Victoria
County History of Kent Vol. 3
1932 - Romano-British
Kent - Military History - Page 48
at each stage like the Boulogne Tour d’Ordre, and formerly
rising, we may infer, to a total height of about 80 ft. Its walls, 12
ft. thick at the bottom and 7 ft. at the top, have a core of rubble and
white mortar and a facing of green sandstone and tufa held by pink
brick-dust mortar and levelled at regular intervals of seven courses
with double (rarely single or triple) courses of brick. The arches of
the doorway and windows are decorated by the alternate use of stone and
brick voussoirs in a common Roman fashion (pp. 67, 74). It was
apparently divided into four stories, each with three or four
semicircular-topped windows, which vary from 2 ft. wide at the bottom of
the tower to 4 ft. wide at the top. A curious feature of some of these
windows is that the actual external opening was originally reduced to a
small spy-hole only 2 ft. high and 1 ft. wide. This external skin
has in most cases |
FIG. 9. DOVER: UPPER WINDOW OF THE PHAROS ON CASTLE HILL
SHOWING INNER WALL AND SPY HOLE
(From a drawing in Miss Jessie Mothersole’s The
Saxon Shore, p. 123,
made from a photograph by Mr. Seers)
|
disappeared completely with the facing of the
main structure, but survives in the eastern window of the third stage
(Fig. 9). Presumably, in the upper story or stories, fires or torches
shone out through more ample openings, but of this no trace now exists,
except perhaps in the larger size of the surviving upper windows. As to
the date of the structure, we can only guess. Suetonius tells us that in
A.D. 40 Caligula commemorated his abortive advance upon Britain by
erecting a pharos upon the opposite shores of Gaul; and an early date
for the establishment of its counterpart on the Dover cliffs is, on a
priori grounds, likely. The site itself has obvious advantages for
the purpose. Here a tower, standing some 380 ft. above sea-level, would
be visible all the way from the French coast, if the weather were clear
and the light strong enough.77 Moreover, the Dover
sea-fogs not infrequently cling to the lower levels and leave the
heights visible |
from the sea above a bank of mist, and the position
of the pharos suits this well. It is a further question whether the
tower stood alone or with other buildings. Traces of foundations are
vaguely stated to have been observed in the vicinity. But the church of
St. Mary’s, which is immediately east of it, is Saxon and indeed late
Saxon. The earthworks round it show no sign of Roman origin in their
present state; nor is the situation likely to have been chosen for a
Roman fort, and the whole idea that the Castle was begun by the Romans
seems a medieval or
77 Mathematicians calculate that,
so far as the curvature of the earth is concerned, the Dover pharos
would have been visible from sea-level for about 26
or 27 miles.
Dover to Grisnez is 21 miles,
to Boulogne 30 miles. |
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