Guest 651- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 5,673
I have broken my silence as I would like to post on the Heights topic as it is a small cog in a big machine that is hopefully the regeneration of Dover
BUT I am interested to know Why Dover? What brought you there? Why do you live there? What keeps you there?
I don't live in Dover, never have, and don't have any family connections with it, but the immense amount of history and heritage, the potential to be a great place, and despite what people thing there is a lot of open space in and around, with great coastal views. I am in Dover more than the wife would like, but Dover needs help and I hope I can make a small difference.
So why Dover ?
Been nice knowing you :)
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
I think people are so disillusioned with how things have gone over years and years perhaps subconsciously they realise that things will never change for the better. It's rather like the old expression "why worry about the things you can't change?".
It's too late now. Anything that might have been done to improve the area during the last few years when there was any money about to do something have gone now forever. The fact is that there is no money now and nothing can be done in any way to transform Dover.
What's mad is how buildings have been demolished in order to make way for promised changes but have been left dilapidated making the town look like a set of a zombie movie.
Even on a smaller scale you only have to see the litter, the dog mess, the general untidiness to know that the decline is permanent. Any new development is confined to the building of new flats and houses. Nothing dynamic really. No vision. No nothing.
I know people will accuse me of merely being negative and doing nothing to improve things myself. Fine I've got broad shoulders but I'm not the one who promised the earth but delivered little.
As an aside I must admit I always get a cold shudder when some insist that more should be done to encourage tourists to the area. That just compounds the issue because the state of the town does nothing to encourage people to return.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Clearly I have no family connections with it whatsoever being a foreigner! I drifted along here years ago on a trip to Europe via those wonderful noisy revving Hovercrafts. I remember we stayed over, ie spent some time here in Dover rambling around, and liked it. Having spent lots of time in Brighton and so on previously..but never really took to it there, its very high crass gloss etc there, but it still has its uses when you want chips and candy floss ( not at the same time!lol). Afterwards we made several trips here on motorbikes and stayed in the poor quality hotels...we stayed in the Dover Stage and lived to tell the tale !! A badge of honour. Then came here with Briony when she was small in more affluent times and stayed in The Churchill as it was then.. as she liked the beach and I liked Dover's sort of nautical gloom!
And the seed of affection was sown. Years later I came back to live here and before I knew it by accident I ended up on the internet and helping out and was catapulted into local life. It was so long ago hardly anyone had email..when I got email there was no one to send an email too but the Sunday Times, so i did.
The shops were all different those days. I met several people over the years who told me, and continue to tell me when I chat, that its not like it was. I have Scotchie's book and you can see the way things have changed. No longer vasts amount of people promenading on the promenade, no longer the shops in the town, no longer the buzz in the marketplace as it were.
Whether that has anything to do with Dover failing I dont know, or whether its just the shifting market forces of modern times, the rise of the supermarkets and so on, and the change in shopping habits.
I have to admit I am not a great detailed one for history but I do admire all the work these guys do..maintaining vital historical assets as volunteers. I'm a volunteer myself so I understand the nature of the volunteer beast.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
i have to many famly connections here,mother father uncles aunts and grandparents plus a few others i dare not mention.but would be nice to move else where.
Guest 700- Registered: 11 Jun 2010
- Posts: 2,868
I took was a 'foreigner' until 40 years ago when I married Bob and moved down from Lincoln, but I love Kent (I do have a Kentish gt-grandmother), and I do love Dover.
Times change though, and as much as we would like, we can't expect to go back to 'how it was', although it might be nostalgic.
As long as the historic things are protected we have to do the best we can NOW to make things good.
Criticism is all very well and in some parts justified but we have to be constructive and build on the good aspects of the town and do whatever we can to help it prosper for the future, even if we can only contribute in some small way. History is built upon changes I guess.
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Lincolnshire Born and Bred
Guest 1694- Registered: 24 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,087
Why Dover?
Well, for me it is more a case of history. I was born here and my family go back quite a few generations here. My Great Grandfather owned and ran a bicycle and pram retail and repair shop near the Methodist Church on London Road at the time of WW1. Initially the family lived in Dover too, but my grandmother was so terrified of the zepellins and the shelling that the family moved out to Eythorne to live in the house where my family and I live today. My Great Grandfather built a row of houses and shops in Eythorne, commencing construction the year that George the V was crowned, hence the name Coronation Villas. Eight of the ten buildings were originally shops with flats above them and my Grandmother and Great Aunt ran one of them right up until the 1980's (its the one that Peter owns now).
