Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION NINE.
SOCIAL HISTORY.
IV. COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.

The River Dour, with its corn mills, oil seed crushing
mills and paper mills, was for many centuries a great aid to
Dover commerce and industry. In later years steam has
largely taken the place of water power, and would have done
so to a much larger extent but for the fact that the importa-
tion of coal was discouraged by coal dues, imposed by a local
Act of Parliament in 1778.

Ship-building, sail-making, and rope-spinning were
profitable occupations here from generation to generation,
but natural causes have brought them to an end, and no
local effort could have galvanised those old callings into life
again ; yet there was considerable compensation when those
occupations were expiring, afforded by the opening of the
Dover Packet Yard for the repair and re-fitting of the steam
ships of the Passage.

A building boom about the same time increased the
volume of the weekly earnings in Dover. This arose from
the building of the new residences and lodging-houses on the
margin of Dover Bay, as well as in many other parts of the
town. The benefit was largely augmented by the fact that
nearly all the building materials were locally obtained — the
lime burnt from the c'lr.lk cliffs ; the timber cut from the
surrounding country estates ; arA the bricks made in Dover
brickfields. Local lime and timber had been used for
centuries; but, p^-ior to the I'eginning of the Nineteenth
Century, bricks and tiles were imported from Holland, and
it is recorded that the bricks used in the building of New
Bridge, in 1800, were brought from Greys, in Essex. The
first local bricks were made on Barham Downs, burnt with
wood; and the first Dover bricks were made at Dodd's
Lane, Buckland, about the time that the Sea Front houses
were built. As the years broucjht changes, the importation
of timber from the North of Europe caused more money to
go out of the locality, and the evil was increased when the
timber was imported in planed boards, shaped pieces, and
even manufactured for doors and windows. The local timber



SOCIAL HISTORY 4I9

merchants, by installing expensive machinery, tried to compete
against the importation of the manufactured timber, but it
was not found possible to do it successfully.

With the decay of old industries and the fluctuation of
new ones, it is a marvel that the Dover of 1801, with a
population of 7,709, should have increased to 41,794
inhabitants in 1901. The increase arose partly from the
policy already mentioned of using, as far as possible, home-
grown and home-made materials ; another cause has been
the great works carried on by the State at Dover, from the
building of the Admiralty Pier until the present time ; and
probably the greatest cause of all has been the advantages
derived from Dover being a garrison town, a seaport, a
seaside resort, and the principal station on the Passage to
the Continent.



420 ANNALS OF DOVER