord Burleigh (who
was one of the company) has left it on record that the road
by which the Queen approached Dover was as rough and
dangerous as at the Peak in Derbyshire. Those wheeled
vehicles in the Queen's procession were samples of the
lumbering carriages in which great persons began to go
about during Queen Elizabeth's Reign; but the day of
stage-coach travelling between Dover and London did not
dawn until the Eighteenth Century, and then it was seldom
that a journey from London to Dover was completed in one
day. About the middle of the Eighteenth Century attempts
to attain greater speed was made by the coachbuilders, and in
1772 a Frenchman, named Grosley, has recorded that he
travelled from Dover to London in one day, in a coach for
four passengers and drawn by six horses. The name for this
novelty in speed was " The Flying Machine," and the cost
of the journey was one guinea each passenger. In those
days wealthy people travelled to Dover in their own carriages
and took them across the Channel in the Packet Boats. A



412 ANNALS OF DOVER

well known traveller, Miss Berry, gives an interesting glimpse
of the Dover Road in 1802. In her diary she wrote: —
" Monday, March 8th. — Left London at 11.30 a.m. ; arrived
at Sittingboume at seven in the evening. The road from
London to Dartford was so very deep in stiff mud that four
horses could hardly draw the coach (though by no means
heavy) at more than a foot-pace for several miles together.
No great road in England is so tedious to travel as this to
Dover; the stages are long, the road continually up and
down hills, several of which are long and severe, and the
postillions in all the stages stop at a half-way house to give
the horses water. To go from I>ondon to Dover in one day
would, at the best time of the year, be a very long day's
journey." She mentions that she arrived at Dover on the
second day too late for the tide.

The Mail Coaches (as distinct from the ordinary stage-
coaches) began to run regularly betwe-en London and Dover
in 1786. In 1799 a stage-coach left Dover every morning
at four o'clock for London ; and a mail-coach every evening
at seven o'clock, the fares on the stage-coaches from Dover
to London being then 30/- inside and 16/- outside. The
only regular road communication between Dover and London
for goods was Rutley's old Dover Waggon, which left
Snargate Street, Dover, every Monday, and returned every
Saturday. The Dover and London Hoy did more in the
way of goods transport than the old Dover waggon. When
Heme Bay Pier was opened, in 1832, a coach from Dover
ran there daily, whence there was a steamboat to
London, the fare all the way being 10/6. There were also
coaches between Dover and the various towns in Kent,
inland and coastwise, the last on the road being that from
Dover to Deal, which disappeared soon after the opening
of the Dover and Deal Railway, in 1882.

Although coaches lingered, their knell was struck when
the South Eastern Railway was opened from London to
Dover, 7th February, 1844. The coming railway was first
seriously discussed at a Dover " Common Hall " in June,
1834, but ten years passed before the railway was opened
to Dover. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was
opened to Dover in 1861. That railway improved our com-
munications with East and North Kent, as w'ell as giving
more trains to London.



SOCIAL HISTORY 4I3

A glance at inter-mural locomotion will carry us back
to pre-railway days. When ancient Dover was a walled
town, and even later, when its limits were bounded by the
sea, the hills, and the Maison Dieu, very few facilities for
intermural locomotion were needed; but when the town
became a resort for wealthy people, who came here for sea
bathing, towards the close of the Eighteenth Century, there
was a demand for wheeled chairs on the Sea Front, and for
light carriages to take country drives. Those carriages were
called fiy-coaches, Britzkas and Clarences. The Clarence
made its appearance at Dover about 1820, having been
named after the Duke of Clarence, then a visitor here, who
for his pleasure had a four-wheeled carriage made for one
person, with a box-seat for the driver. The business of
letting carriages for hire in Dover began about 1830, and
a local Act of that year gave the Pavement Commissioners
authority to make bye-laws for their regulation and to grant
licences to the owners and drivers.

As Dover extended up the valley, the need was felt in
the town of further faciUties for locomotion, but, with the
exception of omnibuses to and from the hotels and the
railway stations, there was no further development until 1881,
when Back's Omnibus commenced running between the South
Eastern Railway Station and Buckland Bridge, and that was
the forerunner of the electric Municipal trams, which ccm-
menced running in 1897.

Bicycles, in their original form, were first seen in the
streets of Dover soon after their use had been demonstrated
in Paris at the Exhibition of 1868, tricycles soon following;
but some years earlier velocipedes, differing from the earlier
tricycles, were built by Mr. Sawyer, of Dover. The motor
car was first seen on the Dover roads on the 15th September,
1896— a year in advance of the Dover electric trams; but
at least two years passed before the motor car became a
famiUar object. Motor lorries for heavy transport, and
taxi-cabs to compete with hackney carriages next came on the
scene.

The latest novelty in locomotion seen at Dover, one
that ignored the old roads and routes, was the aeroplane.
The Straits of Dover had been crossed by Blanchard and
Tefferies in their balloon on 7th January, 1785, and the fir.st
aeroplane to cross the Straits was Bleriot's which flew from



414 ANNALS OF DOVER

Calais to the Northfall Meadow, Dover, on Sunday, July
25th, 1909, the place where it landed being marked by a
memorial. Since then aeroplane flights across the Channel
have become common. In the Guilford Lawn, Dover, is
erected a memorial of the Hon. C. Rolls, who was the first
to make a non-stop flight from Dover to Calais and back.
This feat was performed on the 2nd June, 1910; but,
unfortunately, he lost his life a month later when flying at
Bournemouth.



SOCIAL HISTORY 415