I grew up out in Eythorne and went to the Boy's Grammar school in Dover. When I was little, going to Dover was a big thing, a special treat and a full day out taking the bus and getting dressed up in best clothes. Dover was and is special, its history, its heritage, its industry and its potential. Later, when I was at the Grammar, I would come into town at the week-ends and spend Saturdays with school friends exploring the Napoleonic fortifications on the Western heights, discovering hidden tunnels and passages with secret entrances behind the cliffs on the East and all the way to St Margarets at Cliffe.
I moved out to 'see the world' when I finished school and served as an officer in the Merchant Navy before coming ashore into port operations and working out of Felixstowe as the port their grew. Not at home in Felixstowe I got itchy feet and moved out to the Far East where I continued in Ports and served as Director on the boards of several developing and growing container ports, then moved to the Philippines to get a new multi-purpose port built from scratch.
When the time came to move back to the UK, I looked at the options and decided on Dover. It is HOME. The place had changed considerably during the years that I'd been away (and not for the better). Until recently I quietly got on with life, working for a major shipping line, commuting and doing bits and pieces in a small way to try and improve my local community and to serve it. With the purchase of the company that I worked for by a German operator, I stopped commuting and started my own business in the Maritime sector. I also started to be more involved with local things again. I especially looked at what I could do, how my knowledge and skills aquired over more than 25 years in the maritime industries could be used to benefit our communities and our young people. You all know what has followed.
So - Why Dover? It is a very special town and district, it is my home and I refuse to sit by and see it slip into the darkness without at least putting every fibre of my own being into trying to halt and reverse the decline. I will stand exposed in the breach and apply myself, my knowledge and energy to trying to bring this great town some measure of revival.
Guest 688- Registered: 16 Jul 2009
- Posts: 268
For what it was and for what it is yet to be.
I got a job here and my son started school here , the commute seemed pointless . I grew to love the place
Guest 730- Registered: 5 Nov 2011
- Posts: 221
I suppose I'm a bit of a foreigner, I was born in Cambridge but we moved down here when my dad got a job with Pfizer. I moved to Dover in 1980 from Deal. I was looking to buy my first house and I was working for BT at the time. Dover was my headquarters so BT would pay me travelling expenses and overtime if they wanted me to travel anywhere else, which they quite often did. So It made sense financially to move to Dover. I don't work for BT any more but I stay here because I don't have a car, and have no intention of getting one now, and Dover is very convenient for public transport. I can travel in three directions by train, and of course we now have the the high speed rail link. Also I'm just used to it here and don't fancy the upheaval of moving, although I have considered moving within Dover.
Guest 748- Registered: 4 Apr 2012
- Posts: 3
I have lived in the area all my life, Eythorne, Shepherdswell and now Whitfield. Like Colin I worked in Dover Telephone Exchange for many years but now I have my own business with Dover proudly in its name and the white cliffs as my logo. I do feel very sad walking through the town and would like to do something to improve the situation but I really don't know what!
My first post by the way - thanks for having me.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Dover is the town of my ancestors going back hundreds of years.
When my dad completed his service in the Army, he returned to Dover with us all.
Times are difficult now, but Dover in Kent will prevail.
We must bear the hardships and hold out, there will never be another Dover.
The day will come when Prosperity will shine over Dover! Britannia Prevail!
Guest 730- Registered: 5 Nov 2011
- Posts: 221
Hello Alan, good to see you on here. Hope you're well.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
I was born here, at least 4th generation of Dovorian.... I think back in the early 1900's my great granddad came from Wales to work in the mines. Just a suspicion though.
Guest 739- Registered: 16 Jan 2012
- Posts: 85
My mum and dad moved here in 1965 when he got promotion to Senior Officer with HM Customs and Excise. Previously he'd been stationed all over the UK at ports and airports and liked the idea of being by the sea. We lived at Markland Road and I went to St Martin's Primary School. Then I went to the Dover Girls Grammar and we moved to Frith Road. Most of my mates went to Uni but I decided to get a job instead and also ended up in HMC&E, where I still am after several moves around. I worked in London for a while and although I loved it up there I was always glad to get home. I dragged my husband here from Maidenhead, not kicking and screaming though as he thinks Dover is better than there. So why do we stay here? Apart from family ties as my dad is getting on a bit now I stay because although it is a dump it's MY dump. And yes I do slag Dover off as it drives me mad to see the lost opportunities but I will defend Dover also. It's not Dover's fault it's shabby and sad is it? I have happy memories of going with my mum to Elizabeth's in the Market Square where I had to stand on the seat to eat my knickerbocker glory, and eating cake in Morelli's with their old fashioned juke box. Oh and nagging mum to take me to the indoor market when it was where Smith's is now and buying me a knitted dress for my tiny tears. Wasn't there a time when we had 2 Wimpy's??I could go on but won't. That's maybe another thread - happy memories of my childhood in Dover.
