Castles and Tunnels and Pubs, Oh My

The morning of January 8th dawned bright and exciting and much earlier than it had any right to. For the preceding 11 1/2 hours I had been sleeping the sleep of the righteous (“righteous” as in “corpselike and jet-lagged”), but presently I was struck with a fair bit of panic. However righteous my sleep had been (one trip to Oregon plus one trip to England plus too few days in-between equals eight hours jet-lag), I had fallen asleep long before finishing the test due after breakfast. I felt feckless and unreliable-- a thorough nogoodnik. I scrawled a few more hasty answers, threw on some clothes, and headed to breakfast. Hurry as I might, I was late getting packed and on the coach where I handed in my test, resigning myself to a poor grade.

As Canterbury’s cobbles gave way to countryside, I relaxed a bit, perusing the new edition of our itinerary which our professors had passed out on the coach and hoping that that would be the last time I had opportunity to write “our professors had passed out on the coach”. What was done was done, and I was genuinely excited to see a pair of Genuine European Castles at Dover and then Leeds. Hotels, however classy, lack the grandeur of huge ramparts and centuries of nasty, exciting History. Gazing out the window, I was treated to my first dose of genuine culture shock watching cars drive past on the right. It hadn’t sunk through the blur of the day before, but the sight of oncoming traffic in the right lane was unnerving. When the coach turned left it felt like were driving on the “normal” side of the road and my stomach dropped a little every time a car sped towards us in the right lane without slowing down or changing course. I hadn’t felt quite so uneasy and foreign even traveling in Egypt-- England’s similarity in most respects threw this one difference into sharp relief.
Image courtesy of Michigan State University and can be viewed in its original context here.
I got my legs back under me hitting solid ground as we disembarked at Dover Castle. Dover was exactly what I have always felt castles should be like: it sits surrounded by a (sadly empty) moat on a cliff over the sea, huge and well nigh impregnable (walls reaching 7 meters thick at points), overlooking the strategically placed port city of Dover. Its walls are peppered with arrow slits overlooking the road winding up to its gate-- I was delighted and thoroughly intimidated as we approached and, picturing the soldiers long ago cut down right where I walked, a little too aware of my own mortality. We had fifteen minutes to explore the castle proper before our tour of the Secret Wartime Tunnels (a name I found terrifically funny), so I headed straight into the keep and up the stairs to the roof. The roof was fantastic, high up and windy, with an amazing view of the keep and surrounding lands. I decided at once that I ought to have a 150’ tall house on top of a hill, and if it happens to be an enormous fortress, so much the better. On top of the Western Heights I skimmed a few plaques about the Siege of 1216, but time was too short to linger long. Halfway down the staircase was the gallery, a little hallway full of windows overlooking the town. I was struck with the view of the town and all the way up the hill from the small windows, now covered with glass. I really am awfully glad I’ve never had to attack Dover Castle. Inner rooms were filled with the “ A Court on a Move” exhibit, which told how the castle was prepared for a royal visit from King Henry VIII in 1539. Lots of false ceilings were put in and the floor was covered in rush mats and carpets. They even brought in the king’s personal locksmith.
So, so awesome.
Heading down to the Secret Wartime Tunnels we passed a few of the castle’s other defenses through the ages, from a trebuchet (a huge and also awesome catapult) to a great big cannon named “Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket Pistol” to a big WW2 mortar. Some in the class were delighted to find “a Harry Potter reference” in the Pocket Pistol’s model name (it was a “basilisk”).
This once went "boom."
Our tour of the Secret Wartime Tunnels began with a movie on its history. The tunnels, originally excavated during the Napoleonic Wars, were reopened and expanded in 1940 for use in planning the evacuation of Dunkirk. In 1942 they were used again as the seat of “Operation Dynamo,” a communications outpost that monitored air and sea traffic and defense and a general hospital was built in new tunnels for ill soldiers and the odd emergency (crashed pilots and the like). We were lead through the hospital tunnels and through sound effects and recorded voices followed the story of a crashed pilot through surgery. The harshness of wartime living was dramatically underlined for me when the lights went out mid-surgery and the surgeon (or more accurately, his voice) had to remove shrapnel by backup lighting.
The shakiness of the picture symbolizes warfare.
