Even in the dusk, as the dark grey of the Channel met the light blue of the sky, it was still possible to make out the French coast. And from the beacon at Dover Castle, it was possible to make out some of the adjacent beacons originally built to defend us from what lay beyond that coast.
Much like the monarchy itself, Britain once looked to these strongpoints — Martello towers, castles, and hill forts — to protect herself from invaders. Now, just like the monarchy, their role is to attract them in the form of tourists. “We spent 1,000 years repelling visitors,” said Neil McCollum, manager of Dover Castle. “Now we welcome them.”
Mr McCollum was speaking from the tunnels below the castle: the white cliffs caves where in the last century the Dunkirk evacuation was organised – and where you can now buy an excellent cappuccino.
The first Queen to use beacons was Elizabeth I. Then, stretching in a line along the South Coast from Devon to Dover, they were lit to warn of the arrival of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
From the same battlements of Dover Castle where today Spaniards, with the inexplicable enthusiasm of the tourist, take photographs of channel ferries, the 16th-century defenders saw the Spanish Armada pass. Later, they would have heard how their Queen Elizabeth, addressing a crowd at Tilbury field, may have had the body of woman — but she also had “the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too”. No one would scoff at a female monarch again.
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Each year, Dover Castle has 350,000 visitors, many of them foreign. But for last night’s lighting of the beacon, the crowd was restricted to local dignitaries. Down in Dover’s Market Square, where a big screen allowed the rest of the town’s residents to watch the ceremony, there was a certain patriotic fervour. If one can use the word “fervour” to describe a knit-your-own-flag stall.
“We’ve made a mile of handmade bunting,” said Julie Bishop, from Dover Arts Development. “And we have pompoms in jubilee colours.”
Back in the castle, the final preparations were made to their own, less homespun, celebrations.
Even if it does not take an armada these days, the use of Dover Castle’s beacon is still a rare event. The last time it was lit, said Mr McCollum, was for the Millennium. And the next? “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe if she lives another ten years?”