1845 Edmund Brown. 1855 C. Chaplin, 2nd time. 1864 W. M. Cavell, 2nd time CONCLUSION. "This special matter of Dele," says the historian John Leland in Cygnea Cantione, "comprehendeth fealty in these two verses: "Jactat dela nouas celebris arces Notus Cæsareis locus Trophœis." "Renowned Deale doth vaunt itself, We commenced the History of Deal by detailing Cæsar's landing on its shore, we conclude it by quoting what he says himself—that, “Having found the shore, upon attempting his descent inaccessible, and the debarkation of the Legions impracticable, on account of the high Cliffs, from which the Britons might have annoyed his forces with their arrows, (circiter millia passuum viii ab eo loco progressus aperto ac plano littore naves constituit ;) that is, having proceeded about eight miles from that place (Dover) he landed upon an open and plain shore, where he met with such opposition as daunted the courage of the Romans, and baffled, at the first onset, the confidence of their superiority in military discipline." Should a time ever arrive when the French, or any other nation, shall attempt to make a hostile landing on the shore of Deal, there is not the smallest doubt but that the same spirit of resistance would be manifested by every inhabitant, as was shewn to Cæsar and his Legions nineteen hundred years ago by the Ancient Britons on this very Coast. In expectation of good things resulting by the erection of the Iron Pier, and by the completion of the Harbour and Docks at the North-end of Deal, it may become ultimately an epitome of the metropolis," to which the lines of Thompson may then be well applied. "Nor stopp'd at barren, bare necessity; But still advancing bolder, led him on Nurse of Art! the city rear'd In beauteous pride her towers-encircled-head: Rais'd the strong crane; chok'd up the loaded street WALMER. WALMER, anciently called "Wallmare," from the Saxon word pall, and the Latin mare-a sea-wall adjoining Deal southward. Some writers suppose its name to be derived from quasi vallum maris; that is, a wall made as a fortification to withstand the sea. But the etymologies of towns and villages are among antiquarians subjects of fruitless research and endless disputation, and even when the origin of a place is satisfactorily ascertained from old records, the name becomes so altered and disguised by its transmutation in modern languages as scarcely to be recognised. In all probability when Julius Cæsar first sighted this extensive plain opening upon him as he passed the end of the Cliffs at Kingsdown, he would attach but one appellation to the whole of it, extending then as now, many miles up to Minster, and that one “Dola,”—a plain lying next the sea. It is very certain that the Saxons overrun this coast and settled hereabouts, and from that circumstance its modern name is attributable. From Walmer Castle commences the high bank of the boulder beach, which extends without interruption the whole length of the sea-shore as far as No. 1 Battery, in the parish of Sholden. Until within about forty years there were many acres of boulders lying between Sandown Castle and that fort, but which is gradually disappearing by the encroachment of the sea. Its appearance was identical with that we see abutting to the road to the Castle of Walmer. Surveying attentively the face of this embankment we must naturally conclude that it is undergoing the same wasting as we see everywhere and along every coast line-the sea warring against the land and everywhere overcoming it, wearing and grinding those pieces to powder, taking that powder away, and spreading it over its own bottom by the continued effects of the tides and currents. The changes, however, on the sea-shore between the two Forelands by the action of the tides within the last fifty years is somewhat reversed, which is very remarkable, and from Kingsdown and along the front of Walmer Castle towards the Old Naval Yard, in Deal, the increase of shingle thrown up within a very limited space of time is surprisingly great, all of which has been caused, it is supposed, by the new Admiralty Pier at Dover altering the set of the tide at St. Margaret's Bay. The loss of beach and shingle between the North-end of Deal and No. 1 Battery is no less manifest, and it is very extensive. Surveys at different times by some of the first Civil Engineers of the present day, taken under the special orders of the War Department, has led to the demolishing of Sandown Castle, built in the reign of Henry VIII.; for had that old fortress been suffered to remain, it would, by its prominence seaward, have aided the encroaching power of the tide to the extent of flooding the valuable marshes that lie between the shore and Minster. The chalk cliffs which commence to the southward of Walmer Castle, extending to Dover and Folkestone, Sir John Herschel supposes to have been at one time connected or united with the like cliffs across the Channel on the French coast at Calais and Boulogne, but when that severance occurred there exists no positive grounds of assurance, although in all probability, as he justly concludes, it might have been produced by some violent volcanic irruption in the early age of the world, perhaps myriads of years before the deluge. The large black boulder pebbles lying close to Walmer Castle display characteristics of their having been once subject to the friction of the tide, the flux and reflux of which by attrition has rounded off the rough angles they once had. The appearance of the shore at the present day is supposed by some writers to be different to what it was when Cæsar landed, but be that as it may, there is no question as to the effect on the shore by the perpetual washing of the sea during a period of full one thousand nine hundred years. It is quite possible that at the time alluded to, the full of the sea, spring tides, was very far distant from the shore than it now is. One is lead to the conclusion that this is the fact, by the presence of so vast a quantity of boulders laying undisturbed to all appearance for ages long past. Dr. Packe, and the Rev. Mr. Lyon, the talented historian of Dover, consider Cæsar to have fought his first battle with the native Britons on the sea-shore by Walmer Castle, and when after having repulsed them in this engagement, he secured his landing. But as to this being the very spot is simply a conjecture. All historians of authority agree that the plain lying about eight miles north of Dover was the place Cæsar arrived at, and Walmer must of necessity be included in it. Round Walmer Church, which stands at the south end of the village on a rise, is a deep fosse, and there are other visible signs of entrenchments at Hawkeshill Close, near the Castle to the southward, and on the place called Dane Pitts, on the old down not far distant. Walmer and Deal have been from the earliest times in close alliance, and it is impossible to dissever them from the historical page. "Wallmare," or Walmer, was once part of the Hundred of Cornilo, but was very early made a branch of the Cinque Ports and a member of the Port of Sandwich. On some disputes arising concerning it, King Henry VI. again annexed and confirmed the union, to which borough it still continues. Its association with Sandwich will ever redound to its honor and celebrity, for whatever the body may be so are its members. The history of Sandwich fills a huge volume replete with information of olden times that no local story can be compared with it. To be connected with |