Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION NINE.
SOCIAL HISTORY.
V. STATE ESTABLISHMENTS.

State establishments there have been in Dover ever
since it became an organised community. The MiUtary estab-
lishments have existed here longer than the Castle ; and
the Navy had its cradle here in the Saxon Period.

The State Custom House, which is now located on the
Custom House Quay, is the lineal successor of the one which
Roger of Amsterdam built over the water, somewhere between
the Market Place and the seashore, previous to the com-
pilation of the Domesday Book. In the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth a new Custom House, worthy of the Port, was
built, not far from the original Norman Custom House, on
a place called The Mount, where a thoroughfare called
New Bridge now crosses the River Dour. A new Custom
House was built on the Quay in the Pier District in the
year 1682, by Sir Arnold Breams, who was then the
farmer of the customs at Dover. That house having existed
124 years, a new Custom House was built by the Crown,
a little north-west of the old one, on the Custom House
Quay. That was opened in 1807, an-l is still used as the
Dover Custom House.

Dover's earliest Post OfRce was at the Custom House,
at the top of Snargatc Street, in 1673 — not because the
building was really a Post Office, but because Mr.
Houseman, who was the head of the Custom House, also
acted as the manager of the Dover " Letter Office." The
mails were then farmed by the Lords Arlington and Berkeley,
one Roger Whitely being their deputy. At that time Mr.
Rouse was the Dover Postmaster, but not in the same sense
that we understand the term. What local letters there were
had to be dealt with by Mr. Ilousman at the Letter Office,
and Mr. Rouse's duty, as Postmaster, was to provide, or
arrange for, saddle-horses to c.nrry the mails by six stages to
London. A few years later the Duke of York, the Lord War-
den, became the farmer of the mails, and then there was some
hustling, a Government official named Sawtell being sent
down "to haste Mr. Rouse in his duties," because "the



SOCIAL HISTORY 42I

Dover letters were expected at Court every Sunday." The
Dover Letter Office was, about the year 1678, transferred
to StrOnd Street, owing to the Clerk of the Passage being
made the Master of the Dover Letter Office. The Dover
Post Office seems to have remained in or about Strond Street
for above 120 years; and from 1800 to i860 it was in the
lower part of Snargate Street, next door to the present
sub-Post Office there. In i860, the head office was removed
to the bottom of Northampton Street, and remained there
until it was removed, in 1893, to the terra cotta fronted
building in King Street; which, owing to a deficiency in
internal accommodation, was abandoned, and a new Post
Office opened in Biggin Street in November, 1914.



432 ANNALS OF DOVER