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Dover Express 26 August 1938
Dover and Betsy Trotwood's Cottage: (this report has been edited)
Adrian Street has for generations been selected by Dickens detectives as the location of Betsy Trotwood's cottage, made famous in David Copperfield. John Bavington-Jones in his book "Dover - a Perambulation" says 'In this above-wall district is supposed to have been situated Betsy Trotwood's cottage but it cannot now be identified. It was said to have been somewhere toward the Pilot's Outlook which used to occupy the edge of the cliff at the top of Adrian Street, before the Pilot Tower was built at the Pier.'
Subsequently the attention of that writer was drawn to a cottage with a double front and a small, walled-in front garden. This had however been deprived of all sea views by a house which had been built in front of it.
In Mr Walter Dexter's "The Kent of Dickens" that writer falls in with the view that the cottage Dickens had in mind really existed at Broadstairs. He says, "the location of Betsy Trotwood at Dover was purely imaginary" as the original was Mary Strong, who lived in the house in Nuckall's Place, Broadstairs, now called 'Dickens House' and marked with a tablet inscribed as follows: 'In this house lived the original of Betsy Trotwood in 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens, 1849."
"The gardens now in front of the house which faces the sea were meadowland in those days, and Miss Strong, it is said, had as decided an antipathy to donkeys as Miss Betsy"
"Mr Dexter says that there is no record of Dickens having stayed at any length of time at Dover, till 1852, three years after he had introduced it by name as the place that Betsy Trotwood lived." There may be no record, but as Dickens had lived for 37 years before David Copperfield was written it is very unsafe to deduce that he did not know Dover.
The internal evidence in the account by Dickens of young Copperfield's search for his aunt at Dover does not really favour the idea that the cottage was one in Adrian Street district. Apart from the fact that most of the houses which have recently been pulled down were in existence at the time there is the question of distance from the Market Place.
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It was here that little David found a fly-driver who directed him to his aunt's cottage. He said 'If you go up there, (pointing with his whip towards the Heights) and keep right on until you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you will hear of her. My opinion is, she won't stand anything, so here's a penny for you." I accepted the gift gratefully and bought a loaf with it. I went in the direction my friend had indicated and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me and, approaching them, went into a little shop and enquired if they would have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived"
The evidence tyo be deduced from this is, that is David had walked from London to Dover he would not describe it as a 'good distance' to cross the Market Square, go through the lanes, and up Adrian Street. These considerations force one to the conclusion that the story about Betsy Trotwood's cottage having been in Adrian Street must be regarded as being demolished - just as much as the Adrian Street area.
There are people in Dover who have 'found' the site of the cottage in another part of the town. One suggestion was Laureston House, on the old Castle Hill.
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There is a mention in the Copperfield story about donkey-rides. Now, at Dover, in the early part of the last century (ie. Early 1800s) a great place to hire donkeys was near the site of the old Burlington Hotel on the corner of Woolcomber Street and Liverpool Street, on which then stood the house of one, Madame Rice, a Dover lady of repute who was quite as determined a character as Miss Trotwood. It is quite possible that Dickens had heard of Madame Rice having objections to donkeys and riders coming too close to her property. This is all imagination but so is everything else which has been said or written about Betsy Trotwood's cottage.