I think we are all guinea pigs in the middle of an experiment for which they have forgotten to set up a control group!
Gosh, lots of lovely, interesting reasons for Dover! And all far more interesting and engaging than #2. We moved here 13-odd years ago having been warned off Dover by people in Folkestone (where we had moved a year prior to that from Wiltshire, with my Old Mans job). We rather bloody-mindedly (no change there then) decided to look anyway and quite simply fell in love first with the house (still love it, 4 storey Victorian Semi with so much character, original features and some pine and stonework thrown in plus a garden) and then with Dover for its beauty (yes!) and history. The place heaves with history, beautiful architecture and lovely sea scenes and countryside.
Guest 722- Registered: 23 Aug 2011
- Posts: 97
I was born in Dover. Spent most of my childhood and youth at the warren and on the cliffs / western heights. I loved Dover and always spoke up when people knocked it. I worked on the ferries and at the docks. When the tunnel building started I was devestated. My favourite walks were no longer possible. The cliff paths were closed. My great grandfather and then my grandmother used to live at shakespeare colliery which then became out of bounds. A motorway was built across the top of the cliffs. You can hear the traffic from below the cliffs on the beach now.
That was enough for me. I bought a camper van, rented out my house and left for the continent. I still live in south west France.
I enjoy coming back to Dover to visit but get so frustrated at what I see. Everywhere I go I have to pay to park, the castle is closed in winter ! pubs closed down, bomb sites from the war still not developed. Not to mention Mr Godden's eyesores. I could go on but I think that's for another thread. Paul wondered why we like Dover not dislike it.
Andy
Guest 656- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,262
When I first set eyes on Dover many years ago now, I was captured by its atmospheric beauty. I stood on the seafront and looked up at the Castle, it stood tall above me reaching to the sky and the white cliffs were shining in the morning sun. I felt that I had been here before, maybe in a past life which may sound daft but that is how it felt.
In PaulB's post#3, I am mentioned in dispatches, the we being the royal we
I have many photos of us on Dover beach as we went through our lives, we were always drawn to Dover. I love it here and I have met so many lovely people whilst working on Doverforum
My Daughters went to the Grammar School and St Richards, they are now both at Uni in London where I first came to from Dublin, ah! the circle of life goes on and on.
What saddens me is that almost everyone I meet gasps with horror when I say I live in Dover. These are people who live close to Dover and some of them work here/shop here etc
I will always be rooting for Dover
Welcome to the Forum, Alan#10
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
not much i can add as everyone else has made clear the benefits of living here.
i washed up here just under 10 years ago and when i arrived the library was in the
town council offices and the white cliffs experience was standing empty.
that of course changed, the town council building has been restored to something of its former glory and the discovery centre is home to a state of the art library a small theatre and all rooms are used in some capacity.
the town centre survives against the odds despite being hit by closures of national shop chains, in fact our retail unit take up is probably high in comparison to the majority.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
then we have market square that despite having the additions of the gateway centre, the big screen and the discovery centre is less busy than it was 10 years ago, things may improve with the new visitor information centre.
the walk through to the seafront has changed little with just cambridge terrace suffering in that time.
the seafront has improved greatly with the new promenade,the merchant navy statue, the stylish(in my view) seaports centre and of course the kiosk.
Guest 644- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,214
Another foreigner - from Burton-on-Trent!
My father was in the Staffordshire Rgt at Connaught Barracks in the mid sixties and met my mother who was virtually a Dovorian, having moved here from Romney area in the early fifties. So yes, son of a squaddie, born in Staffordshire. Parents moved to Deal when I was three and I grew up there though I went to DGSB in the eighties. I moved here in 1996 simply due to proximity to work. All quite boring really.
My grandfather on my mother's side was a dedicated Dovorian though even though he moved from Maidstone (including service in the Home Guard there). He wrote a number of history books and pamphlets all about Dover, so if you have any stashed away written by Alfred Haynes from the sixties and seventies, that's him!
Dover is a love or loathe marmite town, and I still have marmite days, equally frustrating and rewarding. But over the years I've come appreciate it more and more, especially the views, the nature and obviously the history. Life isn't all about shopping, economics, demographics and footfall when you are sitting in Fan Bay in August watching the sun set over the wreck of the Falcon.
As time went by I got more and more involved in community groups, LRCF, WCCP and WHPS because I subconciously started to realise I truly cared about the place and wanted to do something, however small, to try and improve things.
The volunteer and community is a strong one and the small numbers of people who seem to run everything are a credit to this town, and we are lucky to have them.