Shakespeare Cliff

Welcome to blog post number 9 on the subject of Shakespeare Cliff.
 
Writing historical fiction involves a lot of research which informs the story but is not necessarily included in it. This blog is for sharing some of the interesting and fun facts I discovered while researching my novel.

Shakespeare Cliff was Sarah’s favourite meeting place. The landscape of hunched hawthorn and scrubby blackthorn bushes, deformed by salt-laden winds, was to most tastes drear. She adored it. The chalk path splitting the turf, bordered by tussocks of coarse grass and dried thistle, led nowhere but the summit. To Sarah, it was enticing.

The presence of Shakespeare Cliff is felt throughout the novel, almost as one of the characters. A meeting place for clandestine lovers, a picnic spot for couples getting to know each other, and a launching point for suicides, it gets its name from Act IV of King Lear where Edgar in disguise pretends to lead the blind Gloucester to the cliff edge:
 
"Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
 
We do not know for sure if William Shakespeare (1564-1616) visited Dover but it is highly likely. The Chamberlain’s men, the company of actors Shakespeare joined aged around 22, performed in Dover in 1597. Following the accession of King James 1st they became known as The King’s Men and Shakespeare remained with them for most of his career. They performed in the town twice more on 30th August 1606 and 6th July 1610. The cliff described in King Lear has long been known as Shakespeare Cliff. It is not difficult to imagine him sitting on the cliff top looking out to sea to gain inspiration and later returning to a local tavern to scribble down a few lines of verse. King Lear was first performed on St Stephen’s Day, 26th December 1606.

The White Cliffs of Dover

​Shakespeare Cliff is the most visually distinctive of the White Cliffs of Dover, which stretch for eight miles, or thirteen kilometres, along the south-eastern coast of England, facing France across the Straits of Dover. The cliffs form part of the North Downs and are composed of chalk laid down in the Late Cretaceous period between 100 and 66 million years ago. Reaching a height of 350 feet (110 metres), Shakespeare Cliff has a sharp peak pointing skywards.

Postcard after a lithograph by Alfred Robert Quinton

Ed drew in a lungful of morning air and looked at the sharp peak of Shakespeare Cliff piercing the sky, like a ship’s prow. Since his wedding, he hadn’t walked there, but it remained a special place…

It was the location of the first attempt to build a tunnel under the Channel to connect England to France. There had been proposals as early as 1802, and in the 1880s, a seven-foot (2.13m) diameter tunnel was dug to a length of 6,211 feet (1,893m), starting at Shakespeare Cliff. The project was abandoned in 1882 due to the British government’s concerns over national security. It took another hundred and twelve years before the project was realised and the Channel tunnel was opened by the Queen and President Mitterand in May 1994.

​During one of the earlier attempts to dig a tunnel in 1890, a seam of coal was struck 1,100 feet (340m) below the surface. Shakespeare Colliery opened in 1896 and by 1907 was producing 8 tons of coal a day. A railway line connecting Folkestone to Dover had opened in 1844. It was a remarkable feat of engineering with two single track tunnels passing through Shakespeare Cliff. They are exceptionally tall (28 feet/8.5m above the track) with distinctive Gothic arches. Following the opening of the colliery, the South Eastern and Chatham Railway opened a station at Shakespeare Cliff for the benefit of the miners.

When the mine closed in 1915, the station was used by the Admiralty to access their stores in the cliff, and by railway staff who lived nearby, but it never appeared in any public timetable: there was no reason for any member of the public to alight onto the small piece of land wedged between the sea and the cliff face. The British Army used the station during WW2 to serve a nearby military base, but it came into its own when work began on a new Channel Tunnel in 1973 (later aborted), and again during the construction of the current Channel Tunnel in the 1990s. Since the opening of the tunnel in 1994, Shakespeare Cliff station has again fallen into disuse.

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Shakespeare Halt in 1958 with railway cottages in the background. The only access to the cottages was by rail or climbing the 333 steps up the cliff seen next to the tunnel entrance. (Photo by HC Casserley)

Captain Matthew Webb

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​Standing on Shakespeare Cliff on a clear day, one can clearly see the French coast at Cap Gris Nez twenty-one miles (thirty-four kilometres) away. By the time Sarah was meeting Edwin on the cliff top in 1897, several people had attempted to swim across the Channel, but only one had succeeded. In 1875 Matthew Webb made the crossing in 21 hours, 45 minutes despite being stung by jellyfish. It was another thirty-six years until the next successful attempt. The first woman to swim the Channel was Gertrude Ederle in 1926, who also broke the record for the fastest time. She began her swim from the French coast at Cap Gris Nez and reached England in 14 hours, 39 minutes.

