The White Cliffs of Dover
The song says bluebirds will fly over them, but its writers were Americans who had never seen them, and Britain has no bluebirds. The real cliffs are just as surprising.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Along the Kent coast either side of Dover, facing France across the Strait of Dover
- Height
- Up to about 110 metres (350 feet) at the highest points
- Length
- Roughly 8 miles (13 km) of white chalk coastline
- Made of
- Chalk laid down in warm Cretaceous seas, more than 70 million years ago, with bands of black flint
- Distance to France
- About 21 miles (33 km) across the Strait of Dover
- Famous song
- (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover, 1941, made a hit by Vera Lynn in 1942
- Cared for by
- The National Trust looks after much of the clifftop, including the South Foreland and Fan Bay areas
- Nearby landmarks
- Dover Castle, South Foreland Lighthouse, Samphire Hoe, St Margaret's Bay
A cliff made of microscopic plankton
The cliffs are built from the remains of tiny sea algae called coccolithophores. When they died, their chalky plates drifted to the bottom of a warm, shallow sea and piled up over millions of years, far more slowly than you could ever watch. Later the seabed was lifted and tilted, and the sea carved it back into a wall. The dark lines of flint running through the white face are nodules formed from silica in the same ancient sediment. The same chalk runs under the Channel and comes up again in the cliffs on the French side. The two coasts were once joined, and the Strait of Dover is a relatively young gap.
The bluebird problem
Vera Lynn's 1942 recording gave the cliffs a wartime anthem. It offered the hope of peace over the cliffs, "tomorrow, just you wait and see". The song was written by two Americans, Nat Burton (words) and Walter Kent (music). Burton is generally said never to have visited Dover. That may explain the bluebirds, because the bluebird is a North American species and doesn't live in Britain. Nobody minded. The song became so closely tied to the cliffs and to the Second World War that many people assume it was written by a Briton gazing at the coast.
Britain's front door, and its first line of defence
For centuries these were the first cliffs travellers saw when they crossed from France, and the first sight of home for returning soldiers and sailors. That is why they became a symbol of England and of Britain's island status. They were also a military position. Dover Castle sits on the heights above the port, and in the Second World War the cliffs hid tunnels and gun positions. Fan Bay, a gun battery covering the Channel, was sealed up after the war and rediscovered by the National Trust. Its deep shelter, a network of tunnels dug by Royal Engineers, has since been reopened for guided visits. From the clifftops, the French coast can be seen on a clear day.
Lighthouses, lightbulbs and the first radio message
South Foreland Lighthouse, on the clifftop, was a pioneer. In 1858 Michael Faraday supervised experiments there with electric lighting, and in 1872 the lighthouse was permanently converted to electricity. In December 1898 Guglielmo Marconi set up a wireless link between South Foreland and the East Goodwin lightship. In March 1899 his cross-Channel transmission between South Foreland and Wimereux, France, followed. So a stretch of chalk best known for scenery also helped shape the modern age.
The cliff that was added in 1997
Under Shakespeare Cliff, west of Dover, you can walk on land that did not exist before the 1990s. Samphire Hoe is a nature park made from chalk marl dug out when the Channel Tunnel was built, about 4.9 million cubic metres of it. The cliff itself takes its name from King Lear, in which Edgar describes the dizzying drop and the people gathering samphire on the face. Today the new park is home to wild flowers and breeding seabirds, and it is a good spot from which to look up at the real thing.
What to look for when you're there
Walk the clifftop path between Dover and St Margaret's Bay. The path follows the edge, so keep well back from it, since chalk cliffs do collapse. Look down on the sea for ferries, and for fulmars gliding along the face. Peregrine falcons also hunt along the cliffs. On the chalk grassland, summer brings wild flowers and butterflies such as the chalkhill blue. For the best photographs, try the view back along the cliffs from the beach at St Margaret's Bay or from a boat at sea, where the full height of the white wall can be seen.
Notable people
- Vera Lynn
- Nat Burton
- Walter Kent
- Michael Faraday
- Guglielmo Marconi
- William Shakespeare
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
.jpg){kind=link}
Canterbury Cathedral
Published
A murder in 1170 turned a Kent cathedral into one of medieval Europe's great pilgrimage destinations, and Chaucer's pilgrims were heading straight for it.