From the hospital tunnels we walked through a hallway filled with photographs. The pictures were taken secretly, as the Secret Wartime Tunnels were, in fact, a secret and had correspondingly tight security. The pictures were donated by the man’s daughter after he died. This lead to the old casemate tunnels, where you could see graffiti and pickaxe marks on the walls dating from Napoleon’s time. The casemate tunnels held communications gear and the tables used to monitor traffic and the records of individual antiaircraft guns. The repeater station held 18 tons of equipment for boosting long-distance phone signals and a cat named Jack who kept the wires safe from mice. There was another set of tunnels, called the “Dumpy Level” after a level used in their construction, but as those tunnels had had the bad idea to be full of asbestos and other nasty things they were off-limits. Lastly we saw the only bathroom in the whole place, which might have had to serve hundreds for months at a time when attacks kept both soldiers and local women trapped inside. It was known alternately as “the loo with a view” and “the loo with a queue.”
We left Dover to see Leeds Castle. On this leg of the journey I sat across the aisle, on the right side. Seeing more clearly that oncoming traffic, though on our right (wrong) side, was still in a different lane eased my mind a great deal. As we drove out of Dover, Diana read a poem about the cliffs of Dover, relating their history and the wars fought there to a pair of lovers. The very existence of Dover Castle and the tunnels there are a vivid reminder of such wars throughout the ages. As discussion of the poem wrapped up, we could see through the fog to the white cliffs of Dover and across the water to France. It was a nice moment.
While Dover Castle was a huge fortress overlooking an important port, Leeds castle was a glorified mansion perched on a tiny island valiantly guarding a golf course. After a somewhat expensive meal at the Fairfax Restaurant, which stood on castle grounds next to a pond full of white and black swans, we entered the castle. Inside the gates stood not a catapult but the Dog Collar Museum. It had been the luxurious home of well-to-do nobles and queens for centuries and was bought by an American heiress, the Lady Baille, who dressed it up in a manner as lavish as it was ugly. Large paintings were on every wall, old sconces were filled with pink and purple fake torches, and floors were covered in lush carpets. We entered the first part of the castle (the Historical Part) through a 12th century cellar right neighboring a working wine cellar. There were interesting rooms here, like the Queen’s Room, which held along with the massive State Bed a much smaller bed for everyday use. Both beds had canopies to show off the lady’s importance and fancy salmon-colored blankets. There was also a small chapel with rows of wooden pews and a gold-embroidered alter cloth. As with most of the castle there were lots of paintings, though these paintings were all of Jesus. The Henry VIII Banquet Hall was a long, narrow room that presumably held a long banquet table, though there was no such table now. It had enormous windows, portraits and busts of Henry’s family and got that Herman’s Hermits song stuck in my head.
To swim away or to run away-- that was the question.
Most of the castle, though, was clearly furnished in the early 20th century by someone with loads of money and taste very different from mine. Modern portraits of people and pets covered the walls, and lush, brightly colored carpets and wallpaper were all over. I loved seeing the enormous rocking horse in the Catherine of Aragon Bedroom and the old gramophone in a living room. Through the library (which held about 3,000 books) was the dining room, which was expensive, ostentatious and ugly. It was an enormous room, with ornate silver candelabras adorning the table and extremely fancy china laid out. Very fancy. Wasn’t impressed.
The most fun of the day came outside in the hedge maze. It was a large, complicated maze with tall hedges keeping other paths out of sight. We fumbled helplessly through the maze for almost an hour, having great fun, before an employee on the stone platform in the center of the maze directed us through the maze up with him. We stood up there for a few minutes, looking down at our friends still stuck in the maze, then left through the grotto, a small artificial cave with shells and mosaics all over the walls and a fountain coming from an enormous stone face on one wall.
Back in Canterbury a group of students searched all through town for a pub that could hold a group of 10 loud American students. We finally settled in at a place called the Horse’s Tail. We stayed about an hour, leaving when it closed at 11. We walked through town for about another hour, and certainly did not climb the ancient city walls as is Cornell tradition. If we had, however, Matt and I would have been the only ones to climb up the wet wall, and he would need a little help getting up.
A artist's sketch of what it might have looked like...
All photos courtesy of Davidson Wissing unless otherwise noted.