V. STATE ESTABLISHMENTS.
State establishments there have been in Dover ever since it became an organised community. The MiUtary estab lishments have existed here longer than the Castle ; and the Navy had its cradle here in the Saxon Period.
The State Custom House, which is now located on the Custom House Quay, is the lineal successor of the one which Roger of Amsterdam built over the water, somewhere between the Market Place and the seashore, previous to the com pilation of the Domesday Book. In the Reign of Queen Elizabeth a new Custom House, worthy of the Port, was built, not far from the original Norman Custom House, on a place called The Mount, where a thoroughfare called New Bridge now crosses the River Dour. A new Custom House was built on the Quay in the Pier District in the year 1682, by Sir Arnold Breams, who was then the farmer of the customs at Dover. That house having existed 124 years, a new Custom House was built by the Crown, a little north-west of the old one, on the Custom House Quay. That was opened in 1807, an-l is still used as the Dover Custom House.
Dover's earliest Post OfRce was at the Custom House, at the top of Snargatc Street, in 1673 — not because the building was really a Post Office, but because Mr. Houseman, who was the head of the Custom House, also acted as the manager of the Dover " Letter Office." The mails were then farmed by the Lords Arlington and Berkeley, one Roger Whitely being their deputy. At that time Mr. Rouse was the Dover Postmaster, but not in the same sense that we understand the term. What local letters there were had to be dealt with by Mr. Ilousman at the Letter Office, and Mr. Rouse's duty, as Postmaster, was to provide, or arrange for, saddle-horses to c.nrry the mails by six stages to London. A few years later the Duke of York, the Lord War den, became the farmer of the mails, and then there was some hustling, a Government official named Sawtell being sent down "to haste Mr. Rouse in his duties," because "the Dover letters were expected at Court every Sunday." The Dover Letter Office was, about the year 1678, transferred to StrOnd Street, owing to the Clerk of the Passage being made the Master of the Dover Letter Office. The Dover Post Office seems to have remained in or about Strond Street for above 120 years; and from 1800 to i860 it was in the lower part of Snargate Street, next door to the present sub-Post Office there. In i860, the head office was removed to the bottom of Northampton Street, and remained there until it was removed, in 1893, to the terra cotta fronted building in King Street; which, owing to a deficiency in internal accommodation, was abandoned, and a new Post Office opened in Biggin Street in November, 1914.