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Gertrude Ederle

Shakespeare’s lines describing the cliff mention samphire gatherers:
half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
 
Rock samphire, a plant from the carrot family with fleshy green edible leaves, was commonly found high up on the cliffs. Collecting it was dangerous. Bert, one of the characters in my novel, has never heard of this occupation:

“What are samphire gatherers?”
“Men what climbed on the cliffs collectin’ samphire. I’m goin’ back some while, mind you. It was quite a trade a hundred years ago, but you won’t find anyone doin’ it now. Not much call for it these days and it’s dangerous work, climbin’ up the cliff face or danglin’ over the edge from the end of a rope.”
“What did they do with the samphire once they gathered it?” Bert asked.
“Sold it, of course, you numbskull.” Alf laughed. “That’s how they made their livin’.”
“But, I mean, what do you do with samphire?” Bert could not imagine going to such trouble except to collect a precious material, like gold.
“Eat it,” Alf, Ed, and Titch said in unison.
“Oh. Does it taste good, then?”
“Dunno,” Alf said. “Never tasted it. Don’t fancy it myself.”
“They say it’s a cross between carrots and turpentine,” Ed said, “but I never tried it either.”

Rock samphire – Crithmum maritimum

Nowadays, samphire has become a fashionable vegetable again, especially as an accompaniment to fish. There are two types of samphire, however, and the type which grows in marshes and near river estuaries is much more common than rock samphire.

The White Cliffs of Dover have long been a symbol of the gateway to England and a welcome sight to travellers returning home from abroad. As such, they have been a popular subject of works of art, literature and song. Shakespeare Cliff in particular has been drawn, painted and photographed dozens of times. My favourite is the painting above by George Fennel Robson (c 1813-1832) which shows Edgar and Gloucester on the cliff.

In my story, Shakespeare Cliff holds a special place in the hearts of Sarah and Edwin who did much of their courting there. When Edwin gets ill and refuses to consult a doctor because of the expense, Sarah pawns two pictures she inherited from her guardian, Mrs Kesby, to pay for his treatment. However, she cannot bring herself to sell the painting of Shakespeare Cliff.

Shakespeare Cliff, Dover, 1849 by Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (Royal Museums Greenwich)

When Ed returned from work that evening, he looked washed out. Sarah waited until the children were in bed before extracting the money from her purse and folding it into his hand.
“What’s this, love?” he asked, surprise in his voice.
“It’s two guineas. Should cover the doctor’s fees, whatever medicine he prescribes, and a few days off work. I can’t bear to see you ill, Ed. Please, for my sake, consult the doctor tomorrow and at least find out what’s wrong.”
“Where did you get the money?” Suspicion replaced surprise.
Sarah laughed. “I didn’t steal it, or sell my body on the streets if that’s what you’re worried about. Go into the parlour and you’ll understand soon enough. You’ll notice the marks on the wall where the pictures used to hang.”
“You sold some paintings?”
“Two, but they weren’t precious to me, nor worth an awful lot.”
“Not the Shakespeare Cliff, I hope.”
Sarah gave him a wistful smile. “No. We’d have to be desperate before I got rid of that.”

The most famous reference to the cliff in literature is, of course, the one in King Lear. In my novel, I have imagined one of the characters finding a lost version of those lines written by Shakespeare as a first draught and left behind in the inn where he was staying. The tea-coloured scrap of paper covered in Elizabethan script becomes a gifted love-token, but is later stolen. Its recovery hints at a change in fortune for this working-class family. But that, as they say, is another story.
 
The following are just a small fraction of the many dozens of artistic representations of Shakespeare Cliff. I hope you enjoy them:

Shakespeare Cliff, Dover, by James Webb (1835-1895) (after Clarkson Frederick Stanfield)

Watercolour by George Childs (active 1826-1873)

Shakespeare Beach, Dover, by James Patterson Cockburn (c. 1840)

Dover from Shakespeare Cliff, drawing by William Daniell from A Voyage Around Great Britain Undertaken between the Years 1814 and 1825, published 1829

Shakespeare Cliff by Henry Bishop, 1933 (Tate gallery)

A Boat on the Shore near Shakespeare’s Cliff, 1785-86, JMW Turner (Tate gallery)

Shakespeare Cliff by James Stroudley (1906-1985) (Herbert Art Gallery and Museum)

Shakespeare’s Cliff, Dover, by Samuel Atkins (active 1787-1808) (Tate gallery)

Shakespeare Cliff by John Byrne (1786-1847), pen and ink drawing (RA collection)

Lone tree at Shakespeare Cliff by Dave Godden 2016, photo on canvas

Shakespeare’s Cliff, Dover, with Luggers on the Beach by Samuel Austin (1796-1834) (South Kensington Museum)

And finally, wishing you all a happy, healthy 2022:

​Sources:
 
http://www.dover.freeuk.com/port/shakespeare_cliff.htm
The Dover Historian - A collection of historical articles from the town of Dover, England, by Lorraine Sencicle
BBC Shakespeare on Tour – Wherefore to Dover?
Dover Museum https://www.dovermuseum.co.uk
Disused Stations Site Record by Nick Catford
Wikipedia